Word of the Year

In 2025, I’d like to be more tender: with myself, especially, but also with my partner, with my loved ones, with the world.

One of the biggest, worst changes in myself that I’ve noticed over the past few years is my slow shift into negativity and harshness. I can blame this on a lot of things: the pain and fear of the pandemic, the anxiety of living above awful neighbours who woke me up every morning by screaming at each other, having a sweet but frustrating puppy who made everything harder for a long time, the deep fog of depression I fell into while living in a house and city that felt isolated and misaligned, the long painful slide into not taking care of myself on the whole. All of these things were real, and all of them took their toll.

As I write this, I am so happy to say that overall, I feel pretty far removed from all of those hard things, and feel more like myself than I have in recent memory. We have a beautiful apartment in a lovely neighbourhood, our puppy has grown up into a (mostly) well-behaved dog, I’m closer (literally and figuratively) to my family & friends, and I’m taking care of myself again in so many big and small ways. I feel mostly quite good, hopeful about my new career path of photography, and positive about the year to come.

And yet! The negativity of those hard years has lingered in sneaky ways. Somewhere along the way, I started talking to myself in a really mean way, like I never had before. Sure, I’ve historically thought less-than-ideal things about myself, my body, my life over the years. Who hasn’t? But this new tendency was different: more cruel, more insidious, more yucky. It was also pretty casual: I’d slip into saying that I was an “idiot” for something super minor, even out loud around my partner. I’d beat myself up for thinking bad thoughts or not having a great day. The comparisonitis to other people got so loud and out of control that I could spend days with an emotional hangover from comparing myself to someone I perceived to be doing better than me. None of this felt like a big deal at the time, or even like it would make a difference in how I was feeling, but I can’t deny that the impact has cumulatively been very nasty. It’s manifested in lower self-confidence, more anger & sadness, more stress and pain.

So even though it felt easy and natural (and even weirdly “right”, when I was at my lowest) to start talking to myself this way, it is proving very difficult to stop doing it. It’s become a habit, and like all bad habits, it’s very hard to break.

When I asked myself what I needed more of in 2025, the first thing that came to mind was better self-talk, being nicer to myself, treating myself with more kindness. And that is true. But if I’m honest, it’s not just my self-talk that has suffered. I think my temper has gotten shorter with others. Sometimes my tone isn’t as calm or kind as I’d like it to be. I’ve become more judgemental: because I’m more judgemental of myself, I’m more judgemental of others. (Ain’t that the truth?) I’ve become more gossipy, more resentful, more impatient.

It’s not just my self-talk that needs to change, it’s my entire orientation to myself and to the world.

So here’s what I’m calling in for 2025: more gentleness. More kindness. More positivity. More tenderness. 

Any of those words could probably have worked for this year (gentle was a very close second!) but I’m going with tender because it feels the most evocative to me. I soften immediately upon even just thinking the word. While ‘gentle’ seems to embody a way of acting or doing (which is lovely too!), I love that one can simply feel tenderly towards something, or someone. We can hold someone in our hearts with tenderness, which implies sending them love, feeling fondly towards them, and thinking kind thoughts about them, without even having to do anything specific to show it. That tenderness can be felt, both through the ether and in person. And I think tenderness leads to gentleness: the more tenderly we hold ourselves and our people, the gentler we will be with them.

But in action, too, I want to be tender. Treat myself tenderly. Treat others tenderly, especially my little family. Try to see people with the eyes of tenderness and care, rather than judgement or impatience. To treat something tenderly is to treat it as precious, I think. So this tender orientation to the good things in my life will (I hope) remind me of the precious love, and joy, and goodness I am so lucky to have.

