December 14th, 2010
Throughout December, I’m (imperfectly and as much as possible) responding to the #reverb10 writing prompts, a wonderful end-of-year project encouraging people to ‘reflect on this year and manifest what’s next’ through the sharing of stories.
December 14 – Appreciate
What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?
(Author: Victoria Klein)
This prompt goes straight to something deeply important for me this year.
Appreciation. Gratitude.
I wrote about it last month on my birthday. Something about turning 39 really got me thinking about how much I appreciate being here, right now, on this planet, at this moment, with so many wonderful people – friends, teachers, creative spirits – doing what I love.
To pick just one thing that I’ve appreciated most this year? That’s harder.
But I think I would have to say that, this year, I’ve grown to truly appreciate my age. I deeply appreciate being a 39-year-old woman.
I have the beginnings of crows’ feet and laughter lines. I have a body that is now much more… ahem, shall we say, softly rounded? I have many more curves than I used to have. And it actually feels good. This year I have truly begun to love and accept my changing body because of the story it tells about me.
But the best thing, the very best thing about being 39 is all the accumulated experience of living for this long. I’ve lived for 39 years and, in that time, lots has happened.
And I appreciate all of it – the difficult and painful and the wonderful and startling – because I’m able to draw on these expereinces now in my work as a coach and therapist and in the Word Sauce e-courses and workshops. And because I find myself making poems out of them.
And because that’s just what 39 is.
I appreciate that I’ve waited this long to become a mother. I really hope to become one soon. I’m ‘stepmum’ to three beautiful girls and that continues to be one of the most interesting and challenging and wonderful adventures of my life.
I appreciate having lived in northern Italy and Edinburgh and London and Vancouver and travelling through Central and South America because all those experiences enabled me to come home – in all the many senses of that phrase – to my native Yorkshire.
I appreciate the men I’ve loved in my 39 years – and the man I love now. I learned so much from those other relationships and I hope those experiences have made me a better lover, friend, partner-in-crime.
I appreciate all the friendships in my life and how rich they are, formed across so many different cities, countries, time zones, cultures but each one of them helping me and inspiring me to be here now.
I didn’t know that this is what it would feel like to be 39. It’s a feeling that begins all the way down in my feet and moves up through my spine and tingles behind my ears and makes me want to throw my head back and laugh out loud.
It’s a feeling of belonging. To myself. To the world.
It’s a feeling of what it means to be a privileged, educated, experienced woman at a difficult time in our history. I want to rise to that challenge in all the ways I can.
What will come next for me? Who knows? That’s what’s so exciting. At 39, I’ve learned not to try to guess but to trust that, whatever happens, I can meet it with courage, experience and love.
39. It’s a breath of wind on the surface of the water. It’s one leaf on one tree, a single blade of grass.
But it’s my 39. The 39 I’ve made so far in my flawed and sometimes anxious and sometimes impulsive and always unfolding way.
How will I express my appreciation?
By living 39 to the very best of my abilities. By loving 39.
It feels good.
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