My word of the year for 2026
And why I'm approaching next year completely differently
A few weeks ago, I started thinking about what I wanted my word of the year to be for 2026. 2025 was… a lot. And while I’m still sorting through HRT and scraping together every ounce of motivation and energy I can, I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted next year to look like. I just know I don’t want it to look like this year. This year was full of high highs and low lows. It was equal parts exciting and exhausting.
So let’s start there. Here are three things I learned about myself in 2025:
I’ve simply lost the shimmery need to keep it all together. Thank God. I simply no longer feel the need to prop up any sort of perfectionist facade. To make sure everyone in every room is comfortable with who I am. (And I mean that with every ounce of love in the world and the hope that you’ll also show up as your whole entire self too). Bringing my voice to new conversations (conversations I wouldn’t have touched with a ten foot pole five years ago) felt right and necessary. Vital, even. Not just to the conversations themselves, but to the integral core of who I am. As a mother. As a business owner. As a woman.
I’m craving the most human of experiences. Not finally making the damn NYT bestseller list. Not finally breaking the $5M ceiling in business. I want art. I want great books. I want connection and love and that feeling I get when all the words line up in just that sort of way, coming from my heart to my head to my fingers to this proverbial page. God, that feeling is like a drug and I love it. I want really good food. I want to hold hands. I want that feeling when you wake up and you know you have another good hour before the alarm goes off. All your people are tucked safely in their beds in rooms down the hall. The pillow is cold and the covers are warm. I want that over and over and over. Simone Weil wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” To have the bandwidth to even notice the good things (even and especially amongst the hard), that is the goal.
