Review of Embrace - My One Little Word 2014

For the past two years I've been selecting a word at the beginning of the year and trying to bring my word into my everyday. In 2013 my word One Little Word was 'grow' and last January I chose 'embrace' as my word for 2014. The words I've had for the past two years have played a key role in helping me shape each year. 'Grow' brought with it great change and personal growth, and 'embrace' has brought with it something different than I had expected. I will admit that it has taken me a while to write about how embrace impacted on my year. It's near the end of January and it has taken until now to process and work out how to express the past year and the impact of my word. Processing the year and tying up loose ends this month has been a challenge in itself, and then putting it into words another.

When I started to explore the meaning of the word 'embrace' I saw that it had a range of meanings, including to hold close, to surround, accept willingly, encircle, adopt, accept and welcome. At the start of the project, for me the word embrace meant embracing who I am, what I have grown to be, what I believe in and what I love to do. Embrace meant surrounding myself with, and welcoming things around me, that made me feel good, embracing my ideas, thoughts and plans to push forward, forming my key intentions for the year. But embrace ended up meaning so much more...

I look back at my twelve intentions I set for the year -

embrace space

embrace change

embrace me

embrace the moments

embrace simplicity

embrace the now

embrace challenge

embrace positivity

embrace my plans

embrace creativity

embrace curiosity

embrace reflection

With these intentions I set my own hopes and thoughts of what may happen in the year. When I selected the word it jumped out of a list of words, I had a huge gut reaction at the time that made me feel that 'this is what I'll need for the year ahead', little did I know the role that the word embrace would play. Perhaps it was intuition or a gut feeling, or perhaps just through pure coincidence, the word embrace became possibly the most powerful thing I had in my emotional toolkit for the year. It became a mantra that gave me focus and something to anchor to and hold close during such a mixed year. 

The year was filled with many memorable moments, from the huge high that came from Mr C and I buying our first home together, however a number of key moments of real lows and sadness came with it too. Hands down, last year was possibly the toughest year I've ever navigated through, and I really mean navigated through. I felt that the year was guided by being faced with multiple paths, trying to read the signs in front of me to help pick a path, dealing with huge obstacles and challenges to overcome on the journey, making key decisions, dealing with a range of emotions and moments, and choosing the best possible path to navigate to the end of the year with. The year was full of key decisions including work, career, relationships, finances and wellbeing. I wrote in June about my blogging break and things that had happened at the start of the year and it was a mixed start to the year. From then onwards it continued to be mixed with a number of challenges playing their own part.

I look back at the year and the best way to describe it was as if a few huge hurricanes landed in our life ripping through at various parts of the year. It felt much of the time that I was holding on during the storm, managing to keep safe but effected by the impacts. At times it seemed that the storm had passed but in actual fact we were in the eye of the storm. At that stage I was taking the time to pick myself up, rebuild, and enjoy the moment of calm…only to be hit by the next phase of the storm. The year felt engulfed by challenge, change and moments that will stay with me forever, with many things happening that impacted on myself and those people very close to Mr C and I.

There were huge changes to my career and work. A process of restructure and redundancy selection happened to me twice during the year, once at the end of March and the other in August. The whole experience rocked me to my core and made me question what I really wanted. I look back and it was tough going through two rounds of restructure and change to the team I was in, saying goodbye to my entire team and other people in the business I've worked with for most of my working life. I felt the anxiety, stress and paranoia of feeling I'm next and unsure what was ahead of me. The work changes shaped most of my year but I embraced it. It was tough but my word embrace became the core focus I needed to get through that period of time. I embraced the moments I had left with my old team and embraced the change to the business and the department I'm part of. I embraced the challenges that arose from the changes to my day job and ultimately the career path I have had planned. I've found myself being the only remaining original team member, which at times was, and still is, incredibly hard, as it has meant huge change in my role and my daily work life. I've embraced it but will look back ever so fondly on the time I had before the huge change. A unique wider team of incredibly talented and creative people filled my weeks making my job the best I think I'll ever have. The close team of people I worked with everyday, their great personalities, and the brilliant achievements we had over the years, are things I will never forget. But I have kept saying to myself embrace the change and move forwards onto the next chapter which gradually I am trying to do.

