Continuing the weekly arguments that 2016 was not all bad, I’ve created a series of posts designed to exonerate the year. This is the tenth installment in that series.

A year ago this week the 366 Days of Selfies Tinas was still rife with images of running, hiking, and practicing yoga. This was my Leap Day portrait. Look closely, especially at the date. Dispels the notion that we are enjoying an early Spring, doesn’t it? I see sunshine, green grass, leaves on the trees, rain evaporating off the pavement, and my bare skin. Obviously Spring is right on time.

Along with the self-portrait I wrote my February highlight reel post in which I decided to stop calling my heart broken (as in I broke it) and officially renamed it my Renaissance Heart. Then I set about the business of renaming everything else I do/did in cyberspace (rebranding my digital footprint, as the techy-necks like to say). I hadn’t yet cut the cord to social media so bing-bang-boom I had a new online identity, at least for a while. In poker parlance, I was all-in in 2016. 

A year ago this week I began studying heart rate training in earnest. I wrote in my journal:

There is no single race or series that is worth

the willful shortening of my life or quality of life.

I had at least one mic drop moment in 2016.

A year ago this week Danielle asked, What’s in your heart right in this moment? 

She also prompted, Today my heart feels: 

Interesting that both of Danielle’s pre-meditated, pre-printed prompts were specific to my heart at that time, isn’t it? Interesting feels a bit too mild, doesn’t it? I was synchronous in 2016. 

Fraught with challenge, change and confrontation was 2016. All bad it was not.

— Mercy