I'm a sucker for a good cover song and I first heard this one during an episode of New Amsterdam where two characters realize they're in love - it was perfectly timed and it's been in my playlists ever since. The original is by Steve Winwood and there is a remix with the late Whitney Houston and Kygo but I'm partial to James Vincent McMorrow’s version you can hear here.
I used to love setting goals / intentions each year then at the end of the year reflecting on the progress made towards those goals. I would be filled with purpose and pride checking off boxes and grading myself against my task list.
Looking back my sole goal for 2021 was to survive. I was fresh in the pit of grief after losing my mom, I was countless months into a seemingly endless pandemic and I was lost. So lost.
I didn't set goals.
I didn't pick a happy word of the year to rally behind. Or if I did I completely forgot what it was?
I didn't even know how I would move from day to day without crumbling.
But, here I am on a nice winter staycation thinking of my year in retro and honestly I can't believe how much I accomplished!
Purging the house of 35 years of clutter (no easy feat!)
Preparing to sell….only to end up hiring a contractor and planning a massive remodel instead. Let's goooo dream house!
Completing a Digital Marketing class at Yale (I work for the marketing team at work and don't have a marketing background so my goal was to immerse myself in the world and learn how to best apply by PM skills).
Finding ways to honor mom in everything I do - being kind, contributing to charities and worthy causes, celebrating friends with flowers, telling her stories, and doing my best to embody all the things I loved about her. ❤️
Oh and publishing my first book - Kindle and paperback!
Holy mackerel - that's kind of a banner year to have while grieving your most important person in a pandemic! I feel pretty proud of that list of accomplishments.
Coming into 2022 I've decided my word of the year is HIGHER - as in finding higher love, dreaming higher, pushing myself higher in order to be the most evolved version of myself I can be and of course continuing to honor my mom's legacy….which sometimes means taking the higher ground rather than being scrappy (even though being scrappy is more fun in the moment lol). I'm excited for everything that's coming (even though everything includes turning the big 4-0!).
Oh and here's my 9 best photos to sum up 2021.
