My One Little Word 2019 | Bloom
As the calendar shifted to a new year as did my word for the next 12 months. I’ve been taking an online class run by Ali Edwards called One Little Word since 2013. It is now my seventh year of choosing a word for the year and experiencing what the intention of having a word brings and how it can shape the feeling of the year. My words have been Grow (2013), Embrace (2014), Simplify (2015), Awaken (2016), Thrive (2017), Nurture (2018), and this year it is Bloom.
The practice of having a word has become very mainstream and talked about everywhere. When I started shaping my year round a word it was something quite small and seemed to be part of the creative blogging and memory keeping community. I feel so pleased to see that this practice has spread beyond small communities because it is such a creative way to approach the year ahead. Rather than a list of resolutions, a word enables you to set an intention for the year ahead.
Bloom is a word that I have had on the tip of my tongue for quite some time. It has sat in the background for a couple of years, always cropping up on lists of words. Deep down I felt that I wasn’t looking to bloom and that other intentions felt more closely aligned. This year, following the birth of our little one, creating my portfolio career by launching my seasonal coaching practice for creativity seekers, and a general shift in my identity, I felt ready to welcome it in. I had things that I wanted to put in place ahead of blooming and now I’m ready.
There is a beautiful energy associated with the word Bloom. For me it is a word with a gentle sustaining energy, a word that invites a gradual opening, whilst drawing upon all the resources put into the soil around it to enable it to bloom. Bloom as a word makes me feel like that cusp of Spring moving to Summer and the sustained summer long blooms that are tended to.
Every year I search for quotes online that connect me to my word. Here are a few that I love:
“And the day came when the risk to remain in a tight bud was more painful that the risk it took to blossom” - Anais Nin
“Like wildflowers; you must allow yourself to grow in all the places people never thought you would” - E.V
“Live life in full Bloom”
“Bloom where you are planted”
“Be patient with yourself. Nothing in nature blooms all year”
“A flower does not think of competing with the flower next to it. It just blooms”
Bloom will be my word for the year to provide a base from where I will focus, I’ll take inspiration and energy from it. Bloom will inform the seasonal manifestos that I create, the outcomes I visualise for the year, and something I will cultivate into a feeling in my body. Let’s see what it brings.