I’m letting go of the way I used to be. I was holding onto stories for dear life, stories that weren’t serving me and yet, I believed them anyway. It was easy to because everyone around me told me so.
This journey into peri-menopause coincided closely with the pandemic. Initially, it felt bigger than life, all consuming, and scary because it was uncertain. A happy ending was nowhere in sight. As I grappled with the fact that the only way out was going to be through, I took in a deep breath and thought to myself, what now? For a hot minute, I felt a wave of panic wash over me as I sat on my bed gripping my steaming cup of early morning coffee. I looked down at the aqua blue mug and my grip loosened as did my breath. “Super Mom, Super Woman, Super Star” lit up my eyes. I’ll never tire of these words. When my son gifted me this mug for my birthday a couple of months again, little did he know that how much I’d be leaning on those six words for the remainder of 2020. They reminded me of what a woman in command energy would feel like.
Command is my word for 2020. With fire in my eyes and hope in my heart, I had chosen this word in anticipation of becoming a stronger and more courageous woman. A woman who didn’t leave herself to the last but instead honoured herself first. This word would remind me of my worth as in commanding presence is what I’d told myself back in December 2019.
It took me a couple of days to accept command as my word of the year because it felt too bold, too undeserving and truthfully, I didn’t know if I could do it justice. My fear of failure was mighty. So I dialogued with resistance and decided that command would serve me and my intentions best. What I had wanted most out of 2020 was to command my worth.
As we approach the end of 2020, I stand taller, stronger, confident and unwavering in my beliefs and values. If anything, 2020 has stripped away layers and layers of meaningless connections, frivolous concerns, cultural and societal impositions, numbing habits, unintentional acts, and excuses that removed me from my life. None of this was easy to navigate but clearly command energy allowed me to seek solace in the fact that this is what I owed to myself.
I’m exiting 2020 with a new perspective:
To embrace menopause as a celebratory transition into my wiser years instead of listening to old, worn out stories of how horrible it is; to accept that unless a friendship is exceptional, it’s not worth having; to re-affirm that beauty is created through intentional acts of self-care and solitude; to fully appreciate and highlight the little things that bring me joy; to recognize that challenging times can also strip away pieces of my life that don’t serve me; and to remind myself that I’ll always have the power to change what no longer works.
I will make it all work at the end because it’s about being in Command.