The year progressed with an overwhelmingly high volume of work, and in time I ended up with the same amount of work that used to be managed by a team of four, needless to say there were many moments that pushed me to near breaking point. But I embraced it which I'm incredibly proud of, I know that I was as strong as I could ever hope to be at such a challenging and emotive time. I tried hard to embrace the change but at times I felt I lost a bit of me as time became dedicated to getting through the overwhelm of work, the lengthy working the hours that were required to deliver, and the pressure of the business on the need for the work to be completed. Losing a little bit of me during that time was tough, I worked late and couldn't really switch off as much as I wanted, I lost any drive to be creative. At times it felt that I was almost fighting for survival, feeling drowned and overcome with workload and demands on me. But I embraced it and ploughed on. I'm proud that I worked so hard, I gave it everything I could, I embraced me and all that I could do.

During the year I kept saying to myself 'just hold on tight', 'embrace this challenge' and 'embrace the new'. It wasn't until I had a fortnight off at Christmas that I realised just how mentally exhausted and physically drained I had become, our last holiday was July where I just sat and relaxed and I did the same again for a fortnight over Christmas. I'm surprised now how I managed to battle through the lack of sleep, deal with the volume of work, the lengthy working hours and pressure I was under to keep things going for the role I found myself in at work, plus deal with the other things going on outside of work. Embrace provided me with a level of strength and taught me to just accept the changes willingly. Somewhere in its meaning it also just meant that I had to hold tight, embrace it and get through it. Without embracing it I think I would have found myself in a different situation than I'm in now.

In addition to the overwhelm of work, we had to deal with the incredibly emotional loss of our beautiful niece. I mentioned in my blog post in June that our niece was diagnosed with a rare terminal illness. In amongst challenges with work, we had a heart breaking number of months of seeing our gorgeous niece fade and slowly slip away. Her brave fight ended in September leaving us utterly heart broken, shell shocked and stunned that life can be so short. I haven’t mentioned it here before as writing it brings it all back and I pour with tears, but it was a key moment for me telling me even more to embrace life and embrace the moments. We've seen so much loss of little ones around us with very close friends' new arrivals not making it through various stages of pregnancy and life over the past few years, it showed me just how so precious and delicate life is.

The year taught me to embrace the moments. I will never forget the moments I spent with our niece, holding her close, cuddling her, comforting her at times when she was in excruciating pain, trying to make the moments we had with her calm, warm and brimming with so much love. The times I spent with her were so incredibly precious, the moments when she squeezed my hand, registered that I was there, telling her stories and comforting her when she was visibly in so much pain. Those moments will never leave me, her presence will never leave our family. What it taught me even more than I was already doing was to embrace the moments we have with the people that mean so much to us, it taught me life can be so short and life can dramatically change over night. I look back and during the year across most things that I experienced I embraced the moments, tried to live life to the full, and remembered to document the moments and memories.

Documenting the moments in my Project Life album took on a new routine and new meaning. Memory keeping during tough times was delayed until I could deal with writing about it and printing out the photos associated with it. What I'm so pleased with is that I embraced the moments and documented them in the best way I could and when I could. The project from 2014 still isn't complete but I'm ok with it and adding the missing weeks when I can. I embraced me, I embraced how I felt and embraced the creative moments however few and far between they were.

