Setting Intentions and Rising Suns

My word for 2020 is Zest.

I didn’t have much fun in 2019. I had to kind of fight through each day, especially at the end of the year. Overall, it seemed like life was handing me one dog-poop sandwich after another. My mom was sick with cancer, and my dad was dying from liver disease. My mother, my siblings, and I stood watch over my father for five days in October, caring for him at home while he faded away in hospice. He passed away on Halloween. He always was a prankster.

I’d like 2020 to take a turn for the better.

I’m figuring out that life gets complicated at middle-age. I’m fourty-seven, I have two young-adult children, I have grown step-children, one with kids of her own. Yes, I am a grandma. Actually, I am a Mimi. My tribe is growing, which is joyful, but it also means our worries multiply.

Reflecting about 2020, and thinking about a word I would like to embody, I came up with – zest. Zest means a kind of zeal or enthusiasm for something that put your heart and soul into. Living your life with zest, means living with flavor and gusto. This year, I must-o find some gusto. I can’t do another 365 days just getting by, or worse, crawling by.

Still, it’s funny how in the gloomiest, hardest moments, life will throw you a bone. The morning before my dad died, I was sleeping on the couch and my mother sleeping upright in a chair in the living room. We were there so we could be near my dad. We’d spent the night listening to his breathing, or rather the pauses in-between his breaths. My mother had finally fallen asleep when I noticed orange behind the curtains. I went outside in my pajamas, the air was cool and crisp. The view was breath-taking. My parent’s farm was glowing.

I am going to add another word to this year, Attune

I’ll be open and actively looking to ferret out the small moments of pleasure and zest that life offers, especially when I feel like that same life is dragging me down. Living is not one big, grand, zesty, adventure. But maybe if I string together enough moments like this, it will be beautiful most of the time.

XO,

Mariah