Discernment Is My 2024 Challenge

Mina Samuels
3 min readJan 3, 2024

The first thing I did on January 1, 2024 was climb up a mountain with a friend. A little more than four hours on snow and ice in very cold, grey conditions. When we got back to the car, I couldn’t even manage to click the car remote to unlock the doors, my hands were so frozen. And it was glorious to open the year in nature, in the vigor of my body ( which has not always been a given this year), with a challenge and great company.

2023 was its own mountain and as much as I love mountains, I’m hoping that 2024 will bring fewer tears and fears and more ease and flow.

Every year (as many of you do, no doubt, and many of us here at Fit Is a Feminist Issue) I choose a WOTY (here’s last year). Sometimes the word is aspirational and other years it is a beacon. This year it is the latter-a lighthouse to indicate the shoals, when I fall out of alignment with its intent; and a north star to guide my speech, actions and spirit.

My word is going to be DISCERNMENT. I had a lot of resistance to my WOTY last year, which was WELCOME, because, well, the year was even harder than I anticipated when I chose the word. Now, heading into another opportunity for a reset, I wanted to find a…

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Mina Samuels

Writer. Performer. Citizen. Traveler. Enthusiast. Author of Run Like a Girl 365 Days A Year and other books. www.minasamuels.com