My 2024 Vision & Thoughts
January 9, 2024
I don’t fully know how to describe this incredible feeling that I have as I move into this new January, but it’s one that’s been painfully unfamiliar for some time. It’s like that elusive word that’s on the very tip of your tongue, or that face in a sea of strangers that’s perplexingly recognizable, but you can’t remember how or why. This feeling is a good one…one that used to be a constant for me…but one that frustratingly waned in the (deeper than expected) trenches of early motherhood. This feeling, I think, can be best described as hope. Not that I had lost it, per se, but I had certainly lost my passion and my focus as a creative and an entrepreneur. So this feeling is a welcomed resurgence of energy…excitement…anticipation. And this feeling is determination, strength, and direction. And purpose. And this feeling is intense dreaming, but dreams that no longer seem too far from my reach. And while those details are all still a bit hazy, and haphazard…they’ve also become more refined…and are taking shape into a form that feels like it’s been taunting me, and eluding me, for the past several years.
Motherhood is a wild ride, as many of you know. And it’s been my wild ride for ten years now. Birthing three kids in three years was quite the undertaking, and for a long time I felt like I had given all of myself over to keeping three tiny humans alive. I’ve always had so many dreams for myself, which comes with the intense desire to live a multi-faceted and interesting life. Motherhood is not my sole calling, and this I’ve always known. So for an incredibly long time I’ve felt like a shell of myself…and that shell became increasingly fragile. I slid down the slippery slope of believing my dreams were unattainable, and that I was trapped, and failing a huge part of my internal self. But something’s shifted recently. Or many things, is more like it. Therapy and my determination to self-grow and heal…and understand exactly who I am, why I am, who is still repressed and who I fully want to be…has helped. I’ve realized that many of my dreams were a bit selfish. And that I can look at those dreams with new eyes, and make them evolve to incorporate my family and my desire to prioritize my relationship with my husband and my kids. But I’ve also reached a pivotal point in my parenting trajectory that (dare I say) feels much, much easier. Raising kids will ALWAYS have its challenges. This I know. But suddenly, as my youngest nears the age of six, I’m emerging from the exhaustion and depletion that came from physically handling their every need. We’re finally in a relationship with our kids that isn’t one-sided and hinged upon us only caring for them. We’re enjoying their company, and watching as they evolve into relatively self-sufficient, capable, amazing human beings. And it is so fucking glorious, my friends. I feel FREE. Which is imperative for me to thrive.
So suddenly I have the space, again, to reignite and reimagine those dreams that felt all too lost and frozen in time. As my therapist likes to remind me, I’ve been in the soil phase. And for a dreamer (and perhaps the ultimate sagittarius) who is filled with constant wanderlust and the desire to experience new and inspiring places and things, this soil phase was TOUGH and constricting. I didn’t feel like I was tilling, and cultivating, and fertilizing seeds that I had planted. I fucking felt stuck…stuck in the deepest, stickiest mud. Like those elk you see videos of, who unknowingly wander into a mud pond and proceed to panic and sink to the point that only their antlers are visible.
So back to this feeling that I have as I navigate the early days of 2024: this is my year, my friends. It may not be the year that I make huge strides, but it’s the year that I start taking them again. It’s the year that I start to create my new “vision.” It’s the year that I officially become “unstuck.” It’s the year that I tell myself, repeatedly, my dreams are possible, and that I am no stranger to chasing those dreams and making them my reality. I’ve done it before, and although I seemed to have been in a state of self-induced pause, I’ll do it again. With new intensity, new focus, and a new understanding of my “why.” Because after tilling that soil, and giving myself over to years of focusing on my children, I have a much deeper understanding of what I want in this life…for me, yes, but also for my family.
And in case you’re intrigued, yes, I’ve been emphatically creating a 2024 vision board (on a chicly upholstered bulletin board, of course), and it’s been SO fun. I’m such a visual person…I want my dreams and goals to be embodied in a physical form that I can then re-download Every. Single. Day. And not only are these carefully curated images a compilation of how I want to feel this year (which is what I’ve mainly focused on), they double as inspiration for my House of Maple brand as it evolves to encompass these newly refined dreams and goals. So here’s a little peek at the photos and thoughts that are getting printed out and pinned to my 2024 vision board. And cheers to the pursuit of your own dreams! Or your tilling. May your 2024 be filled with the rediscovery of who you are, and what you want your life to be.