Tender

• affectionate or loving, gentle or kind; showing gentleness and concern
• delicate or soft in quality or tone
• that requires careful handling
• careful, considerate
• acutely sensitive, as to pain, insult, etc.
• something offered, especially money, as in payment

Synonyms: delicate, gentle, soft, caring, compassionate, romantic, thoughtful, sensitive, adoring, soothing, mellow, cash, money, offer, give, proffer

Intentions

Spot the Success: I really believe that healing my self-talk is going to be the most important factor in bringing more tenderness into my life. The way I talk to and treat myself will inevitably filter out into how I engage with the world around me. So this year, one of my daily habits is “Spot the Success”, an exercise I learned from a book I read towards the tail-end of last year, The Self-Talk Workout. The idea is to make a list of ten things every day that you did that were positive in some way. She talks about how, when our self-talk is overly negative, making a gratitude list doesn’t really help you feel better. You can be abstractly (or even profoundly!) grateful for the things in your life, while still thinking you suck/you lucked into them/you don’t deserve them, etc. Instead, we have to force our minds to seek out the good things that we are responsible for, even if they’re very small or indicate the absence of something (ie. “I didn’t pick that fight when I easily could have”). I’ve been doing this for just five days now and it already feels so good. It feels like I needed to give myself permission to look for the good things, almost like I wasn’t allowing myself to acknowledge the good before because it didn’t feel fully true or authentic to the awful ways I was feeling, or because the negative things just felt realer and more urgent. But by flipping this and starting with the positive, I feel so much better. The negative stuff is still there, of course, but at least the positivity has a fighting chance now to push back against it. It feels good to list my accomplishments each day and give myself some credit for them.

Tone: I know that my tone can get harsh or just blunt, especially if I’m tired or hungry (which is frankly quite a lot of the time). I want to work on keeping my tone of voice positive and light, especially with my partner and dog. Because even if I don’t actually feel as gloomy or cranky as I sound, the way I say things matters just as much as what I’m saying. Mike is very sweet and sensitive to my moods, and it affects him if I sound agitated, impatient, or (in my worst moments) rude. It’s not always easy to keep my tone positive, but I really want to work on it. This will also mean working on the things that erode my ability to keep my tone light, like sleeping & eating (see below).

Judgement: Just as it’s dangerous to let myself off the hook of needing to be kind to myself, it’s dangerously easy to let myself slip into judgment and negativity about others. I love to gossip, and I think it often serves a legitimate purpose (both to share important information, and as a way into discussing and examining our own values), but it’s also far too easy to let my negativity take over. I can get judgy, saying snarky things or spending way too long diagnosing why things are going wrong or right for others. It’s a waste of time! It’s not nice! Everyone is fighting their own battles, and who am I to judge them for it? One of my favourite ever pieces is ‘This is Water” by David Foster Wallace, and I want to get back to living out its ethos: having deep compassion, understanding, and grace for the people around us, rather than harshly judging them or imagining ourselves above them in some way.

Mindfulness: I’m proud to say that I did a lot of meditation last year, and I’m eager to keep it up. I use and love Insight Timer and have been doing more of their guided meditations in recent months. Looking ahead, I want to try to stick to my daily meditation practice, folding in more loving-kindness meditations and ones that focus on self-compassion. Speaking of which, I’d also love to dive deeper into the work of Kristen Neff and read her books, as well as any other books on self-talk and self-kindness that I can find.

Bruno: This dog brings so much love & joy to my life, but I can admit that I can also get pretty frustrated with him. There are certain skills that he never fully learned (read: I never fully trained) that can lead to bad behaviour and stress for us both. Namely: walking well on a leash when excited, coming back when he’s called, and not acting like an absolute lunatic around water. Part of treating Bruno with tenderness is remembering that he’s not acting out or being naughty, he is simply doing what he has learned to do or was literally born to do. After all, there’s no such thing as a bad dog! So to improve his behaviour, I have to improve mine, and my training of him. This year, that means working on his leash training, recall, and water sensitivity more actively and consistently, so that daily life can be easier for all of us.

Tender Loving Care: I want to embody this particularly when it comes to my body. As I write this, I am nursing a minor neck injury that has caused me a lot of pain and suffering for the past couple days, so I’m currently very aware of how debilitating pain can be and how my health really is so precious. I built some good habits in 2024, like near-daily movement (including way more strength training), better sleep habits, less screen time (thanks to Opal), and a more regular eating schedule (intermittent fasting is NOT for me). I’d like to keep up with these habits this year, and bring in even more mindfulness in how I listen to my body: what it feels like eating, how it feels like moving, when it feels like sleeping.

Beyond the biological basics, I’d also like to bring more TLC in how I care for myself in subtler ways: taking the time to get dressed in a way that makes me feel good, learning to do my hair in fun ways, giving myself treats and pampering whenever I can. And of course, I also want to bring TLC to all kind of other things too, like doing sweet things for my partner, creating new traditions with my family, and bringing surprise and delight to my friends.

