verb (used with object)

1.to sustain with food or nutriment; supply with what is necessary for life, health, and growth.

2.to cherish, foster, keep alive, etc.

3.to strengthen, build up, or promote.

I came into 2017 feeling exhausted, uninspired, overwhelmed, unhealthy, and beyond stressed. My physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wells were all empty. Nearly six years into devoting the majority of my time and energy into parenting my wonderful-but-high-needs autistic sons I realized that I had nothing left to give to the other people and causes that I cared deeply about.

In the wake of the presidential election, when so many of my friends were increasing their efforts to champion civil rights, I was too depleted to join in myself. I spent most of 2016 watching artists fill my Instagram feed with beautiful things while my pencils and brushes sat forgotten. Over the holidays I saw photos of others’ adventures appear throughout my facebook feed while our family remained at home, recovering from yet another string of illnesses. Nothing felt right.

When I learned about the One Little Word project, I knew that the word I would choose as a guide post for 2017 would have to have restorative powers. It would have to address the depth of emptiness I was feeling heading into the year. I needed a word that would take me from merely surviving to thriving.

It came to me almost immediately. Nourish. It’s not an overly ambitious word. It’s simple. It conjures images of home-cooked meals, kitchen gardens, deeply enriched soil, and flourishing plant-life.

For me “nourishing” means getting back to cooking food from local farms (we’ve survived on takeout and frozen pizzas for most of the past few years as we’ve been in autism emergency mode.) It means taking long walks in nature, strengthening my body and finding inspiration for my art. It means more sleep and less TV. It means finding time daily, even just a few moments, to create art. It means focusing on enjoying my boys’ childhoods more and worrying about their development less. It means spending as much time enjoying my husband as we spend parenting together. It means reconnecting with my best friend whose absence in my life I feel on a daily basis. It means deepening my connections to my spiritual community and my Unitarian Universalist faith. And it means writing my story here, not with any particular audience in mind, but simply because writing itself nourishes my soul.