{goals} Reflect on my 2024 word of the year

{goals} Reflect on my 2024 word of the year – whole

I just read my 2023/ 2024 post which details why I chose the word tend for 2023 and whole for 2024.

I chose the word whole because I felt broken after 2023’s craziness. Work pressures, leadership pressures, parenting pressures and loneliness.

And then I felt like things started off well in 2024, certainly in areas other than my body but to such an extent that I considered changing my word at the end of June. I thought I’d get some thinking done on holiday to decide if I wanted a new word.

Then I came back from holidays and went straight into the suspicious mammogram and all that happened afterwards.

Of course, then, from 12 July I was plunged into the vortex of medical appointment after medical appointment, treatments and so on.

I then realised that perhaps the word whole meant my body was being restored physically. I have also never cried as much as I did last year; I said to a work friend yesterday that I am now that person who cries everywhere and in front of everyone (in waiting rooms, at the oncology rooms, at the surgeon’s office, at the hospital, in front of people, etc.) – everywhere. Maybe that was also part of becoming whole emotionally? Or am I stretching here?

I still feel somewhat broken in certain parts of my life – is this just how it goes as one ages? is life really this hard? I don’t know. That much is clear – I have no idea and cannot control a single thing.

In summary, 2024 was not the most fun I ever had in my life (or with a word) but it will be my reminder that I had to focus on my physical body in 2024. Ironically, because of all this “single area” focus, I still have a lot of things on my medical to-do list to sort out, only one of which I have attended to (my new glasses).