One Little Word 2017 : June - In Progress.

I'm taking Ali Edwards' One Little Word OLW workshop. The monthly prompts encourage you to connect with your word throughout the year and I've been enjoying how SHINE has manifested so far in 2017. June's prompt was about documenting our progress as we reach the half way point in the year. We were given a question and answer worksheet to fill in. I decided this would go into my inner work journal again. June was a BIG month for me - my 50th birthday celebrations! I did a whole blog post about it and I'm sharing the link here because it was titled 50 : My Time to Shine and highlighted some of the ways that my word has been present, especially this month. I put a copy of the main pieces of my invitation in my inner work journal, as well as a modified print out of the blog post.

I wanted a title page for the prompt writing and since I have done some lovely art lately around SHINE, I decided to include a couple of those pieces as well as a photo of me this month.

You can find the original post about my shine angel HERE, and the hearts spread HERE. Then I wrote my responses - I include photos here so you can see that you don't need to have pretty pages in this kind of journal. Although I did use a pretty coloured pen and added some metallic tape (more shine ♥), it's just my own messy writing as I wrote from my heart in response to the prompts.

One of the main things I've found about my word this year is that I have talked about it more than I ever have before - publicly on my blog, I share it in my art, and I talk about it with my friends. The wonderful thing that has happened is that as others have seen me actively modeling SHINE in various ways, they are in turn reflecting positively back to me - sharing how I am inspiring them with my outlook on life and my creative passion. I printed out a couple of comments that people made on my FB page that made me glow ♥

Brave Girls Club also sent an email recently reminding us of the role we may play in others' lives without realising it 

So my main learning is that sharing your word makes you more vulnerable - but in my case it has also led to increased support and therefore more growth, positivity and development. Also finding that the more work I do on self-development (eg. written journaling in response to prompts in my inner work journal, using my responses to Tarot as a mirror to my inner landscape, making time to fit creativity into every day), and the better I feel about myself, the more I have to give to others. It's not selfish to make sure you have time for self-care. You can change what you pay attention to. The more I attend to myself, the better I can Shine, inspire and support others. I feel so grateful that my word is such a positive force and reflection of what's happening my life. I can't wait to see what happens as we move into the second half of the year.
See all my posts about OLW 2017 HERE, and my Flickr album which includes any art featuring my word as well as the class prompts HERE.