Choosing a word for the year is one of the things that I enjoy most.  Two or three months before the end of the year I start paying very close attention to what is happening around me.  I always feel like my word chooses me and some years I have to wait patiently while it finds me.  I love working with a word or a concept so much more than a resolution. I usually didn’t follow through with my resolutions, but these words that I choose, shape my entire year in ways that I can’t anticipate in January. This is true of my 2021’s word, “whole-hearted”, two weeks into the year and already I have learned so much.

I started questioning what it means to be whole-hearted. I didn’t realize that Brene Brown, a world leading researcher on shame, has been there before me and has written whole books on what it means to be whole-hearted and I am welcoming her insights.  I’ve actually started thinking about being whole-hearted by contemplating what it is NOT. I know what it means to do something half-heartedly and for sure that NOT what I want this year. I’ve also been thinking about soft hearts and hard hearts and broken hearts.  I have whole lists of words with heart in them – heart felt, heartless, pure in heart, etc..  I am looking at what each concept means in terms of having a whole or complete heart.

I was delighted when I discovered a “kintsugi” heart. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of making repairs with gold and turning broken things into gold seamed treasures. See the above image of a heart pendent repaired with gold.

Every time I think about this concept it is more and more beautiful. Imagine taking all our heartbreaks and putting them back together with gold. This is a beautiful concept that I think we can all incorporate into our lives. Think of all the brokenness in your life, think of the sorrow and the pain, and imagine it all put back together and repaired with a special gold-filled balm. How is that possible?

I am a certified life coach who works with LDS women whose adult children have left the church.  This can be a confusing and painful time for mothers as their hearts are broken and they wonder what will happen to their eternal family.  I have talked to moms who are so worried about their kid’s choices and what’s going to happen to them eternally, that it’s all they can think about.

If you have a child who has left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and it’s all you can think about.  Just click here and let me know what’s on your mind.  We can arrange a time to talk and I believe that I can help you find the peace you want back in your life.