Dear Friend,

I greatly enjoyed my New Year’s Peace Meditation yesterday as it brings together NVC enthusiasts from across the world. It is one of my favorite traditions for welcoming the New Year! 

How has 2022 been for you? For me, it has felt like an exhilarating and challenging year. I was named CEO of the NVC Academy and we spent the year performing a complete company-wide restructuring. This included changes in leadership and individual roles to improve efficiency and provide opportunities for in-house collaboration; retraining of several team members and hiring new people to join our team in order to support individual and company-wide sustainability; a complete overhaul of all systems that has been huge to create and implement, and improved our effectiveness and potential reach significantly. In addition to these changes, we hired a company to help us update our website, which we will be launching soon!

The changes are dramatic and this leaves us poised to extend our outreach, programs, and impact!

If I was honest, I would express my experience of overseeing these changes as “whoosh.” Can you relate to whoosh? Those times in life when the ground feels unsteady, like a small earthquake. Even moments that are so unsteadying, it feels like tumbling in an ocean wave that’s too big for you to hold your ground. This is what whoosh means to me. 2022 felt like a whoosh!

I am in awe of our progress, proud of our NVC Academy team, and most especially grateful for you and all our members and students who continue to grow with us!

For me personally, I have grown into my role as CEO and have done enough body-image work that I experience and hold my physical self with more grace and compassion. These changes mean that I am more relaxed and at peace from the inside out, and immensely grateful for my health and the countless ways that this beautiful body helps me navigate my life. In fact, every thought, smell, sound, sight, taste, touch, and experience has been possible through this body. I cherish it. My thanks to many of you who have walked this particular path with me, and offered your support and compassion.

Now what? For those of you who have read my New Year messages in the past, you may recall that I pray for a mantra that I use throughout the coming year to help focus and ground myself. My 2022 mantra was “This change is Divinely guided” (Wow! Was that true, or what? Whoosh!). For 2023, I am thinking of a mantra that is related to integration or assimilation. I would like it to somehow bring together all the changes of 2022 and propel the NVC Academy and myself into new, exciting possibilities. I will let you know when I “find” it.

What would you like to call into your life in 2023? Consider if you’d like to write a mantra to help guide you throughout the year.

I imagine your 2022 was eventful, challenging, beautiful, and inspiring in many different ways. I wish you joy, fulfillment, and inner peace in abundance in 2023. I hope our paths will cross. Until then, blessings to you and those you love… 

Mary Mackenzie
CEO, NVC Academy
CNVC Certified Trainer