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 nineteenth installment in that series.

A year ago this week I set a goal for the month of May:

Honor fulfillment as a sacred requirement.

I wish I could remember if I wrote this or if I read it somewhere and adopted it as part of my truth. If I wrote it, how brilliant was that? If I didn’t, how brilliant was I for recognizing it as a divine directive? In 2016, my finesse with a fiat was flat-out fantastic. I knew how to work the f-words in 2016. Like a boss.

A year ago this week I reasoned that She is Me, therefore I should consider giving, spending, and choosing in alignment with what I would give Her. Whatever I would do for Her, I should do for Me, because She is Me. Whatever I would do to make Her feel splendid, whole, loved, honored, worshiped, sacred, and timeless, I should do for Me. In 2016, mine was the queendom and the glory.

A year ago this week Danielle asked me to share the best advice I’d ever been given. I wrote:

Yesterday, today, forever. This is an ongoing practice. I renounced emotional slavery in 2016. I was/am a Freedom Fighter.

A year ago this week the running/walking clinic finished its 2016 season with a graduation 5k. I lined up beside the walker I coached over the previous weeks and prepped her for the pacing. We slathered on sunscreen. I took charge of her water bottles and fuel. I declared only positive outcomes and in just a shade over one hour I held her hand across the finish line. My trainee became a finisher. There were tears. There were cheers. There were yoga stretches flat on her back to help her recover.

My trainee turned finisher gave me a tropical scented candle as a thank-you gift. I’ve been using it on my outdoor altar to light incense over the past year. I kid you not, the candle burned down just this week, a calendar year after she gave it to me. I couldn’t have managed that better if I’d tried! I bumped into my finisher lady at a baseball game not long ago. She’s still walking. I made lasting impressions in 2016.

A year ago this week I banished the scale from my home. No one in my home knows how much they weigh anymore. I tried to write about it a year ago this week and ended up writing my way into an sardonic moment of forgiveness for someone in my past. The excerpt:

Freedom. I finally broke up with the bathroom scale. I kicked it out of the house. A woman who wanted me out of her house long ago once told me, “There’s your clothes and there’s the door.” I’d moved in with her family right after graduation. While I searched for employment I earned my keep by cleaning her house and doing the laundry. When I found a job I dove right into full-time hours and didn’t have time to get her house clean before she arrived home at 5 pm. Sometimes the laundry was only halfway done. Sometimes the bathrooms had to wait until the weekend. She got fed up. Continuing to clean the house at the same rate of completion and on the same timetable as before turned out to be a deal-breaker for her. She got fed up with my excuses of I had to go to work or I got called in to work or I was late for work. She didn’t want to hear it. I wasn’t adding any value to her household. I could pack my crap and go. Stuff my sorrys in a sack, mister.

Through the years I always thought this was cold and cruel. I am not going to lie to you though, as I removed the scale from my yoga room (sacred space, but with a scale–I know!) I had to laugh. There’s your batteries and there’s the door, Scale! She was adding no value to my household. I might have welcomed her into my home at one time but she was no longer welcome. All she did was suck up resources without any contribution. Her productivity was shit and I didn’t want to hear any of her excuses of I’m just a machine or I’m just doing what I was programmed to do or I don’t know how to make you happy.  Whatever. Not hearing it. I put that bitch OUT. I am free. I have no idea how much I weigh. I mean to go on not knowing. It was a radical act of self-love. It made me whole. And empowered. And Lo-Retta, wherever you are, I forgive you.

I was ruthless when it came to self-truth in 2016. I should have thought of this while I was searching for a pen name all those months:  Ruth Less.

Yes indeed, 2016 was at times a damn triflin’ ho. But she wasn’t all bad.

— Mercy