My Word for the Year

how i'm moving into 2024

This is my 6th year to choose a word for the year. I love the practice of it; how it alleviates the pressure of resolutions and goal setting (though I sometimes do those too). It’s been a companion in naming how I want to move into a new year. And this year has been no different.

Last year, I chose the word continue. I wasn’t expecting a lot of change — same schools, same jobs, same spiritual direction program etc. etc. As I wrote last year, I simply wanted to continue. I wanted to tend to what already is.¹

This year, however, change is expected, and I can already feel myself oscillating between excitement and overwhelm. As I envisioned the coming year, I searched for a word to counterbalance the feelings of overwhelm and the ever-growing to-do list. I considered words like attune or discern, but I couldn’t shake the word… playful.

And now, as I dig deep for memories of my grandmother², they often come back to her playfulness. She used to jump out at my sister and me to surprise us, giggling at our reactions. She loved golf and the ladies she played with. She loved the Dallas Cowboys. She loved throwing a big Christmas party for her Sunday school friends each year. She loved to play card games and draw and play Barbies with us. Her life wasn’t easy, she experienced heartache and loss and disappointment — but she was silly, and fun and playful! She giggled at our potty humor and laughed at silly commercials, and I can picture her now, tears coming down her cheeks, her face red and scrunched from laughter.

I don't expect this year to be easy. I know that roller skating or hanging up a disco ball won't overshadow the heartache that will surely come. I'm not looking for that anyway. I'm not trying to pretend that suffering and grief don’t exist; I’m trying to bring balance to the heaviness of life. As I spend more hours listening as a spiritual director, I want and need to remember that there is also room for playfulness. It’s in us to play. We are born with an innate ability to play; it is not something we are taught but something we are naturally drawn to. And somehow, as we get older, we forget. Somehow, I’ve forgotten.

In Ashlee Gadd’s book Create Anyway, she says this about play: Play unlocks us, loosens us up. Play grants us permission to try something new for the sake of delight not mastery. Play brings us back to the little artists we were as kids.³

So, what better way to honor my grandmother’s life? What better way to remember her? To let her continue to live in me?

On New Year’s Day, the temperature outside was a chilly 42 degrees, still, I put on my swimsuit and jumped into Barton Springs, a spring fed pool in downtown Austin. I held my friend's hand. We giggled, screamed, and took the Polar Plunge. I started the year the way I want to move through it — delighting in something new, in nature, in friendship, in absurdity.

I can acknowledge and face the heaviness of life in one hand, without turning away from it. There is room for that, but choosing the word "playful" reminds me that in my other hand, I can hold delight. So this year, I’ll jump into cold water, turn cartwheels⁴, play video games with my kids and maybe (probably) jump out at them once in a while.

Alongside you,

Holly

P.S. I’d love to hear how you’re entering into the new year! Did you choose a word for the year?

Links & Spiritual Direction News

• The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again by Catherine Price — this book has been a huge inspiration as I navigate bringing more playfulness into my life. Here is a TED Talk by the author if you want the Cliffs Notes version!

• Mark your calendar for my next mini-retreat: Preparing for Lent & Easter on Tuesday, February 13th from 11:30 am - 1 pm CT. If you are interested in joining, you can reply to this email or send me a note at hollyporterphillips@gmail.com. Similar to my advent retreat⁵, this will be a spacious time to prayerfully consider how you would like to enter the seasons of Lent and Easter. This retreat will be donation based as well.

• As a spiritual direction apprentice, I am taking on directees (both in person and virtually) for free as I learn and grow in the practice. You can read more about my apprenticeship training here, see my bio at the bottom of this page and read a little about my philosophy of spiritual direction here. If spiritual direction is something that you or someone you know might be interested in, please reach out! I can be contacted at hollyporterphillips@gmail.com.

1. Last year’s post about my word of the year: Name, Tend, Continue

2. A little about my grandmother: The Reason I’m Lingering in 2023

3. Create Anyway: The Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood by Ashlee Gadd

4. I wrote more about cartwheels and my grandmother here: An Invitation of the Incarnation

5. G.S. wrote this to me after the Advent Mini-Retreat last November: Thank you so much for your Advent mini-Retreat last week, and for sharing your written version of what you so gently offered up to us women that evening.  It came at a moment of needed grace and space, to be able to be quietly present, and yet also able to turn off that vulnerable feeling screen, while you led us through reflection of our lives, naming what is real within them, and creating intention for within this year’s Advent.