Review of Nurture | My One Little Word 2018

Hello! It has been such a long time since I shared here on my blog. I have missed this space and I’m so glad to be returning here. I needed to take time away to conserve my energy and focus elsewhere for the majority of 2018. Instead of sharing on my blog I spent the year sporadically posting to Instagram and in my own way leaning into micro-blogging using the platform. I still wanted to share and connect and in a way that fitted in with my life but found creating for my blog was something that had to take a pause.

As you may have spotted I’ve moved my blog into my new website! Welcome to the home of my small bespoke seasonal coaching practice for creativity seekers. I’m so excited to have launched and I’d love for you to take a look around. This has been one of a few projects I have been working on in amongst a few other big changes. I’ll let you read on to find out more…

At the start of each year I share with you the review of my word of the year. Since 2013 I have taken Ali Edwards’ One Little Word online class and have used a word of the year to set intentions and help shape what I do and where I put focus in my life. Over the years my words have been Grow (2013), Embrace (2014), Simplify (2015), Awaken (2016), Thrive (2017) and Nurture (2018).

‘Nurture’ was selected with the aim of inviting in a focus on tending and caring for myself. I decided I wanted to nurture and grow my coaching business, as well as nurture parts of my life and work. When I selected it as my word in December 2017 it felt like it would help guide me towards taking a slow approach, allowing sustainable growth in my life, and be a word that would allow me a bit of time to go inward and hibernate away. It felt like a word that would enable me to put a focus on the inner part of me which was something I really needed. It would help me focus on planning for change, and give me the opportunity to step back a little and enter a winter season for myself.

‘Nurture’ morphed into a word that would lead to a huge shift in my life, my identity, and will forever be a special intention I had created for the year.

Here is how it showed up in my life…

Nurture my body

I had hoped that ‘Nurture’ would bring with it a deep connection to myself and my body. The start of the year felt full and I didn’t feel that I was putting enough focus on nurturing and caring for my body and how I was feeling. I started to notice how run down I felt, it was the opposite of feeling nurtured, so I headed to the doctors in April and discovered some amazing news. I was pregnant. We found out a few days ahead of my 36th birthday that we would be welcoming a little person into our world. It was such a surprise and something that took me until our little girl was born to sink in that it was really happening.

I had been hopeful that during 2018 we’d get pregnant and that it could potentially happen during the fertility treatment we were about to enter into at the end of April. We were very lucky to have conceived naturally and on hearing the news of our little person it changed everything for me. Due to having PCOS, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, and no natural menstrual cycle, I’ve known since my mid-twenties that conceiving could be a challenge and that I may be infertile. It was certainly a big hitter in terms of shaping who I felt was at that time of finding out, effecting my mood, how I was showing up in the world, and how I thought about my future. I knew in my heart that it would be highly unlikely that I’d get pregnant naturally and so for a number of years I’ve been preparing my mindset for what may happen.

I selected Nurture so that in some way I could focus on nurturing my body in the best way I could with the hope of getting pregnant. I didn’t want to share these thoughts at the beginning of the year in case things didn’t ever happen. I wasn’t ready to share the journey and what may lay ahead. I started nurturing my body using complementary therapies to help my body prepare for pregnancy, I took organic herbal supplements and had fertility acupuncture with Gemma from The Quiet Heart in the hope that a cycle may occur and my body would some how become ready. I slowly nurtured my mindset for what may become a long journey ahead in preparing to welcome a little person into our lives.

During my pregnancy I suffered problems with my thyroid and the first few months saw it becoming very overactive, the exhaustion took hold every afternoon. Tablets helped normalise my thyroid, and then whilst taking the medication my thyroid became underactive. I spent the time from April to October having fortnightly blood tests, monthly hospital trips, and decided to hibernate away from my blog. Because of the thyroid, and other experiences family and friends had experienced in our past, I knew there could be complications and I had to take a very pragmatic view.

Our daughter Chloe arrived at the end of October, three weeks and three days ahead of schedule and is growing into a gorgeous little person that we love so much. I used hypnobirthing and gave birth naturally having had a few paracetamol. Chloe is the perfect celebration of our year and has brought a new meaning and role of my word Nurture, as I’m sure you can imagine! Nurture shifted in meaning from myself to looking after Chloe and navigating the early weeks of her life to get her weight up, and giving her lots of love, smiles and cuddles to nurture our relationship and connection. After Chloe safely arrived I could finally process that I could be a mum and have a long awaited little person in our lives. I still pinch myself that it has happened and feel she is our little miracle.

Nurture my mind

I wanted to nurture my mind, as well as my body, and for me this meant spending time refining the ideas in my business plan, launching my coaching practice, and completing my NLP Master Practitioner qualification. After finding out I was pregnant the aim became to get through each week and be kind to myself. I decided to give myself grace and understanding to spend a longer time bringing my plans to life, it felt important to nurture all aspects of my life and plans in the way I felt would work best.

With a deep determination and passion for what I was doing, I completed the NLP Master Practitioner qualification and my research project, in amongst a summer of a growing bump and my thyroid still causing an huge impact on my energy levels. For me completing the course and gaining the qualification meant that I would have the tools I wanted ahead of starting my coaching practice. I adored the course, the learning, the people I shared the journey of the course with, and had such a special experience whilst learning that really nurtured my mind and nurtured my soul. The concepts, the deeper understanding of NLP and the experience of completing something whilst so much was going on, gave me the toolkit I had wanted ahead of launching my coaching practice.

I spent time during the year working on my business plan, refining my ideas, and drafting parts of my website. I joined Sas Petherick’s Fire Monkeys class at the start of the year and worked my way through the modules. I had planned to launch the website in the Autumn, then it shifted to the start of my maternity leave. Chloe decided that she wanted to meet us three and a half weeks earlier than planned (!) and so I needed to pause the plans whilst learning to be a mum and caring for her with nothing else clouding my mind. It has taken until this January to get into the swing of things and so I finished off what I had started, shaping more ideas and plans, and letting them fuse together. During Chloe’s naps I created more web copy, selected images and built the site. Even though it is a few months later than I had initially planned my coaching practice and my website has launched.

A year of nurture

At the start of the year ‘Nurture’ felt that it would be the word I’d need to take a slow sustainable approach to starting my coaching practice, to nurturing my body, to nurture my knowledge and abilities, and take my coach training to a higher level. I kept nurture in my mind as I worked through the year, it grounded me and gave me the permission I needed to take a slower and simple route. Taking one thing at a time and creating a space for natural growth became very real.

Nurture has enabled me to hibernate away, allowing me to grow and birth my baby, to complete my coach training and nurture a deep knowing within me that I am ready to coach people in the way I want to, with a business plan and website I feel energised by. Nurture has enabled me to quietly refine parts of my coaching business and to do that with grace, time, and a slow and simple approach.

In January 2018 I wrote the list you can see in the photo above, I took it down from the wall above my desk and smiled as I prepared to start unravelling the year with Susannah Conway’s workbook, something I’ve done every January and February since 2014. I’ve experienced the power of having a word I connected with and having a visible list. My list was called ‘My priority projects’ and lists ‘getting pregnant, coach business, NLP Master Practitioner, Fire Monkeys, house restoration and blog’. I look back to last January and can see the progress made with the list. It’s time to write a new one ready to shape the year and what I hope to achieve. I look forward to sharing the year with you.