Getting 2025 Off to A Good Start!

I ended last year making my own flock inspired by Picasso's Dove of Peace. This was to reflect on my word of the year for 2025, Peace. I wanted to use these simple abstract lines of doves to help me think about what that word means for me and what I need to do to reach for that.

Last year, the word was "Safety." It was a brutal beginning and a tough slog to get through the year, but I worked super hard on a number of fronts and think that I have a solid foundation to move some significant things forward.

I used a daily creative practice in 2024 to help me think about what safety means for me and to help come up with actionable items to work on. I did DrawTogether with Wendy McNaughton and really enjoyed this curated daily creative practice activities. I felt that it helped me find words for a lot of things I was still reaching for in therapy. It also helped direct some of my creative practice in 2024.

I did make active steps to do items in the More column, but saw the bulk of my work in 2024 in the Less column. Coming off a long term illness and also some insane personal trauma, it is a lot to get back to some semblance of normal. I feel like a lot of working on communicating what my accommodation needs are and establishing/maintaining boundaries helped me get anxiety under control.

I am still reactive, but nothing like I was. cPTSD is like that and the crazy thing is that people push back mad hard when they meet up with me establishing healthy boundaries for the first time and then become downright obstinate when you maintain them. That was hard, but I was determined. Still more work to do there this year, but I have come a long way.

Toxic connections meant spaces and people. These were spaces and people that meant a whole lot to me, but I needed to take a step back if they were not willing to listen to my accommodation needs and routinely stepped over boundaries. Let me tell you how hard that is! Walking and creating kept me sane as I processed this grief.

For me, I saw the toxic behavior. I just kept doing logistics, tolerated some toxic stuff, took responsibility for all the things and grumbling a lot (fine trauma dumped a lot). That letting a lot things go was expected of me. For a lot of people that I found myself connecting to, I was logistics and nothing more. Only, I am more and I deserve to say no and to also be treated with respect.

In the more column, I made a big effort to repair relationships or reconnect with people. I need to do more of this, but this needed me to be more stable to do this right or well. Some of my not connecting is because trauma dumping is not something people want to hear and I am afraid of doing that without noticing. I am still awkward and am not perfect, but I am trying.

I will say that my out of control anxiety and my freeze response/stagnation have seen the most improvement. I took them off for 2025, not because I don't need to work on them, but I know the steps and it is an active process to make it muscle memory. I also know that anxiety and freezing are a response to humans and I left those actions items in the 2025 More/Less journal page that I need to work on to help keep those manageable.

Do you make resolutions? An epic to do list? A word of the year? Nothing? Do you use a creative process to help you develop these ideas? I would love to hear what you do.

Can You Review the Website and Links For Me?

I changed platforms for this project (The Feral Goat Creative) to consolidate my healing/daily creative practice under one roof. Can you click all of the links and check things out? Let me know what you think? This is a work in progress and some of the design features are wonky at the moment. I would greatly appreciate your input.

I plan to have more things to download, fun content, link to a shop, etc. Just getting this started slowly. Thanks. ~S