I’m Heading into This New Year in a Whole New Way

How my word of the year has changed my perspective on greeting the turn of the calendar

I want it. I’ve been saying that for years now. I want it.

That’s all I knew as I stood on the precipice of another year. Well, that, and my anger. I’ve known my anger for a while and am learning the beautiful art of cultivating it, stitching it into a protective garment of healthy boundaries, and letting it energize my efforts toward creating positive change in the world.

When I looked ahead at the coming year, trying to decide what word to choose to guide me, I knew it needed to capture both my ravenous appetite for new experiences, for better circumstances, for love, while also clearly illustrating that I am done taking shit, and I will happily maim the next person who steps into my life and tries to take advantage of me.

I suppose it was a tall order.

I was open to leaving the anger out of it, just to make it simpler, but even that was tough. How could I find a word that meant both hunger and satiety? That meant both possibility and possibility realized? Both potential and potential achieved?

I toiled and toiled over it, plugging in dozens of words into Thesaurus.com, but I just couldn’t find anything.

A few days before the new year, I realized I had to make peace with the fact that I might not be able to come up with a word for 2022. The task seemed unusually impossible, after the previous six years in which words came to me effortlessly.

Then, while looking over the stories I’d written in 2021, I came upon We Will Devour, a poem I wrote early in the year.

I stopped. I took in a long breath.

DEVOUR.

I loved it. I loved the sound of it. I loved how it indicated ravenous hunger, but a hunger that was being satiated. I loved how there was such a sense of abandon about it. I loved how unapologetic it was.

And frankly…I loved how vicious it was.

I decided to sit with the word for the day and see how it felt by bedtime.

Not even an hour later, I went on my walk and listened to a voice message from my friend, Veronica (Edward Riley’s wife), and she listed off several words that she thought might be good matches for me. All of them were close, but I had already considered and disregarded most of them.

“I have one more,” she said at the end of the list, “and this one is my favorite. Devour.”

I literally started whooping, right there in the woods, scaring several doves and magpies into flight.

Yes. I knew that had to be it. My word had finally come to me.

DEVOUR.

Normally, when I choose a word, it comes with a set of phrases or goals I’d like to achieve throughout the year.

I chose the word SURRENDER soon after my partner left our relationship to be with another woman…because I needed the constant reminder to let go of events that I could not control.

I chose LEAP the year I was at my wit’s end with the job I had at the time, with my feelings of creative stagnation, with being so goddamn slow and cautious all the time, and it helped me aspire to some big changes that happened that year, including leaving my job a lot sooner than I had planned.

And I chose EASE for last year to help me be gentler with myself a year into this pandemic, hoping that mastering a few strategies (like checking my email less and distancing myself from Facebook) might open more spaces for ease in my everyday life.

This year, however, I have no desire to do that. I am so sick of to-do lists, and yearly aspirations, and the endless chasing of goals. Sometimes, I find it exhilarating, but as I get older, I find that life never agrees with my aspirations and goals. It always has a different plan.

All I know is that I experienced one thing this year that I want more of and one thing that I want less of — or better yet, none of.

I got to try so many new things, and it was exhilarating. I want more. I want it all.

And I also found myself in situations that shredded me in ways that I could probably have avoided had I been more able to assert good boundaries. I don’t want more of that. I’d rather bare my teeth and let blood run down my muzzle than take one more hit that I shouldn’t have to take.

I want to gorge and I want to growl. It’s as simple as that.

My favorite fairy tale is Little Red Riding Hood. There is something about that story that thrills and terrifies me.

I love intrepid Red, wandering through the dark woods. I understand that she’s made out to be a dimwitted cautionary tale to all the young women who don’t listen to their elders and wander off the path and into the lair of the predator.

But I don’t see her that way. I see her as fiery and brave. I see those steps into the woods as the initiation she must take into womanhood.

She has to face the dangers of the world. She has to learn how to protect herself. And she has to confront her own inner darkness.

Just as I see Red in a more flattering light than what the creators of the tale intended, I also see the big, bad wolf just a little differently. Sometimes, I like to think of the wolf as her wild lover, who is a part of her initiatory experience into womanhood. But mostly, I think of the wolf as a symbol of her own darkness, strength, and wildness.

In other words, she cannot cross over into womanhood until she devours the child that she once was. She cannot become an empowered woman until she learns how to bare her teeth and rip the limbs from any creature who tries to do her harm.

She has to learn the Ways of the Wolf.

That’s what the word DEVOUR means to me this year. I’ve been wandering these woods for a long time, and though I likely always will (they are my home, after all), I want to learn my way around a bit better and to be unafraid to do whatever it takes to protect myself.

I want to consume everything. I want to try it all. I am so hungry and so tired of this cautious, carefully rationed life I’ve been living.

Everything is part of my feast for 2022. And I’m overjoyed at the prospect of digging in.

Just don’t put your hand too close to me…I might mistake it for food. Or assume you are reaching for that plate of mashed potatoes and gravy, which I wouldn’t take kindly to.

Either way…you’ll probably lose a finger or two.

And it’s not likely I’ll apologize.

© Yael Wolfe 2022

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