Episode 10: Choosing a word for the year

Fable and the Verbivore dig into words or themes that they are holding onto and hoping to become self fulfilling prophesies for this new year.

For Laura, 2019 was a year of actively working to be open and not reject an idea just because it felt scary or impossible. This led to a lot of unexpected opportunities, and ultimately deciding to leave a 12 year career and rededicate herself for the present to writing and spending more time with her two kids. This year she envisions walking through the doors that have now been opened, and stepping into whatever lies beyond them.

The year 2019 for Bethany involved a lot of staying indoors and care giving for her daughter as she recovered from hip surgery and her husband as he continues cancer treatment. A benefit of this time at home was that she could focus more on her writing projects, reading tons of books, and working to create this podcast. In 2020, she is resonating with the theme of going into the woods and holding herself in active, directed tension between the forces outside herself (as you would a yoga pose).

We wish you a 2020 that holds excitement, challenges, peace, relaxation, overcoming fear, joy, opportunities, and the unexpected! We would love to hear if any of our listeners have any words or themes that they are holding onto for the new year!

Into the woods,
Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

Laura mentions the story trope of forests/woods being a place of transformation. This tends to be a story symbol/truism used in many old and modern works alike (most often in fairy tales and fantasy), where the hero/heroine travel into an enchanted forest and returns changed in some way. This device is used significantly in Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

The movie Frozen 2 has Olaf call out the forest trope directly in his dialogue, which had Laura laughing out loud in the theater while watching with her two kids. Into the Unknown is a song from the movie, but it is also a strong story theme in this movie about going into places where you can’t see the outcome but you keep taking that next right step.

Bethany mentions into the woods, which is also a reference to both this story trope and the Sondheim musical Into the Woods. The fairy tale characters in this show journey into the woods to get what they desire most, and then find that getting what you want has consequences. The character transformations are really well orchestrated, and the music is syncopated with clever lyrics . If you haven’t seen or heard this one, we both highly recommend it.

Books mentioned:

Allusion to The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Welhelm Grimm and Jacob Grimm

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)