Money: I love picking words with multiple meanings, and you’d best believe I’m excited that ‘tender’ also means cash money, honey! Money has been a sore point the past few years (my business and bank account both suffered when I did) and I’m carrying some credit card debt that I’d like to be rid of. I’d also like to focus on manifesting and working to bring in more income overall: both to help me with my debt payoff, and also to help plan for our future goal of having a family. My new photography business has been pretty successful so far (yay!), so I’m feeling hopeful about being able to bring in more money in the year to come.

That’s a lot of words, but it felt healing to even write this and acknowledge how much I want this negativity to shift. Things are better, but if I can’t truly feel that they’re better, or appreciate that they’re better, or be kind to myself as they continue to get better, what difference does it make?

I can’t tell you how good it feels to think of this coming year as a year of tenderness. A year of softness & kindness, gentleness and care. I know it might be painful too (choosing a yearly theme always means also revealing all the ways you’re blocked, inside and out, from living that way), but the idea of tenderness feels a lot like a failsafe. So long as I’m tender, I can handle whatever hurt, sadness, or fear come my way. I can learn from my mistakes without worrying they mean I’ve irrevocably messed up. I can let things go. I can let myself grieve or suffer without adding harmful narratives. I can be gentle and sweet with myself and my inner child.

If I’m being honest, I can’t wait to start living like this. Let’s begin!

Love,

Steph

PS. If you’re curious, you can explore all my past words below:

2013: Reach | 2014: Abundance | 2015: Grace | 2016: Light | 2017: Embrace | 2018: Flow | 2019: Energy | 2020: Devoted | 2021: Soften | 2022: Present | 2023: Sustainable | 2024: Strength

By now I’ve shared quite a bit about the past few years and how I’ve felt throughout them. In short: not great! When I think back, what stands out the most to me is my overall feeling of fragility. Of not being sure what small thing was going to make me break down in tears, or of feeling utter despair at even the most minute setback. I often felt unsure I could handle a small uncertainty or try a new thing without it rattling me.

I hate that I’ve spent so much time feeling this way, because this is really not how I think of myself as a person. I grew up going on adventures at overnight summer camp and taking on singing musical theatre roles and bossing my younger sisters around incessantly. I was not delicate! I’ve always been a big feeler, but I’ve also always been confident. Even when I was nervous about something (examples: backpacking Europe by myself, moving to Korea for a year and Ecuador for another, starting my own business), I’d feel the fear and do it anyways. I knew I wanted to be the kind of person who did those things, even if I wasn’t sure I was that kind of person. Surprise! By doing the things, I became the kind of person who did the things.

Until I wasn’t anymore. Until a pandemic and toxic neighbours and a crazy puppy tore through my life like a hurricane and deposited me in Sad Town, USA. I lost myself, and for a long while my confidence was shaken and my resilience felt practically non-existent.

As I shared in my Year in Review post, I’m in a better place now, but I feel like my muscles of confidence and resilience have atrophied more than I’d like. I’ve held onto several bad habits from The Dark Years™️, like hibernating at home instead of adventuring, or hitting the snooze button non-stop every morning, or mindlessly scrolling all night instead of reading a gosh-darn book. They’re relics of a time when I felt like hiding and/or numbing, which I don’t want to do anymore.

Instead, I want to show up for myself & my people. I want to rebuild my confidence and feel more resilient. I want to be less thrown off by small things, and more equipped to tackle big things. At the risk of sounding like one of those “Become Your Best Self!” people, I really do want to get back to feeling like my best self. I want to remind myself of my own strength, and offer that strength to others.

So my word for 2024 is Strength. As with most of my words, this one kept appearing to me as the year came to a close, along with other ones that felt aligned. Strength, strong, resilience, stamina, discipline, embodiment, fortitude, endurance. Challenge, practice, tough, core, spine, habits, routine. Dig deep, stand tall. As my mom always says, “Strong like bull.”

These words have an edge to them. They aren’t gentle and comforting, as many of my previous words have been (ex. soften, grace, abundance, embrace). They ask more of me. They remind me that sometimes the more compassionate, kind thing to do is bring in some structure, some discipline, some accountability. Being lax is not always being loving. Sometimes, you need that strong mama bear energy: do no harm, but take no shit.

