I don’t have a whole lot to report about my journey with my word for the year except that for most of April I was definitely not feeling light. It was a super hard month of parenting and I wasn’t feeling proud of the way I handled the stress.

However, having the word “light” in the back of my mind allowed me to make the decision toward the end of the month to let some things go and release a lot of the pressure I put on myself. I had to get back to the root of why I chose my word: “light” is how I want to feel on the inside. Sure, I would love to completely declutter our house so the space is lighter. I’d love to get back to a frequent exercise regimen so I’m literally lighter. But with all I have going on right now worrying about those things (and others) was just stressing me out so that I wasn’t able to cope with challenges in motherhood, which is a priority.

So far the shift in mentality has been incredibly helpful, but I’ll report back. :)

This month’s prompt was to capture our word through photography. I simply went back through my photos from the year and chose nine that represented an aspect of what “light” means to me. (Also, to get this done I tried printing my photos on cardstock and they came out really terrible. Old me would have trashed them and ordered new ones, but new me is saying they’re good enough.)

Top left: this is one of my favorite recent photos of me and Meredith. It was a happy day and I want to focus on the good times we have.

Top middle: I love being outside and seeing the beautiful skies, and attending Texas Style Conference was such a positive and uplifting experience for me.

Top right: Liam is at such an adorable age and I want to soak it all in.

Middle left: Updating the kids’ room with string lights made me happy.

Middle middle: This is a photo of me at TxSC where I was really feeling lighthearted.

Middle right: I started a fun little cross stitch project, and as long as I don’t pressure myself to finish in a certain amount of time, this is the kind of thing I want to be able to do and enjoy.

Bottom left: Running is so good for me! I need to do more of it.

Bottom middle: Eating real food contributes to lightness of body and mind.

Bottom right: Our new kittens are so playful. They are what I didn’t even know I needed. :)

I debated giving up on the One Little Word project when I was deciding what to let go in my life right now, but it has been helpful for me so far and even keeping up with the prompts hasn’t been hard. If any of them are too involved I’ll just modify it and make it simple. I’m still really connecting with the word “light” and look forward to seeing how it changes for me.