Integrate: 2023 Year in Review
The oath, or mission statement of the ALTER podcast is “exploring the practice off growth.”
Take a deep breath into that phrase: The practice of growth.
Turns out, growth is a practice. It requires intention. It doesn’t just happen on its own.
Everyone gets old.
Not everyone becomes an elder.
You know what I mean?
Growing up, I always thought of age 40 as some sort of portal to adulthood, after which you become wise, but as I’ve gone through it, it turns out no! We don’t automatically become wise.
We’ve all met olders who are not elders. Bitter or immature or carrying a victim-mindset throughout their lives. There’s not that kind of gravity, gravitas, weightiness we want to acquire as we age with wisdom and joy.
We have develop practices of growth that help us alchemize experiences like injury and illness and divorce and disappointments and failures into wisdom. This doesn’t automatically happen on its own.
One of those practices is integration. Periodically, intentionally, taking stock. Coming into integrity.
I’m loving this word integrity more and more. It’s our theme this month in the Alter Together membership. It’s the lens we’re looking though in movement and mediation practices, and it’s especially relevant not just for our time on the planet right now, where we see many leaders lacking integrity, but also for this time of year, as the year is drawing to a close. Or as I choose to think about it: crescendoing.
Integrity shares the same root word as integrate.
To integrate is to come into integrity. To come into wholeness.
The word integrate means to weave together disparate parts into a whole.
To bring something fully into ourselves.
A year can go by in kind of a blur, with moments and pieces we haven’t fully sat with, and metabolized, and learned from.
But when we ask specific questions of it, we can integrate it, and alchemize it into wisdom
Grief, regret, gratitude, celebration - all it can be alchemized - transformed through fire - into wisdom.
So a few questions for you, to get started:
What has been your favorite song this year?
What was your favorite belly laugh?
What was your favorite kiss? (Dog kisses count!)
What has been your hardest won lesson?
How have you healed this year?
What progress have you made toward a big dream?
What’s the best compliment you gave?
These questions are from my Integrate Year in Review Journal.
I’d love to invite you to The Integrate Workshop I’m leading on Wednesday, December 20th, where we’ll be working and playing and maybe crying and ah-ha-ing and celebrating our way through The Integrate Journal, If you can’t make it live, the replay will be included, so whenever you’re listening to this podcast, you can take this workshop. In addition to the end of the year, it’s especially powerful at a shift in seasons of life or during the year, or around your birthday.
Register at nicolemeline.com/visionary. The Integrate Workshop is included in The Visionary Dream Year course, which you can learn about there, or on its own, when you scroll to the bottom of the page.
The Workshop includes a coupon for 50% off the Integrate Journal, or you can find just the journal at shop.nicolemeline.com
The Integrate Journal is a really powerful and fun tool for the kinds of meaningful conversations we crave, especially around the holidays. I dream of y’all setting these out as part of a place setting at Thanksgiving, or as stocking stuffers, or housewarming gifts.
It’s a way to say to yourself and your beloved,