Really, I’m choosing this word because I want to constantly be reminded that I’m stronger than I think. When I’m tempted to fall back into patterns that don’t serve me, or crumple when confronted with a challenge, I want to remember who I really am, deep down. And not just remember, but also create myself anew. There are places where I have always lacked strength, and I’d like to actively build up that strength for perhaps the first time – in my boundaries, in my biceps, in my bedtime routines.

One thing I love about strength is that it’s not binary, something you either have or you don’t. It builds up gradually, and it fades away steadily if not in use. We all possess various strengths and lacks thereof, but we always have the choice to build up our strength layer by layer, day by day.

Strength

• the quality or state of being physically or mentally strong
• the influence or power possessed by a person
• the capacity of an object to withstand great force or pressure
• the emotional or mental qualities necessary in dealing with difficult or distressing situations
• a person or thing perceived as a source of mental or emotional support
• bravery in dealing with difficulties

Synonyms: Courage, tenacity, fortitude, power, vitality, effectiveness, backbone, steadiness, health, anchor, spirit, vigour, virtue.

Intentions

• Body: Quite simply, I want to get stronger! I’ve been weight-lifting at home lately with the StrongLifts program and it’s helping me discover the joy of strengthening underused muscles. I also need to get help & support with my back, which has been giving me problems and pain for years. I know the solution will involve literally straightening and strengthening my spine, which feels like a metaphor if there ever was one.
• Mind: I have let my meditation & gratitude practices slip dramatically since the pandemic years, and I’d like to reclaim them. Meditation especially, because it helps me become less reactive and always brings me new ideas, two things I sorely need. I’d also like to reduce distractions, minimize multi-tasking and seriously curb my social media usage. To strengthen my mind, my focus, and my creativity, I need to limit the things that weaken them.
• Reading: On a related note, I’d like to strengthen my reading practice! Over the past few years, I’ve tended to avoid challenging books in favour of nourishing romance that brings me delight and joy. To be clear: this is great! In my opinion, there is no moral hierarchy to books, different genres serve different needs at different times. BUT. I also like to read books that push me, that change the way I see the world and introduce complex new ideas, and those have been lacking in recent years due to my burnout. This year, I’d like to strengthen my focus and return to deeper reading.
• Habits: I am also really excited to strengthen my habits in 2024. I’ve chosen four to track throughout the year: meditation, exercise, writing, and nightly flossing. I’ll be using DayStamp to monitor them, which offers a very cute visual report each month and year, plus a widget for my phone to show me what I haven’t done on a given day.
• Community: We’ve just moved to Hamilton, and I’d love to spend time this year cultivating my community. One way I plan to do this is by starting a Cookbook Club locally, an idea that utterly delights me. I am lucky to know several friends in the city who I could deepen my relationship with, and some new online pals I’d like to meet up with. Plus, I’m living only about 20 minutes away from my mom, stepdad & grandma, who I adore. I’d like to host more gatherings & dinners, meet up with friends more often, make regular plans with my sisters and find the local entrepreneurial community here in Hamilton. When I lived in Toronto I had a very vibrant community, so I’d like to find it again in my new city.
• Relationship: Mike and I are in a good place right now, but I want our relationship to become even stronger. For us to communicate better, strengthen our friendship, fight less and have more fun together.

And as my friend Sonja always says: more will be revealed! I’m curious to see how this word (like all my previous words) surprises me in ways good and bad. My friends and I often joke that when you choose a word, you also choose its opposite because that always seems to be the case. But I prefer to reframe it this way: when you choose a word, your attention gets drawn to all the ways that you are currently blocked from accessing that feeling or state. All the yucky stuff holding you back comes to the surface and needs to be dealt with before you can feel strong, or energized, or however you’d like to feel. So this year, I expect I’ll be shown where I am weak. I will likely feel weak on my way to strength. But that’s okay too, it’s all part of the process.

Welcome to 2024. For me, it’ll be the year of Strength. What will this year be for you? 

If you’re curious, you can explore all my past words below:

2013: Reach | 2014: Abundance | 2015: Grace | 2016: Light | 2017: Embrace | 2018: Flow | 2019: Energy | 2020: Devoted | 2021: Soften | 2022: Present | 2023: Sustainable