The week after our niece passed away Mr C and I collected the keys to our new home. A whirlwind of emotions engulfed us during that time, dealing with a very sad time versus an incredibly positive and exciting event was quite overwhelming. We packed up our home and our courtyard garden and moved into our new home. I embraced our new space, embraced the positivity of our new home and embraced the exciting change to our routines and what we could do in our amazing new space. It felt like a dream come true and I still have to pinch myself everyday that it happened and we were so lucky to find our home and be able to move. Our new home became a space of pure happiness that I came back to everyday after a busy day and enjoyed throughout the comforting autumnal months and during Christmas when we hosted for our friends.

The year we had has taught me is to embrace life and what it throws at you. The goodbyes, the change, the life decisions, and the new things that became part of life shaping things moving forwards. I embraced the fact that many decisions were out of my hands and were meant to be. I embraced the tough times and discovered during the year new levels of mental strength and composure that I have never had to tap into before. I spent much of the year embracing reflection and trying to embrace the challenges around me personally, professionally and emotionally. I embraced the journey of my thoughts and feelings during the year, it enabled me to see what was important in life, it helped me refocus things and discover what I most wanted in life.

Embrace added a new level of strength to my personal and emotional toolkit. As with the word 'grow' the year before last, the word 'embrace' isn’t going to leave me, that feeling and belief is embedded in who I am now. In some areas of my life the situations faced during the year would have prompted me to crumble and not deal with things but embrace gave me a real focus and strength. I embraced space to think and to reflect, I embraced change and saw it as the next stage, I embraced and discovered the positives and I held on tight, I embraced the life I was leading.

This January leaving my word behind and moving to the next word is exciting and all part of the next phase for me. I didn't manage to meet some of the intentions I set last year like embracing simplicity, embracing my plans and embracing curiosity, in the way I thought I may have had the opportunity to. As with all changes in the calendar, I can see this year as a new dawn and a new phase. It's time for the next path to be created, a fresh chapter to be started on a crisp page of a book waiting to be written. It is the opportunity to move forwards to something new. I know there will be more challenges this year and I have already experienced a few in January that I've embraced and just finished working through. Luckily my in built 'embrace' mechanism kicked in as did the feelings behind 'grow' and also the impact of my new word of the year.

What I know is that by having a word selected for the year can lead to remarkable things. It can help guide during key decisions and for me it enabled a new level of personal development to be experienced and reached. Thank you 'embrace' for being there in 2014, you certainly provided a guiding light and an anchor for year.

I'm looking forward to what my One Little Word for 2015 will bring...I'll update you on this soon.

Moving house :: Embracing the new

Over the past month or so I've had a quiet time on my blog. I had hoped to not be away for quite so long but there were a few things that have had our focus and energy. One of those has been taking some time for Mr C and I to embrace a fantastic and exciting positive change in our life...we've bought a house together and have moved!

I can't tell you how long I have wanted to share the news but I didn't want to tempt fate and tell many of our friends and family until we had the keys. Mr C and I have been patiently waiting since early June for the outcome of our house purchase and just over four weeks ago we were able to collect the keys and move our possessions and our life into a new home.

We are still living in Bristol and have moved from our basement flat into a gorgeous three bedroomed victorian terraced house on the other side of the river. We stumbled upon a real gem of a house that has just the right amount of space we were looking for, it is also well decorated with only a few colour changes needed on the walls, so nothing too overwhelming to do. Our new home is like a dream come true and has so many features we love.

We were looking for more space and a house that would allow us to achieve more of the lifestyle we wanted. We hoped to find a space that would enable us to make it easier and simpler to do the things that both Mr C and I love...and we have found it!

Our new kitchen is much larger and gives Mr C the space to get stuck into his cooking hobby and me the push I need to learn more cooking and baking skills. We now have dedicated dining room space to entertain friends and family with the food Mr C loves to cook. Our bedroom is spacious and provides us with a calm uncluttered space to relax and sleep in. We are lucky to have two additional bedrooms that will mean that friends and family can come and stay in comfort. One of the spare rooms is our gorgeous converted attic which is home to both my new craft studio as well as doubling up as an additional room for our hobbies and for guests to stay. Our garden is a perfect size for city living, it allows us to have the balance between gardening and container gardening, and with it being south facing there is more light than I could have ever have hoped for!

