Finding a Word for 2025

“One word.” It’s a newer trend to ring in a new year foregoing the traditional New Year’s resolution. Instead, you opt for a word or phrase that sets your intention for the coming year. Adventure, Inner Peace, Joy. You get the idea.

It’s an alternative with some real benefits. Magellan Health says a focus word, instead of a resolution, “becomes a filter and guide, helping you to grow in unexpected ways throughout the year.” It can impact multiple dimensions of your life and is easier to stick to than a list of goals. 

Looking ahead, 2025 holds uncertainty and fear around civil rights, human dignity, international relations, the environment, education, and more. It’s created a tension in me that’s brought me restless nights, anxious worry, and countless tears.

I captured some of my process of searching for “one word” for 2025 in the following poem. In sharing this, it is my hope that your own feelings — be it fear, uncertainty, anxiety, dread, despair, unease — may find comfort in sitting next to mine.

Asking God for a Word

Around me swirl lofty aspirations for the year ahead, 
Products of meaningful reflection, 
quiet moments in prayer, 
clear paths of spiritual growth.

They remain just outside my grasp,
too much for the knot in my stomach to absorb
As I lie in wait for a tide change that threatens to reach tragic depths, 
inundating houses, apartments, shelters,
and leaving behind the broken pieces.

I want to run away and hide. I want to scream, No!

I close my eyes, and I reach for the God who is both 
More expansive
than the universe 
and Closer to me
than my own breath.

I ask,
What word wants to reside in me this year?

Is it Courage —
to turn on the news,
to remain connected to the suffering,
to do what must be done?

Is it Hope —
to believe in collective goodness,
to be sure of my own capacity,
to face the worst of what could come?

Is it Optimism —
To remain open to opportunities,
To bet when the odds are against me,
to avoid the death-spiral of negative thoughts?

Is it Presence — 
to find purpose in the small things,
To be fully alive in this very moment,
To let go of everything it’s not?

Perhaps it is Gentleness —
to see in myself, my spouse  and my children, 
the parts that are overwhelmed, afraid, angry or sad,
 and to love them?

Or even Vulnerability —
to ask for help, to be seen by others,
To trust that my emotions are doors to open,
not to shame or condemn?

Is it  Safety —
To protect our children,
To form networks of support,,
To band together and defend our rights?

Is it Playfulness —
to take myself less seriously,
To welcome more laughter,
to get in touch with my childlike side?

It can’t be Acceptance — too passive, too resigned.
But there is one word that comes to my mind.

I say it in a whisper; I say it with fear.
I think this is what my heart needs to hear.

When the Word became flesh, it took only three letters,
Uttered from the lips of an unexpected mother.

Her Word resounds through the echoes of time
and reaches my ears — I want to make it mine:

Yes.

I don’t know how, but yes.

I’m not ready, but yes.

I might get hurt, but yes.

Yes, 2025. I will keep walking, because the Word is already alive in me.

For more on saying yes in uncertainty, see this post by Sr. Julia and this podcast with Melody Gee.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emily Cortina is a mother raising three bilingual, bicultural children alongside her Mexican husband. She advocates for transformative and restorative justice through her work in prison ministry and parish outreach at Kolbe House Jail Ministry in Chicago, Illinois.