Choosing a word to focus on each year has become a nourishing, soulful ritual. I savor the word, that more so chooses me, throughout the year—it brings great joy when in perfect synchronicity, it appears over and again in what I read, hear, and see. I trust that the word, as it settles in my heart, will be a guiding light for months to come—challenging, inspiring, and transforming me.
My 2024 word of the year, FULLY, is a throwback to ten years ago when I birthed and named my first website and creative venture, SoulFully You. I participated in training to become a certified SoulCollage® facilitator, to lead retreats on creativity and spirituality. As a Marketing teacher, creating a brand name felt like the best first step. With my daughter Jessica and her friend Claire (both students of my high school classes) we brainstormed a variety of words, phrases, and combinations, and then it clicked, that “aha moment” of knowing I have come to trust—SoulFully You. I loved what it meant, and still do. The image at the top of this page, a SoulCollage® card to represent SoulFully You, came later.
Being SoulFully You is living with purpose, on purpose; being attentive to the present moment; practicing gratitude; making good choices and having no regrets; living with death daily before your eyes, as St. Benedict writes; and leaving something beautiful from a life well-lived. It is living life to the fullest, using the gifts and talents you have while being open and responsive to opportunities and surprises that come your way.
A tree gives glory to God by being a tree.
Thomas Merton
Being SoulFully You is discovering and becoming all that God has created you to be. Thomas Merton writes, “For me to be a saint means to be myself.” The call to be holy is the call to be more fully myself, just as a tree gives glory to God by being a tree.
Michael Casey, a monk of Tarrawarra Abbey, writes in The Road to Eternal Life that following the teachings of Christ “asks no more and no less of us than that we become what God intends us to be, that we cease acting a role and allow ourselves to become fully ourselves …the purpose of St. Benedict’s Rule (is) to show us how to move closer to its realization in the course of a lifetime: not only to be good, but to become ourselves.”
All spiritual traditions point us in the direction of becoming more Soulfully You. In Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, Parker Palmer writes, “Biblical faith calls it the image of God in which we are all created. Thomas Merton calls it true self. Quakers call it the inner light, or “that of God” in every person. The humanist tradition calls it identity and integrity. No matter what you call it, it is a pearl of great price.”
To be SoulFully You, one must learn, in the lyrics of Red Molly, how to “hold it all”—to embrace the peaks and valleys of life. Yes, I want to hold it all, to be fully in this life. But then, to let it go—to not cling too tightly. To hold and let go is to embrace the paradox of what it means to live soulfully, to live the dance of life with grace, to honor both the beauty and the heartbreak, the beginnings and endings, knowing that to be SoulFully You is to always begin again.
If we are to live our lives fully and well, we must learn to embrace the opposites, to live in a creative tension between our limits and our potentials…we must trust and use our gifts in ways that fulfill the potentials God gave us.
Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak
“There’s a ‘time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance’ (Eccles. 3:4). But what I want to tell you is that these times are connected. Mourning and dancing are part of the same movement of grace. Somehow, in the midst of your tears, a gift of life is given. Somehow, in the midst of your mourning, the first steps of the dance take place. The cries that well up from your losses belong to the song of praise. Those who cannot grieve cannot be joyful. Those who have not been sad cannot be glad. Quite often, right in the midst of your crying, your smile comes through your tears. And while you are in mourning, you already are working on the choreography of your dance.” -Henri Nouwen
To be SoulFully You is to live prayerfully, joyfully, playfully, gratefully, mindfully, and soulfully. I want to hold it all fully—the bittersweet moments and the sweet surprises. This year I stand at a threshold, a turning from one chapter of life to another, from working as a high school teacher to having more time to work on SoulFully You projects—planning and leading retreats, writing more, pursuing creative ventures, and sharing the joy of living fully.
The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything. –Julian of Norwich
Red Molly, Hold It All https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-Wf5edPQ_E
So it seems there’s no escape | We are part beauty and part heartbreak|But I want to hold it all |To hold it all | Help me hold it all | God I don’t know what you want from this life | But I’m tryin’
Words that have chosen me in the last few years:
2017 Mercy
2018 Cushion
2019 You Are Free (I needed more words that year)
2020 Carry On
2021 Truth
2022 Consent
2023 Wonder
Being Benedictine 
January 22, 2024 at 11:36 am
Thank you for another beautiful reflection on the significance of choosing a word to carry in the coming year. I especially appreciated your reminder that our mission is the live “prayerfully, playfully, mindfully, joyfully and soulfully.” It makes me think of why I appreciate so much my soujourns in Italy where people seem to have learned to live that way over the centuries. It is why I love to share the experience of Italy with others. Thank you Jodi for these reminders!
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January 28, 2024 at 4:48 pm
My chosen word is simply HOPE. Hope that the world will soon become peaceful; hope for an end to every conflict, hoping that realisation of the teachings of Christ can bring this about.
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