Reclaiming My Badassery

Forgive the now belated post on New Year's resolutions. I started it in the car, on my phone, on the drive back to Tallahassee. But the beginning of the semester and a broken laptop (which has now, finally, been replaced) caused me to ignore the blog for a while. So I hope you'll excuse the untimeliness and read on.

I am a believer in resolutions, New Year's or otherwise. I'm a goal-oriented person, but often those goals are typically on a micro level (clean the fridge, return books to the library). The tradition of resolutions at the start of each new year reminds me to think bigger, have macro-resolutions if you will (like my past resolution to live more intentionally).

When I started brainstorming what to resolve for 2011, I immediately knew what it should be. But not wanting to admit it (or face the logistics of what such a resolution would entail), I ignored it and avoided any resolution-forming at all.

Then Karen Waldrond (aka Chookooloonks) started talking about "badassery" on Twitter. Something about the word, and the discussion, struck a chord with me. But like the initial resolution, I ignored it.

Then I read her post which attempted to define badassery. She gave it the following general definition [sections that most struck a chord with me are italicized]:

• Someone who isn't afraid to wish good things for herself.  Someone who believes she's worthy of being happy.
• Someone who isn't afraid to make goals, and then once those goals are made, isn't afraid of taking those first, tiny steps toward achieving those goals. 
• Someone who realizes that taking care of himself isn't selfish or egotistical, but that sometimes you have to put the oxygen mask on first before you start helping others.
• Someone who realizes that at his core, he's a good person.  And that given this, when he makes a mistake, maybe he should go easy on himself.
• Someone who, when bad things happen (and make no mistake, they will happen), will not spend valuable time thinking about who did her wrong, or why the world is conspiring against her, but will instead spend that time working through it by taking care of herself, leaning on friends as necessary, asking for help when needed, and treating herself as she would a good friend going through a similar situation.  Someone who, when life knocks her down, does what she can to pick herself up, dust herself off, and try, try again. 
• Someone who makes kindness to friends, people around him (like waiters and others in the service industry), and even strangers his primary focus; and who also takes care to surround himself and cultivate relationships with good friends who have equal focus.  Someone who is never afraid to speak his mind or his truth, but always does so with kindness.
• And finally (and probably most predictably), someone who works hard at reframing the things that make him different, recognizing them as attributes that are sources of great beauty, and when used for good, maybe even superpowers.

Each description sounded like that of someone I used to be, someone I was proud to be, but not the person I am today. Though it was a fairly light-hearted definition of a relatively silly word, I cried through it.

You see, the resolution I thought of was to take better care of myself, because not doing so has allowed me to neglect and subsequently lose my badassery.

This last year I have poured every bit of myself into Molly, and that has given me an intense, wonderful bond with my daughter and has cultivated some of the most beautiful moments of my life. But it has also overshadowed part of myself, what I now acknowledge as my badassery. My oomph, my fight, my sense that what matters to me is worth it no matter how difficult it might be to achieve. It has slowly seeped out of me. Though I sensed the loss, I ignored it, too.

And so it was gone.

When I'm away from Molly, I feel untethered, as though I don't quite know how to fit into the world without her. This has allowed me to float adrift at work, abandoning or ignoring goals that were once of the utmost importance to me. And if they had become unimportant, that would be fine, a personal choice. But they do still matter to me. It's just that without my badassery, I seem to have lost the will and/or ability to achieve them.

So my goal for 2011 is to reclaim my badassery. The cool thing about this is that, in addition to finding the me I lost in the past year, badassery will unquestionably make me a better mother (and wife - though that's a very different post).

It's win-win, and it's a win I desperately need. So here's to badassery in 2011.

:::

In addition to thinking of this as a resolution, I'm also choosing "badassery" as my One Little Word for 2011. If you've never heard of Ali Edwards or One Little Word, you should really check it out. For me, it's one of the most inspiring thing on the blogosphere these days.