I’m daring to choose One Word for 2016. Last year I adopted the phrase, “Whatever happens, happens” because I couldn’t bear to choose one word that would define my year. I’d done that and been disappointed in years past. But this year, there’s a word that keeps nagging at me, and I’m opening myself to listen.

This year I choose to FIGHT. I’m fighting for myself, to be myself, to be the best me I can be. I am fighting for connection, collaboration and consistency because I am my best self when those three areas are in harmony.

I have to fight against putting up walls in relationships. While connection is my heart’s desire, protection is my instinct. But the best relationships are those in which we can let others enter our hearts and roam around. That requires risk . . . the risk that we might get hurt. And risk requires a willingness to change. And, for me, that requires fighting the walls I’m prone to build.

Not only am I fighting to connect, but also, to collaborate. I love collaborating with other people who share my interests (i.e., music and writing), but I also need to collaborate with inspiration. In “Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear,” Elizabeth Gilbert says, “Your very body and your very being are perfectly designed to live in collaboration with inspiration, and inspiration is still trying to find you . . .” I want to be found. I want to be inspired. I want to collaborate to create.

Finally, I am fighting to be consistent. If I’m not intentional about being consistent, I am quick to let life swallow my creative endeavors. I have to fight to prioritize what makes me the best I can be; otherwise, I wind up in a black hole of laundry and dishes and kids’ homework and extracurricular activities, and my creativity escapes like a cat running from a bath.

This year I will fight like a girl woman who doesn’t want to live with the regret of giving up, who will get back up when she’s knocked down. I will fight, and at the end, I will say of myself, “I didn’t quit.”