My Theme for 2018: My Year of Emergence

 

Tonight we greet the new moon. It is a new month, the beginning of Adar in the Jewish calendar. It is the Lunar Imbolc. And the Lunar New Year.

The new moon each month is generally the time to seed new intentions. And, so, it’s time for me to share some of the seeds that I am planting for 2018. With this new moon tonight, I claim my theme for 2018: My Year of Emergence.

My 2018 Theme: Emergence

I am claiming 2018 as My Year of Emergence.

This is the year that I step into my light.

My Journey Through the Shadows

For the past three years, I’ve been in a personal “winter.” This long, dark period began when I sustained a brain injury after a middle-of-the-night fall in my apartment in January 2015.

That event sent me careening down a long, deep hole, like Alice in Lewis Carroll’s classic tale. My world turned upside down as I was forced into the darkness.

It was the start of what I called my period of “personal excavation”: a journey of digging deep and navigating in the dark tunnels of my inner experience. Since then, I’ve been hiding in and among the shadows, exploring my own shadows.

My Long Winter of Hiding

To explore the depths of the darkness required a lot of time alone in introspection. In 2015, I took a four-month hiatus from all social media. In 2016, I began a year-long hiatus from Facebook.

I spent a lot of time alone, doing the deep inner work to break down my life so I could rebuild from a stronger foundation.

This was difficult because I’m an extrovert. I get my energy from being around people. But winter — whether the natural season or a personal season — requires a lot of hibernation. I’ve been in the trenches.

Shadow work is a lifelong process. I am not complete with that. But it is time for the next season. It is time for spring.

It is time for me to emerge.

2017 was the year of the Fire Phoenix, and it often felt that I was in the fire. Life was filled with upheaval. Big tests. Tremendous “growth opportunities.”

I am ready to emerge from the fire. I am ready to stand rooted in my truth.

This theme will take shape on its own as it unfolds throughout the year.

Here are some preliminary thoughts about what this year of emergence means to me.

Stepping into My Light

It is time for me to emerge from winter, to emerge from the shadows. Time to come out of hiding and to step into the light of my truth.

This year of emergence is about stepping into the full truth of who I am and what I do. This is the year for me to show my full self.

It means being willing to stand in the light, and willing to be seen, even in my imperfections and insecurities. Especially in the imperfections.

This is the time for me to show the world who I am; to embrace my unique and quirky personality traits, and to stake a claim for doing things my way.

It’s time for me to emerge from prison of expectations that others have built for me that dictate who I should be and how I should live and work.

The Emergence of My Sacred Work

Based on my years of personal development and deep inner work, learning from some of the best in the industry, I’ve developed a body of work that is powerful and transformative. This isn’t just a regurgitation of others’ work. I’ve turned their teachings into my own embodied knowledge and earned the wisdom. And that wisdom seeks to emerge.

I am ready to stand in the truth of who I am.

I am ready to step into the spotlight with my speaking, coaching, and programs.

I am ready to emerge as a leader, teacher, mentor, and guide.

Releasing Fear and Shame

I’ve often kept parts of myself, my interests, or of my work hidden out of fear that people won’t get it, or that they will judge me, or think I’m less capable than they previously thought.

Looking at these fears in the light, they feel silly. Trivial. But they were real. They are real.

But they are no longer an excuse to play small. It’s time to release the fears around being seen.

In emerging, I release any shame I have around the fact that some aspects of my work are not “complex matters” of intellect but rather are more spiritually and emotionally based (and, actually, no less complex).

The willingness to be seen entails the willingness to be rejected. I am willing to accept that not everyone will like all aspects of me. Or even any aspects of me.

Emergence is about refusing to live in fear of what things will mean and what might happen if I speak truth about certain topics.

I’m ready to embrace and celebrate who I am, what I do, and how I do it.

A Gradual Process

It’s not that I simply declare this to be my year of emergence and propel outward in that instant.

In nature, nothing “gets done” instantly. In nature, things emerge and retreat in a steady pace, in rhythm with the laws of divine timing.

This sets the pace. It seeds the intention.

Flowers emerge from the seeds planted in the ground.
A butterfly emerges from the chrysalis.
The moon emerges from the darkness
The sun emerges over the horizon.

This is my year of emergence.

I remind myself that everything emerges in its proper time.

I am trying this on as a mantra:

Everything emerges in divine timing. I emerge in divine timing.

A Side Note: The Power of Claiming

There is tremendous power in claiming and speaking aloud the seeds we plant for our life. The public claiming sends a vibration into the universe. Once we claim something, we own it in a new way.

When we claim something in public, others can hold the intention for us as well. We don’t need to do all the work on our own.

As we celebrate this new moon and the energy of the solar eclipse, I claim that 2018 will be my year of emergence.

This is the year I will come out of hiding, out of the shadows and out of the darkness, and step into my light.

And so it will be.

What are you claiming for yourself this year? I invite you to claim it publicly in the comments so that we can hold the intention for each other.