We are so delighted to be living close by to some of our great friends and are a short walk from a bustling high street which is full of character. We are spoilt for choice with a few butchers and bakeries, a green grocer, a post office, a few small supermarkets, lots of little shops, pubs and restaurants, a park, and a 10 minute walk to my favourite little garden centre. We are still on the edge of the city with a few minutes drive away from the countryside and a 25 minute walk into the centre of the city. It feels like all of our hopes and dreams, for the type of home and location, have been met for this phase of our lives bringing with it a huge wave of positivity.

We've embraced the challenges and change that have come hand in hand with a house purchase and a move. It has been quite overwhelming at times, both emotionally and with the level of physical tiredness. We have almost unpacked and are gradually finding homes for our possessions. I've been enjoying seeing what we own and having another sort through our things to keep refining and making space for the new. In the first week after having moved in we began to see the space taking shape and our house becoming our home. We are now looking forward to gradually putting our own stamp on things and creating a homemade home full of things that reflect our personalities and interests.

...As I write this I'm sitting at my desk in our attic room, with a steaming cup of tea, listening to the occasional pitter patter of rain drops on the skylight windows. While I've been sitting here the weather has cleared and bursts of sunlight and warmth now fill the space.

I've been sitting here reflecting on how moving house and starting a new has truly made my year. I can't tell you how happy we are to have found such a beautiful house that fits exactly what Mr C and I were looking for. Whilst we move about our home we both have a visibly renewed spring in our step and an enthusiasm for the things we love.

Each time I sit at my desk I am filled with many emotions but mainly with real joy and happiness. My new creative space is more than I could ever have hoped for. I'm truly lucky and so incredibly excited about what this space will lead me to achieve. I've been jotting down notes of project ideas and have been refreshing my plans and goals whilst I unpack the final set of boxes.

Our life in our new home has begun, our new routines have started, and a refreshed enthusiasm for our passions has been kicked into life once again...I wonder what this new house will hold for Mr C and I? Our exciting new journey has begun...watch this space.

Embracing the year so far

We are nearing the end of February, the evenings are getting lighter and blossom is appearing on the trees. The year is already passing by at speed and spring appears to be on its way. After weeks of rain and storms things seem to be calming with more frequent sunny and dry days brightening the week.

The past two months I've been using the time for reflection and for planning the year ahead. The month has been busy and I've tried hard to embrace the year and everything that has arisen so far.

I've been...

Travelling...

At the end of January Mr C and I took a refreshing holiday away to the Yorkshire Dales, our first holiday away since May last year. We certainly needed it and forgot how good it was to escape for a week away. We had a lovely trip and stayed in a converted barn with our close friends. We enjoyed days out stomping in the countryside, seeing waterfalls, caves, amazing landscapes and pretty towns. Afternoons of drinking tea, eating cake, reading books and snuggling next to the log burner became a regular routine.

Clearing...

We've had some work done in our little flat turning the place into a building site and a dusty mess. Luckily most of the work was completed while we were away on holiday but we had a few days of cleaning our home top to bottom to get everything back together. Despite the building work being really disruptive I found huge positives in amongst the mess. It was the perfect time to do a huge spring clean, time to assess what we own, a chance to get rid of the old and give to charity, a time to make space and plan changes to our home.

Taking time to assess what we own and cleaning our home top to bottom was so therapeutic. We cleaned our windows, tidied through cupboards and storage boxes and reviewed our book collection, making our home feel fresh again with space to move. The space we created will not immediately be filled with new things, we want some space to breathe and a space to slowly add to as we find new pieces we love.

With our house tidying and planning came a refresh and a brand new and improved space for me to sew and make. I'll tell you more over the next week but I'm delighted to have a really special place in our home to dedicate to my passions and have space to create. Having the space has enabled me to get stuck in with some making and planning projects for the year.

