Last year, I began (but didn’t finish) reverb10. I didn’t finish because it started to feel like a big ‘ol advertisement for those who wrote the prompt. Every prompt seemed to come with a call to action by the reader. Sub to my newsletter! Buy my e-course! Get my book!

Blah.

There will be no reverb10 this year, but this woman took up the challenge to do it all over again, only with a new word and, it appears, without all the self-promoting hoopla! I couldn’t be more pleased! I am not planning (as I did last year) to art my way through it this time, but I do expect some art will come out of it. When it does, I’ll be sure to let you know.

#Resound11 ~ Day One: One word 

What is one word to describe your 2011? Why does that word sum up your year?

Last year, I participated (in my own very hermity, anti-social, quiet way) in One Word with Ali Edwards. The word I chose for the year was ‘emerge’.

As I reflect over 2011, I did a lot of coming out. I came out from underneath my own ideas of who I should be. I came out as a journal artist (and embraced the word ‘artist’). I came out as a blogger (and embraced the passion I have for writing authentically and vulnerably for an audience). I came out as my own (instead of my husband’s or my children’s or my parent’s or my friends).

The word emerge felt right at the time, but in retrospect, it has a sort of passive feel to me. When I say ‘emerge’ I think of tendrils of green shoots slowly rising up out of soil, propelled by growth and sunlight, but not by any real sentience. There is little ‘choice’ in the word. A butterfly doesn’t ‘choose’ to emerge from the chrysalis. A baby doesn’t ‘choose’ to emerge from the womb.

If I had it to do over again, I would change my word from emerge (too passive for the very audacious ways I busted out all over the place) to the phrase ‘come out’. I know that phrase is very connected with the LGBT and pagan community, but all the same…I love how active it is. How powerful. Coming out isn’t just a nice, quiet peeking, or a careful toe-dipping. It is a launching self out of darkness and into light.

I’m grateful to myself for my courage in doing that, and grateful, too, for the growth and emergence that came as a by-product.