I fully embraced the Word of the Year (WOTY) in 2012 right in the middle of postpartum OCD and suicidal depression. I could no longer stomach looking at my New Year’s resolutions, any of which not completed rolled over to the next year. My resolutions started as a great idea that quickly turned into a yearly, insanely long list of all the things I didn’t do because I suck. My last resolution list was three pages long. Single-spaced. I wish I was kidding.
My first WOTY was for 2013. I found out about it from a well-meaning friend. She really embraced it and it changed her life – a word to grow with, to live with. A word to love by, grow with, become. A word to inspire, drive, live. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
At the end of 2012, I was still suicidally depressed and chronically fatigued and I had a 16-month-old. I was on four psych meds that were no longer working – or were barely working. I was mentally and physically ill and had been for over 1.5 years. I really didn’t think I would ever get better so I made the desperate decision to wean off my meds and replace them with exercise, diet and supplements, which I got my crap psychiatrist at the time to sign off on.
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
My WOTY was HEALTHY because “I’ll be 40 at the end of 2013. I’d like to start a new decade feeling strong, balanced and clear. I’d like to have enough energy to keep up with my toddler. I’d like to enjoy my life again – because life is good.”
Life was anything but good. In 2013, I weaned from off of all of the psych meds and lost my stepfather when I was going through the worst of the Lamictal withdrawals. That shit sucked. I was so fatigued I could barely walk. I was told by an integrative doctor that there was no such thing as mental illness right before she sold me thousands of dollars worth of supplements and hormones that would fix my thyroid, adrenal fatigue and leaky gut that were REALLY the cause of my suicidal depression and chronic fatigue. I announced to the world that I was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder.
I felt better on desiccated thyroid medication and the Hashimoto’s went into a short remission, but I was soon again sleeping any free moment I could and I couldn’t stop thinking about suicide. Again, nothing was working, so I made another huge, desperate change. I started the Paleo Autoimmune protocol, an incredibly rigid diet that promises to cure everything, or something like that.
IT WORKED!!! For a few months. Then magic happened. I found the answer. Fucking other people besides my husband. Yes, you read that right.
AND IT REALLY WORKED!!! I took a lover. A considerably younger lover. Meow. (We both did. We opened our marriage. Don’t judge.) I fucked my way into a fantastic 6-week mania, during which I chose my WOTY for 2014. Of course, I write this in hindsight. I had no idea I was in a mania at the time because I still didn’t think I had bipolar disorder and my thyroid and my adrenals and my gut were the cause… and it would be another six years before all of that would be figured out, mostly. (Hint: Lyme and friends.)
From my 2014 blog: “Now that I’m ‘HEALTHY,’ it’s time to ‘SHINE.’ Makes sense, doesn’t it? I have a brilliant light inside of me today that started with a spark. A spark of hope. Everyday it grows. People who’ve known me for years stop to tell me how beautiful and healthy I look. I’ve even had a few people not recognize me. Yes, I shed a lot of weight, but there’s so much more than that. I look younger. My eyes have changed. My hair has changed. Even my eyelashes are longer and my eyebrows are finally filling back in. I want to shine my light into a book. A delicious, brutally honest recounting of my journey from madness to optimum health. The book I wish would’ve been there for me when I was sick to give me hope and solutions. Then I want to shine my light on stages and podiums all over the world to tell my story so that others may be inspired and find their paths to health if that’s where God sees it fit to do so. I’ve had a passion for public speaking and inspiring others for decades that only grows with time and never fades, so it’s something not to be ignored, although it feels insurmountable.”
Seriously, people, I’m always the last to know that I’m manic. Sigh.
I declared myself HEALTHY and now it was time to SHINE.
This is what SHINE ended up looking like for me:
- The longest darkest suicidal depression I’ve ever endured
- Not sleeping for the most nights I’ve ever endured
- Complete loss of appetite
- Sudden, dangerous weight loss
- Two psychiatric hospitalizations
- Three months in an IOP
- Relapsing after 15 years
- My husband and I separating
- My husband threatening divorce
- Moving back in with my family in Nevada
- Having to learn how to eat and sleep again
- Missing Christmas with my then 3-year-old son
- Losing almost all of my friends and many family members
- Losing everything I’d fought so hard for in my life
I didn’t make a WOTY for 2015 because I didn’t think if I’d be alive for much longer.
My toxic positivity got me through many very hard years. I am so grateful I’m still here. In 2022, that husband and I finally divorced after 21 years together and I healed from a long battle with Lyme disease. I felt like my life was finally starting over. I had a shot. I decided to come up with a WOTY again for 2023. It was FREEDOM.
On May 1, 2023, that husband and father of our then 11-year old son died suddenly and tragically in a car accident and neither of us will ever, ever be the same again. I can’t find the words to express the devastation of losing the man I grew up with and navigating the biggest loss of my life while parenting my son through the loss of his father. His death has pushed the remains of my toxic positivity over a cliff and finally, for once in my life, I’m living in reality. I’m feeling my feelings.
I was not HEALTHY in 2013, I did not SHINE in 2014 and I most certainly didn’t find FREEDOM in 2023, but I can take a peek in the rearview and find deep meaning in all those years. I can also find words.
- 2013 = SEARCHING
- 2014 = BRAVE
- 2023 = GRIEVING
See? It makes much more sense for me to actually live the year first and find a WOTY after all is said and done. If not, I’m just doing another version of my masochistic resolutions. I’m setting myself up for not only failure (most likely), but the pressure and stress of trying to force the word upon my life and lying to myself that it has magically come true. I’m forcing results rather than just letting them unfold. Because life is going to unfold whether I like it or not. Yes, I have some control over me, my reactions, my involvement, my attachments, but I don’t have control over the result.
And I get into a hell of a lot of pain when I think I do.
This is also why I no longer do vision boards. Both just say to me “hey, you want to come over and make a collage or a word into a giant baseball bat to beat yourself up with until you either complete the task or give up completely?” I’ve learned in my now 50 years on the planet that my neurons are deeply grooved to kick my own ass. I’m very mean to myself when I give myself an opportunity. Or jump on board with what is a creative and beautiful way for some to reach for goals throughout the year and fool myself that I am them, but I am not them.
I am me. And I’m not going to play in their reindeer games even if I have FOMO and feel like I don’t belong. Because I don’t have to belong all of the time.
And neither do you.
Happy New Year. I hope 2024 brings you shiny health and freedom and everything your heart desires.
