one little word 2018 wrap-up: grit.

I know, I know: it’s the second week of January and everyone is all new year new you new habits new word. A couple of friends (and my husband) have already asked if I have a word for 2019. This is not surprising, because by now I generally do. (I often find Susannah Conway’s free Find Your Word exercises helpful, in case you’re still searching for yours. Not sponsored; just sharing a resource I’ve enjoyed.)

But as I said to Roxanne last week, in some ways I’ve still been wrapping up the year past. Not wallowing in nostalgia, exactly: 2018 was a wild, unsettling, hard and heavy – though also joyous – year. It was full of (more) transition, personally and professionally, and as Jen keeps reminding me, it takes a while for these changes to settle into our bodies and our souls. (One of those changes is inked visibly onto my skin now: just before Christmas, I finally got that brave tattoo I’d been thinking about for over a year.)

My one little word for 2018, which proved more apt than I could have known, was grit. And while I haven’t written about it here for months, I carried it close to my heart (and in the treads of my running shoes) all year.

Grit, for me, was often about doing what had to be done: staring down yet another work crisis, sending out resumes and email queries after I lost my job, keeping up with dishes and laundry and other daily-life details. It was also – to my great surprise and delight – about digging deeper physically: throwing myself into Monday night boot camps, and pushing myself to run farther, faster and more often than I ever expected. I have become, in the last year, a runner, and I love what that habit is making of me.

Far harder than the to-do-list type of grit – or even the physical kind, which has often been its own reward – is the emotional grit sometimes required to keep steering through life. I am not the sort of person who weathers storms – internal or external – with undisturbed equilibrium. I go on, as Rilla Blythe says, “but not calmly – I rage and cry.” I handle change, but I do it slowly. I have a long runway. I am strong, but I am not invulnerable. I often need a minute (or a long run, a cup of tea, a listening ear, or all of the above) before I can pull it together and move forward.

I’m learning that grit can include all these self-care moves, instead of being the white-knuckled thing that replaces them. I am learning to ask for what I need, and that, too, takes grit. But then – as Rilla also says – “when it’s over I vow I’ll show them.” And this year, I have kept going: down the river trail, through the email inbox, back and forth across the Charles River about a thousand times, deep into the territory of my own heart.

The work of grit isn’t finished for me. I suspect it may never be. The thing with some words, like brave, is that they get under your skin (or, eventually, into it), and keep tugging you toward a stronger version of yourself. I think grit is the same. I’ll be following a new word this year, but grit will still be there, pulling me forward into whatever’s next. I’m glad to have it with me, whether I’m running or commuting or simply walking forward into each day.

Did you follow a word for 2018? What did it look like for you?