Way better than resolutions
I'm not a resolutions girl but I go nuts for dreaming up my Word for the Year. A Word of the Year is just a sneaky way of naming one of your most important values and keeping it front and center so you can honor it.
This year I asked my family to each tell me their word so I could combine them in a blessing. One kid consciously objected but I stayed cool as a cucumber and still made my cool kitchen sign. Having conversations about our intentional values is too important for me to take their resistance personally.
Last year I came up with a multitude of postures instead of a Word of The Year. I water colored each one. Per my biased self-assessment, I nailed the "singing with others" and "seeking feminine nurture and affection". I've got work to do around "find solitude and space to wait".
Knowing your values and honoring them in parenting and your family culture is crucial. Your values are like your operating instructions for optimal performance. You have valid preferences around your time, your space, your energy, your body, your food, how you like to communicate, be touched, spoken to, and how you want to parent.
When you ignore these personal preferences, you eventually burn out. You, oh Mother of a Spicy One, cannot afford to burn out.
Research shows that family culture plays as significant a role in shaping a child as your actual parenting style. Doesn’t that blow your mind? I think it's because the felt sense of belonging inherent in an intentional culture increases a child’s well-being. Family culture is the distinct way that a family harnesses their values to work together to solve problems, achieve goals, and relate to one another. (Source: https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-study-identifies-four-family-cultures-america)
For helpful list of questions and exercises for unearthing your entire family's values, grab this $7.99 PDF.
You are a unique pegasus of a creature, may you give yourself the space to determine what matters most to you.
Happy New Year. And as always, scroll down to the bottom for This Week On The 'Gram.
Rooting for you,
Mary