Making...

I've been picking up work in progress projects and sewing together rows of patchwork for my new cushion cover...

and cutting out triangles and piecing them together for the back of the cushion...

and then packing up! My sewing machine decided that it needed a service so while I'm waiting for my sewing machine to be fixed I've been busy making more crochet granny squares for my blanket.

Seeing...

I've been busy catching up with special friends over brunches, visits, tea and cake, and long distance Facetime catch ups. Some of these catch ups haven't happened for years, others months and some weeks. However long our time apart our friendship bonds are still strong and taking time to catch up made me so very grateful for the friends in my life and the brightness, warmth and closeness they bring.

Receiving...

Its been a month of receiving lovely pieces of post and parcels. A few weeks ago I received a long awaited crochet book as a late Christmas gift, and last week I treated myself to a few new patchwork books. The books are already inspiring me for my next quilt and crochet projects.

I've mentioned before about how much I love receiving post. This month I've been so lucky to receive two beautifully hand written thank you cards bringing with them warm words and kindness, receiving them made my day!

Embracing...

My word Embrace has been at the forefront of many things over the past two months. It's surprising how many things can happen in the space of two months that I've looked to my word for direction and guidance for. I've embraced unexpected changes and embraced challenges that have arisen so far. I'm embracing the moments and embracing reflection by keeping up to date with my Project Life album and my diaries. I'm embracing the now, embracing the space and embracing positivity. I'm loving this project and I'm feeling more connection to my word too.

I hope you have had a good month...it's time to wave goodbye to the wet and stormy months, and look forward to welcoming in the clear skies and calmer weather ahead.

My One Little Word for 2014 :: Embrace

My One Little Word for 2014 is Embrace...

The process of deciding on a word for the year started by writing a long list of words that spoke to me. I used lists of words people have used over the years and a list of my thoughts about how I want things to progress for me this year. Ali Edwards, the inspirational memory keeper behind the One Little Word course, says that 'your word may find you or you may go searching for it'...

Something about writing the word EMBRACE on the list of words I had made me put a little star next to it. I felt an odd sense of warmth towards the word and felt drawn to it each time I read through my shortlist. I know that in my life so far I have relied upon and gone with my gut reaction for many things, and this type of decision making process has proved to always give me the right solution when I've needed to use it...so I went with EMBRACE for this year.

EMBRACE feels like a natural step forward from GROW for me. Maybe for me last year I needed to GROW, grow from a new seed, grow to find me again, and to grow new things in my life...and now it is time to EMBRACE that growth, embrace me and push forward.

The photo above was taken be me in 2006 when I started to embrace my love and passion for digital photography and looking at the macro details...there's no manipulation with the photo, it's just what came happened when I pressed the button. I love this image, it's a raw expression of me and what I wanted to capture. This photo prompted me to push forward with a love of photography. Using this photo as my image for EMBRACE symbolises a few things for me and by adding my word has helped me focus on the word even more. The image for me symbolises that my favourite flower has opened, it has grown...and now it's time to embrace to moment of being open and blooming. There may be some blurry edges but in the centre there is focus...

I’ve started this month's prompt on the One Little Word course run by Ali Edwards. Our first set of tasks is really allowing me to discover more about my word for 2014. One of those is finding my image or symbol of EMBRACE, and I've been brave and embraced putting it out there today. I'm spending time exploring my word, I'm not rushing the process. I'm taking time to feel really connected to my plans for the year.

I may share more posts about my word this year, like I have done here, and let you know how I’m getting on. At the moment I’m just going to be with my word, let it into my life and see what the year brings. I'm really looking forward to it.

...Onwards with 2014, onwards with EMBRACE...

Have you chosen a word to make more visible this year? I’d love to find out if you are doing One Little Word and what word you have chosen.