Name Your Year

After the first of every year, my husband and I try to encapsulate in a few words how we would describe the previous year. We do this by reflecting upon the people, blessings, challenges, milestones, and experiences that came our way. We have used words like progress, dysfunctional, baseline, and transition. It may seem difficult to sum up the whole year full of varied experiences and emotions into a word or two, but it has been really meaningful to us over the 15 years we have done this. I think it helps give perspective to see themes and connections to the days that have turned into weeks that became months.

This exercise really right sizes all that happened. It helps to name it. Accept it. Grieve it. Rejoice over it. Last year was an emotionally polarizing year for us as some wonderful, long-awaited things happened, but then it was mixed with tensions and changes we were desperately fighting. It was like going from extreme highs while experiencing the free fall to the bottom. I look at 2018 as an awakening year for us. We saw things more clearly as dust settled while new opportunities arose and relationships were healed that had long been on our hearts. I love looking back at 2018 through the lens of awakening, as that word gives it purpose and meaning to me.

I know medically when you are wondering what’s wrong, it has to be named or diagnosed before you can fix it or start a course of treatment. I think it’s the same with our lives. Our years even, too. Sometimes just giving a name or a word to what you have been through brings clarity. 

First, start by making a list of all the people who were a blessing to you in 2018 and why. Then write down all the special events/memories that happened. Next, remember the hard times/things that you encountered and write them down. Finally, after writing down all these things in their categories, reread it. Brainstorm words that come to mind as you reflect on your lists. See if there are reoccurring themes or strains of emotions that were pervasive. If not, maybe the highs were so high you just want to remember 2018 as the year you got the big promotion at work, so you’d use the word promotion. If you had your first child, you may want to always remember that by new beginnings. It’s fun to keep track. We put this list of blessings, events, etc. in a binder and have it as a keepsake for us to look back on. When we feel like we have found the right word or phrase, we circle it on the page. 

If you read the Bible, you will see God was always renaming people and places after major events. I love this. I experienced this myself. I had a major life transformation in my mid-20s and started going by my full name Pamela, instead of Pam. It was like Pam 2.0. It helps me set up a monument in my mind of when something was finished and the new began. The naming isn’t magical, but the remembrance is. Whenever someone asks me if I go by Pam or Pamela I have a chance to privately relive and remember the why. If they ask why I can share with them my journey, but otherwise, it’s like a little verification to myself of the once was and now who.

Simple, yet clarifying. I know Id like every year to have words like “Finish” or “Progress”,  but I have grown to also love the hard words too. Name your year, embrace what it was, and look back on it with a new perspective.