It is hard to believe today is New Years Day and its now 2020! I started this post by writing out things that have happened to me in the last decade. Then I realize how many things that was and got a little nervous it would both get too long and I would miss something and be sad. So, I decided to change the directions a little bit in a good way.
I do want to take just a min to highlight a few large milestones for me. I became and RN and got married to my amazing husband. I also finished my BSN degree, I actually finished my last class while recovering from the surgery they found my cancer. One day after my diagnosis my dad was out on hospice and passed away during my treatment. I ended up beating cancer and now 5 years in remission. We also paid a few loans off including both of my school loans which felt amazing. I have learned many new skills and even hiked a mountain in Glacier. We have now fallen in love with Montana and can see a future living there. We went from 3 to 4 kitties as well as in the last decade we added our baby Bailey to our family which keeps us on our toes for sure. She is a huge mommy’s girl and can be naughty but can be so sweet.
That is a very brief overview of 10 years. I have started a list of my memories and plan to keep adding to it so at the next decade I will have a better idea of all the amazing things I have accomplished. It was really cool looking back on the last 10 years and the good and bad times that have shaped and made me the person that I am today. Although bad times are never fun, a person can never truly grow with out them and I am choosing to embrace them as part of my story.
Speaking of embrace it brings me to the other thing I wanted to write about. 2019 was the first year that I picked a word to define my year. My word in 2019 was Joy. While I wish I could say that I 100% of the time found joy in everything and was happy that is not real. I can say this, there were sometimes that I did say Yes to certain things because I knew they would bring me joy, and No so other things that I knew would not bring me as much joy.
For 2020 my word is going to be Embrace. I was struggling to find a word and then the other night, I work up and the word just came to me. I took that as a sign that it should be my word for 2020. After really thinking about it, it is a great word. I tried it with a punch of other words such as:
- Embrace Chaos
- Embrace Change
- Embrace the suck
- Embrace the pain
- Embrace the journey
It seemed to go so well with so many different things and even seemed to make some of the hard things easier to handle. It fit perfect so that is my word going into this year and my goal for it is to put it into everything I do this year.
I encourage you, if you have not yet or like me last year never picked a word pick one. Make sure it is a word that you can take with you the whole year and help you grow and become the best version of you in 2020. You really can do anything you dream of with hard work and determination.
Happy New Year!!
Kimberly Van Iperen 