Intentions for the new year
How to set intentions for the new year, anchored in healing and a sense of being held without effort.
As we start a new year, I’d like to invite you to imagine what this year has to offer you. Setting intentions for the new year can feel overwhelming. But imagining how your life will be lighter, brighter, stronger or more encouraging with the input that the coming year is preparing for you can feel more grounding.
For me, it’s not about the calendar year. I’m one of those who can get overwhelmed and fall straight into a freeze when I need to think about a whole year and all the goals I’d like to accomplish, all the dreams I’d like to fulfill or all the tasks I need to get through.
Intentions that naturally work for you
The way I’ve approached it in the past few years has been to find a word that embodies what I sense I will be growing towards in the coming year. This has been a more compassionate approach and proved to give me a sense of being held.
Rather than something the mind pushes me towards, this word surfaces like a bubble from the depths of a lake. A sign of a Knowing life that lives in the depths of my beingness.
It is something partly known to my system. An edge of growth that emerges from the past year and, at the same time, is partly unknown, yet feels safe enough to elicit curiosity rather than freeze, spacious enough that I can imagine myself growing into it.
In the past, words such as friendships, trust, safety or embodied alignment were my orientation. The chosen word held a compass that my innermost being felt called towards.
In 2024, my word was ambition. It surprised me because I don’t identify myself as an ambitious person. I’ve had negative associations with the word as it brings up images of a hurried, slightly aggressive woman who sacrifices a lot of her passions and well-being for the sake of achieving goals.
The magic of one word for intention setting
Ironically I’ve learned a lot about healing with the word 'ambition' as my compass.
It came up from the threshold of coming out of what I call “functional freeze”, which I’ve been dealing with and working through with me therapist for the past two years.
While my mind expected ambition to stress me out with achieving goals and live an out of alignment daily rhythm, my imagining body was inspired by the exploration of the potential this word held.
I couldn’t understand it with my mind. But I know how to trust the messages that my psyche provides, so I allowed in the unfolding.
The principles of what I’ve described above are very much the seeding ground for the processes and results of the work I’m offering women in healing the mother wound:
Rather then getting trapped in habits of perfectionism, allowing ease and comfort to be the pillar of a woman’s day to day life
Finding or strengthening trust in the invisible guidance of the body and the unseen messages from life experiences, even the most painful ones
Instead of falling into the masculine illusion that there’s someone outside yourself who has the solution to your stuck-ness, cultivating the capacity to find the answers that reside within yourself together with a skillful companion
Archiving the old, dusty cliche “get over it”, coming out of functional freeze and finding precious vitality in life
Uniting inner parts that seem conflictual or to carry negative associations in order to live a wholesome life
Finding our inner compass
You may be set for the year with your intentions, or maybe you’re finding yourself at a loss in your search for a reassuring starting point.
Perhaps you’ve already slipped back into familiar habits, or perhaps you’re giving yourself the time to start something new in a gentle way.
Either way, I’d like to offer this first Muzeletter of the year as an avenue for inspiring or fine-tuning your compass. Setting intentions for the new year that will serve as a bedrock for healing.
I started my journey of healing 24 years ago, when I realised that I couldn’t run away anymore from the traumatic period of life that was my childhood. Each year since then, I have grown into healing with different rhythms and intensities, with different intentions and companions.
It is my experience that when healing is our compass we find a greater sense of life satisfaction.
A healing compass can offer you:
Unexpected insights and energy to embody empowering self-beliefs
New friendships and support systems that embrace you as you are, for who you are
The capacity to believe in yourself, take yourself seriously and trust in the invisible support offered to you through your body, emotions, and energy
So here are a couple of questions you can use to illuminate your healing compass:
What is your edge of growth right now? When you listen deeply, what does it whisper to use, what does it need to move forward?
How would your year look like if you dedicated it—in small or big ways—to healing?
Healing the mother wound takes shape in many ways, can be propelled by many different life experiences and be re/started at any stage of life.
The healing compass of the mother wound goes into one source: finding an embodied expression of who we sense ourselves to be without the impositions of wounds and traumas, forged by the gifts of those challenging experiences of mother-daughter relationship.
May your healing be your compass
May your compass be a comfort
May your comfort be a way to freedom
Setting intentions for the new year can be a compassionate process that adds ease and comfort into your life, rather than stress. Instead of pushing for something your mind wants you to do, follow the process I've outlined above to discover a word that will be serve as healing compass for the new year, aiding in the healing of your mother wound.
Love, are you struggling to incorporate and attitude of ease into your life?
Perhaps you're caught up in a belief that if you only try harder things will be different? I want you to know that this is a common mother wound habit that many women experince, and there's a way to turn things around.
If you wish to learn how, clikc the button below for a complimentary call where we can explore how working together will support you in this wish:
Not sure yet? No problem!
Here are a couple of ways to learn about healing the mother wound:
Sign up to my Museletter for regular, useful content on healing the mother wound
Take my video training on breaking free from mother wound limiting beliefs
Shelly's helping women who've had a complex relationship with their mother and want to unplack the way it shaped them so they can become unlimited in their personal or professional life
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