While in the Waiting Room, Nurture
2022 One Word = N U R T U R E
A new year always marks that it’s time to reflect and set intentions. Each year since 2017, I’ve selected a #OneWord to guide me. They have always served me well (somehow I had the foresight to select resilience as my word in in January 2020!) and each has intention, manifestation practice and story behind it. The list includes: Release (2017), Attention (2018), Victorious (2019), Resilience (2020), Aspire (2021). This year, 2022, my word is: N U R T U R E.
Here’s a bit of the backstory on how I arrived at nurture.
Futurists have predicted various outcomes and long-lasting impacts of the pandemic. One I follow, Cecily Sommers, author of Think Like A Futurist, described the four forces of change: governance, demographics, technology, resources and how the pandemic plays into these forces at an April 10, 2020 talk during the Global Foresight Summit (available here (scroll down); my LinkedIn share is here). I continued to pay attention to her work and in a May 2020 article (Beyond the Pandemic: Taking the Long View), I appreciated how she noted, “As our quarantine extends indefinitely, the more it assumes the characteristics of a purgatory-like waiting room.”
Indeed we are still in the waiting room. And it’s becoming evident that if we continue to treat it as such, a purgatory-like mindset and its characteristics could last a lifetime. As individuals exerting all of our effort to live in and navigate the impact of daily change, it can be challenging to process what’s happened since the pandemic onset, much less anticipate what’s next for us in 2022. Our perception or understanding of the passage of time, which once felt marked by reliable seasonal and calendar occurrences and even a deep knowing, is now skewed. We most definitely know our rhythm is off.
It can be unsettling. It presents challenges for our well-being, our mental state, and so much more. I liken early pandemic behavior to the feeling of white-knuckling it during early sobriety -- which felt like a tense and gripping state of never letting my guard down and attempting to check all the boxes. It’s exhausting to always be on heightened alert. One careless, mask-less move and COVID will hit you up.
When I think of the countless daily virus-related decisions made for myself and my family over 654 days (from 3.17.20), I need a very long nap. I think of myself as a consistent person, but feel I’ve been pushing the boundaries with inconsistencies everywhere. I’ve given myself grace as the things I afford myself are gathering with friends, frequenting sauna experiences (at 200 degrees, can any virus survive?), occasional group hot yoga, and co-working and coffee shop outings. We even traveled in the U.S. as a family in spring 2021. Each one of these add-back-ins have been heavily weighed considering potential impact to others, and my and my family’s mental health and well-being. Sometimes, I still go forward with a high-risk move. The lines are blurry.
One thing is clear. I want out of the pandemic waiting room. But I also realize that we need to stay here, be human, have hard conversations, make significant shifts, and figure it out. So 2022 for me is about nurturing. It’s about nurturing the small starts of goodness created by the remembering I did in 2021 (I remember when I used to prepare a meal for the family more than once a week and sit down to enjoy it together; I remember when I used to not work on weekends). It’s about nurturing relationships I deeply value by bringing common understanding and boundaries to the core in healthy ways. It’s about nurturing myself (grace x 10!) in a milestone year of life. It’s about nurturing my teenage children in ways they really need right now.
It’s an inward year and it does remind me of early sobriety. It was a one-year stretch where I remembered the self I got so far away from, nurtured even the smallest inkling that I could persevere on my alcohol-free journey, white knuckled it in the waiting room of sorts – all with the promise of the good stuff just around the corner. I’m here six years after that season of my life to say that the good stuff did indeed arrive. With a lot of nurturing in 2022, I have hope that it can again for me and us as a collective of humans.
-- What’s your one word, if you have one? How are you managing this purgatory-like waiting room in 2022?
