A Word for the Year

Dear Friends,

I’m always arguing with Greta, my therapist, about the future. I’m suspicious of it. Bad things seem poised to repeat themselves. Scary diagnoses loom around the next page of the calendar. Every weekend seems ripe for a new toddler illness. 

Greta wants me to “remember that good things happen to you, too.” Greta wants me to “think about what is different this time.”

I know she’s right. But lately it’s like the universe is taking my fear of the repeat-bad-time and laughing at me.

First we had COVID Christmas 2022, which felt a whole lot like COVID Lockdown Christmas 2020. Now I’m living through a repeat of 2022’s Scary January. 

January of last year was very bad. The Omicron variant was new on the scene, and I decided to keep my daughter home from the first few weeks of preschool to avoid getting it. Sure enough, it ripped through her preschool class while we were at home. But, despite my caution, we managed to catch a horrible stomach flu (where? We’d been nowhere), which knocked us out for the rest of the month. 

Thus began five months of non-stop illnesses, with a new virus showing up literally every three weeks. 

“I can’t do it again,” I told Greta. 

But what is different this year? 

Apparently nothing. 

Exactly three weeks after my daughter brought us COVID for Christmas, she came down with a stomach flu. The pattern just feels too real–I’m already looking at my spring calendar wondering if I should preemptively cancel everything. 

The thing is, though, things are different this year. For one, I know how to spot a doom-spiral when I start one. My daughter is a year older now and can actually tell us when her stomach hurts. Her immune system is also a year stronger. 

But the main difference is that my anxiety is in a very different place. Last year, when my daughter had the stomach flu, I couldn’t sleep because I was so anxious she would be sick in the night. This year, I woke up when she made a noise on the baby monitor (just a dream!), but I was quickly able to go back to sleep. 

For the past few years, I’ve chosen a word for the year in lieu of resolutions. In 2021, I chose “rest.” It felt a bit subversive to grant myself permission to choose a nap over productivity, or to go to bed early even if I didn’t know anything about television for a whole year. “Rest” was a constant reminder to honor what my body needed rather than pushing forward all the time. 

For 2022, I chose a word and then somewhere along the way forgot it. When I was telling this to my friend Erin (subscribe to her lovely newsletter if you’re a book person), she looked back at an old Instagram survey and found my answer–I’d chosen the word “present.” 

At first I felt bad that I’d forgotten my word for 2022, but when Erin told me what I’d chosen, I realized that I didn’t so much forget it as learn and internalize it, forgetting the project but choosing the practice. Present was my constant reminder as I moved through last year. Put your phone away. Be present. Pay close attention to this moment. Be here. 

The thing about the word project is that I didn’t give up “rest” while focusing on being “present.” I’ve kept both words in mind the whole time. It’s an accumulation of intentions–a values exercise that will continue to grow.

This year, for 2023, I’ve chosen the word “delight.” It may not seem an obvious choice for a year that began with COVID and a stomach flu. There’s nothing delightful about illness. 

I chose “delight” to be more aware when delight is in front of me. Not to miss it. To note it in the moment and remember it as part of the narrative. 

With a three year old, I often feel like the days are equal parts terror and delight. There’s the refusal to put on clothes “because I’m scared of them,” the emotional abuse from someone who tells you they love you and then tells you to go away. And then there’s the delight of the funny things my daughter says (“I’m a catastrophe right now!”), her laugh, her reactions to everyday happenings. 

Choosing delight also means prioritizing opportunities to create delight. Making more plans with friends. Taking more walks with my family. Treating myself in everyday ways–burning the good candles. Buying frames for my own paintings. Savoring things that feel special or rare. 

When everything feels the same, and I’m back in the same valley as last year, I can still choose what lens I want to hold up to the world, not as a way to erase the hard times, but as a way to notice what moments of delight happen alongside them. 

It’s nudging myself to look for the and: the acknowledgment that things can be hard, and delight can still be present. 

There is little that is redeemable about a stomach flu. But there are tiny delights: the relief of a warm bath after being sick. The joy of clean sheets. Even the delight my daughter showed at being able to watch back-to-back (to back) episodes of Daniel Tiger.  

Last January, I chatted with Laura Miles about her approach to the new year. She said one question she likes to ask herself (and offer to clients) is “What emotions do you want to understand better in the coming year?”

For me, choosing a word for the year involved asking myself what emotions I also want to experience more of in the coming year. 

In a way, choosing “delight” for my word of the year feels a little scary, because it’s a hopeful word. In choosing delight, I’m hoping that the year will be filled with things to delight over rather than suffer, which is never guaranteed. 

British philosopher Alain de Botton wrote, “Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t–surrender to events with hope.” 

Though January 2023 feels like a repeat of January 2022 so far, I don’t actually know what’s coming. Control is a known illusion. 

My suspicious self tells me that I shouldn’t be hopeful because hope is often paired with disappointment, and look what happened last year. But delight feels hopeful in a manageable way, somehow. It exists outside the movements of illness and fear. It slides into the small spaces in the day. It shimmers in the present, ready for the taking. 

Take good care, 

Dot

Did you choose a word for the year? Comment or reply to this email and let me know!

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News & Updates

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Blog Posts

Continuing our “8 Things We Swear By” series, in our latest blog we’re spending time with Art Therapist & Resident in Counseling Katie Gaynor. Read more for 8 things she loves, including Katie’s gorgeous printmaking stamps.

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Links We Like

In 2023, we are embracing our inner bookshop grandpa. 

There is no secret Option C: a helpful framework for decision-making.

Rest and Rejuvenation are two separate things. 

The comment section of this blog post feels like a love letter to therapy. 

I love Ann Lawton’s review of the year in colors. 

“When Avi and I decided to start [trying] in the summer, I didn’t feel particularly desperate for a baby, or in a rush to transition into a more complicated and sleep-deprived era of my life. I assumed those conditions would lower the stakes significantly. I would be patient and accepting of the process. I would be, above all else, ‘casual,’ a word I repeated like a mantra those first months. Unfortunately, there is no version of trying to grow a person in your body that is low-stakes and casual.”

What’s in for 2023 (and what’s out) (click through the carousel).

Made me laugh. 

“Finding your true self is an act of love. Expressing it is an act of rebellion.” Love this, and these 21 other nuggets of wisdom from Cory Muscara. 

Choosing delight. Scout & the Disco Ball by Cig Harvey: 

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