Turning 42: The Year I Finished Something

Yesterday I turned forty-two.

Every year I do this thing where I take honest inventory of the last 365 days. Not a resolution, truthfully I’m not built for resolutions. This inventory look is more like: what did this year actually ask of me + did I answer the call.

Year forty-one asked a lot of me.

It was the very first full year with my daughter out of the house, off to college. People kept congratulating me on my new found perceived freedom, which, yes there is a level of freedom. But bigger than that is nobody prepares you for how loud a house gets when the noise stops. Ive been raising that child since I was twenty-two. Pretty much my entire adult life up until this point has been shaped + built around another person’s schedule + then one day it wasn’t.

It was the year the biggest contract my business has ever been a part of ended. So did that income stream + I had to build something to replace it, in public, bills still due, all while pretending that I had it all figured out.

It was the year that I lived more alone than I ever have in my entire life + I discovered that I actually like my own company. That one wasn’t a surprise to me. What was a surprise is how much I could grow if I had the time + space to focus on myself. It was the year of removal of any relationship that wasn’t aligned. Every area of my life got a deep cleaning.

Truth Moment? When I laid all of it out, I noticed the same thing I’ve told you here before, + I’m going to keep saying it until I stop doing it.

Building the rooms + containers I never got is kinda my thing.

I became a doula because I labored mostly by myself while people talked at me instead of to me. Started teaching cycle literacy because nobody taught me mine until I was well into my thirties. I write this blog + my newsletters because I needed somebody to tell me the truth about my own body years before anybody did. My entire holistic lifestyle business stems from an autoimmune disease diagnosis that I received back in 2012.

Every single thing I’ve built started as a thing I needed + could not find.

The Year of Completion

Year forty-one was the year of wrapping things up. The year of completion. When I went into this year, I didn’t see it as that initially. I was very bright eyed + excited about the new beginning + planting new seeds. The retreats! A Black owned-farm! Oh the things I was ready to move forward with. The thing about new seeds is they won’t grow if they aren’t in the right environment. My soil needed to be tended. There were things that needed to be executed.

Another truth moment? I have a real bad habit of starting things + not finishing them. If things are not moving at the pace that I believe they should be moving, I will abandon ship. Yep, at this big age lol I will cut losses real quick + move on.

That is both good + bad as an entrepreneur. Well as a human really. I don’t harp long on things but also it is quite possible I have let things die off that probably needed just a little more cooking time.

I Finished the Book

For two years, twenty-four months I’ve actively been working on a book. What’s worse is I’ve been talking about said book to my close circle for closer to three years. Thirteen cycles. A hundred forty-four pages. The exact planner I always needed, a place to write down what my body was already telling me until I could hear it without writing it down.

Something about this year, things began to click + fall together vs falling apart. The farm experience has to be hands-down one of the most transformational things to ever happen FOR me (not to me). I didn’t feel this way 30 days ago, but reflecting now the entire process gave me so many invaluable lessons.

Making a big decision like that for the business put a little pep in my step, after flowing through the other emotions of disappointment + a little bit of embarrassment because things were not working out how I envisioned they would.

In the midst of dusting off + picking myself back up again, I finished the book.

Perfection vs Permission

The last 2 years it was about me wanting things to be perfect. To make sense. For there to be positive impact. I took all the right steps for this retreat + it STILL fell apart on me. That was the permission I needed because then one day I was sitting in my favorite coffee shop Sumaq + the words began to flow. With my heart beating so loud I felt like the whole room could hear, I finished it.

I finished the book.

The Same Pattern

With the exact same pattern over + over again underneath it all. I had never been given the way to see my own body across a whole year, so I built what I needed. What took me by surprise is at the beginning of year forty-one I really thought the farm retreat that I had been seeing in my mind was the thing that I needed. Turns out I did need it lol but not how I thought. I needed it to work out exactly how it did so I could take the steps on my side to tend my own land + finish this book. Same woman, same education + purpose, different container.

I have spent almost a decade now being the person that holds rooms. I am exceptionally good at it, it’s one of my favorite parts of my being + my life. In the same breath as the person who is always holding, there is almost never someone that is holding me in return. That part can be tough. Both things can be true at the same time. There is a version of this where I’m just being thorough in my holistic wellness business, knowing ALL the things. Some may even say that I’m being extra generous even + that’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is every last thing that I have built, created + was part of is something that I personally needed. I am the woman I build for. The avatar is me beloved lol. I just happen to also be the person who knows the ins + outs of the thing that is needed.

So that’s how forty-one ends. Not on a farm hosting a weekend wellness retreat. At my own table, at my favorite coffee shop, me finishing something.

So did I answer the call of year forty-one? Hell, yea I’d like to think I did + then some.

For year forty-two, I want more.

More rooms to share my expertise. I want to continue to be the person who says the things nobody is saying in terms of women’s womb health. I want to work with more women teaching them the language of their bodies, because language is the thing that helps us advocate for ourselves.

In year forty-two I really want to practice receiving. Believe it or not, that’s the actual growth edge. I know I can pour. Baby, I can pour like nobody’s business. I am STILL learning how to let something happen for me without immediately doing something for somebody in return. It’s much harder than it sounds.

If you have been reading my journal posts for a while, I appreciate you. I mean that in a real way actually. You have been apart of one of the rooms that have held me this year without knowing you were doing it. That means something to me.

Till next time beloved

XO

Denawa Deniece