Intentions for a New Year: Mothers of Invention

And, I knew I was on the right track, because the second I wrote those two things down, I felt lighter. I could almost smell cherry blossoms on the wind, though they’re still curled tightly away for another few months.

Writing such intentions down is the first step. Absorbing them into your fiber is another matter. But I’m a believer that it can work. A few years ago, when life felt like a damp wool blanket and bleak didn’t begin to describe how rotten I felt, I quarantined myself to the attic of our house. Although it went against everything I believe in as a card-carrying cynic, I wrote a list of intentions and posted them above my mattress. They were the things I needed to do to be able to come down from the attic. Be softer, was chief among them. I read them every morning and again before going to sleep. I breathed them in and blew them out. I closed my eyes and saw myself being those things. I checked out books—self-help books that prescribed a path, art books that inspired me—and listened to lyrics more closely than I had in years. Quotes and pictures joined my list on the wall. After three months, when I finally stripped the bed and rejoined my husband in our bedroom, I was a different person. If anyone else had described such transformation and its methodology, I would have rolled my eyes at them; but I could feel the changes, subtle and powerful, in my muscles and in my heart.

When I asked some of the women whom I’ve talked to this year for the Mothers of Invention column about their hopes and desires for 2008, I was reminded of my time in the attic and the list on the wall. I don’t mean to suggest anyone here is in the kind of dire straights to need that cold, top-of-the-house space. But I hear genuine searching and heartfelt intention in their lists. Here are a few of their lists.

Singer/songwriter Rani Arbo seeks to: