My Word of the Year for 2025
Over a decade ago I decided new years resolutions were no longer how I wanted to begin my year, I wanted to do something different to support me for the year ahead. Having a guiding word for the year ahead became my way of intentionally starting to shape my life and my career.
Having a word of the year has become part of the rhythm of my life and something I hold close to my heart. I’m thankful for the past me who decided to start doing something not many others were doing at the time. When asked about my new years resolutions I’d say I didn’t have any and instead I was choosing a word. Over time holding a word has become more mainstream and I’m so glad it has, it’s a softer way of approaching the year and something you can accomplish without having to tick specific goals off a list.
A word of the year has shaped how I feel each year, how I have journeyed through life and through work. I will always have a word of the year and don’t ever see myself stopping, it’s such an aligned way for me to think about the year ahead. It’s part of me and how I choose to intentionally be and become.
How I started to hold a word of the year
As someone who has always had a camera in my hands, from a film camera and later a digital camera, I see the world through my lens but also the words which sit alongside it. Being a creative and crafty soul who wanted to find an outlet for these interests and share what I was doing. I started a personal blog in Autumn of 2011, which now sits on my personal website lucyellenhill.com.
Whilst working in media I was specialising in recruiting people with creative passions and blogs came up as a standard question we would ask in the craft portfolio interviews. It’s where skills were being shared, where trends started and where we would discover people who had a passion for a certain craft to feature in the magazine. As I interviewed hundreds of creatives for job roles on magazines I started reading the blogs mentioned and decided to start my own journey quietly with a blog and my instagram page.
I had a passion and love for reading other blogs and discovering what other women were making and doing. Blogger was the platform I used to discover other bloggers, it was a warm, supportive and connected community of creative people, sharing words, thoughts, how tos and images of what they were doing and making. It was there I reconnected to my love of crafting and discovered more about crafts I had seen in magazines that I wanted to try.
During 2012 and through the blog links each blog would show on their sidebar of other bloggers they followed (a little like Substack is today), I discovered Ali Edwards and her online class called One Little Word. The class involved choosing a word, journaling prompts, photography prompts and crafty approaches to scrapbooking. In January 2013 I signed up for my first One Little Word class and spent a year holding my first word of the year, connecting with the word each month using creative prompts. Since then I’ve held a word every year and I love the journey I’ve been on with the words.
My One Little Word, and therefore my words of the year have been:
Grow (2013), Embrace (2014), Simplify (2015), Awaken (2016), Thrive (2017), Nurture (2018), Bloom (2019), Light (2020), Flow (2021), Nourish (2022), Root (2023), and Evolve (2024).
Some of my words have just lived privately in my scrapbooking albums, some have lived in my journal, and some of them have been shared at various points on my personal blog. Most recently since 2021 my words have had their own home in a dedicated Leuchtturm1917 softcover B5 plain journal where my words were held, and journalled about as I didn’t have the time or headspace to get crafty, despite a huge papercrafting and stamping stash in my attic room.
My word of the year for 2025 - Enrich
Fast forward to now and I’m starting my 13th year of having a word to help guide me each month. What was something the online creative community were tapping into moved more into the mainstream over the recent years, which I’m so happy to see as the benefits of having a word, rather than resolutions, is a much more positive way of approaching our hopes, intentions, goals and dreams for the year ahead.
My word of the year for 2025 is ‘Enrich’.
As usual my new word landed in early November last year following some reflection about how I wanted to feel next year in my personal life and in my career. Sometimes I feel that the words which might serve me the best are those which come from deeper reflection and ongoing reflections at that time of the year.
I moved through the autumnal months allowing the goodness of the year to be harvested, allowing space to let go of things, and creating the compost from the growth and experiences during the year. Then the clarity arrives when the bare branches of trees and plants retreating create space during November and December, allowing me to see the structures beneath, the spaces and the view points to look into the distance ahead.
Holding a shortlist of words of the year
My shortlist of words for this year were Create and Enrich. I usually hold a few words together to see what feels best, sometimes I have a shortlist and other years a quick decision on one word which feels right can happen. I go with the flow, trusting myself I’ll work out a word which sits well and supports my intentions, hopes and plans for the year ahead.
The word ‘Create’ felt quite an obvious word for me for the year. Since October last year I felt a shift in my parenting journey when my daughter turned 6 and I felt I had more opportunity and headspace to do a few things I wanted to add back into my life. I knew I wanted to reinvigorate my crafty life I held pre-motherhood. I had a longing and sometimes a quiet but deep frustration for not having space and time for this part of me which I’ve held for many years. I can be my best self when I’m given the opportunity to create, make, express myself and the things I want to do through hand made creations, documenting and my photography.
After a year of exploring my creativity on a garden design course it awakened the many parts of me which had been on pause, I had realised what I had been missing in my life and a hidden and untapped skill and passion I had sidelined. My words from previous years, Evolve and Root, had helped me guide a route through and allowed me the opportunities to work it out and own the identity I wanted to bring back into my life.
There was a part of me in my late 20s and early 30s who adored interior styling, gardening, colour and texture, making things unique to me, and traditional crafts like crochet, sewing and quilting. ‘Create’ felt like a word which could sit well with the aspirations I had for the year both in my life passions and my work and connect me back to this part of life which brought me so much joy.
However there was something I felt was missing with the word ‘Create’ for me. I knew I could have held the word, and it would have served me well and have helped me shape my year but when I said it out loud I didn’t get the feeling in my body that said, yes this is the word I most want.
When I hold a word for the year I choose to really embody a word and ‘Create’ needed something else with it to be a word that I could feel. ‘Create’ felt a word in my head and in my hands but not felt in my body. It felt light, perhaps not stretchy or challenging enough for me, it felt like it could be a fleeting and one off experience, or even a surface level of a shift.
I made space to really think and to see if I could discover and seek out something different which would still hold the essence of what ‘Create’ could bring. As in most years I wanted more layers of understanding with the word I chose, I like my words to unfurl in a year and unfold different ways of thinking. I wrote in my journal about what I was wanting to happen in the year and the word ‘enrichment’ landed.
I shortened the word to ‘Enrich’ and over the course of a few weeks it came up out of the blue again and again. It landed when I was reflecting on my business for this year and what I wanted it to do in my life and the lives of my clients. I hadn’t noticed it until I read through my notes and kept spotting it. It was then I knew ‘Enrich’ would become the word I would choose for the year ahead to help be my guide.
Working out if the word was right for me
I did query the word ‘Enrich’ at first. I like to look up the definitions of a word before settling on it. Enrich felt like a word which would be adding something. But did I really need more things in an already full life? I thought about how I enriched the soil in our garden to help things grow better, this is what I felt it meant to me, in a sense it would be about energy, sustenance and nourishment in my life. Looking more at the word ‘Enrich’ meant ‘adding quality ingredients’ and this felt good. Perhaps it wasn't about more, it was about the quality and the intention behind the enrichment.
When I started to think about enriching the activities already in my life, the word started to feel good, as I was looking to reconnect with parts of my creative life. I love the way Enrich started to feel like it was a great way to think about intentional living, which is something I’m continuing to cultivate in my life as the seasons of life shift. It also felt that ‘Create’ could sit within the word Enrich and be part of it, but there would be more to the word too.
When I looked back at the words I’ve had over the most recent years, ‘Root’ and ‘Evolve’ sat well with Enrich. It felt like they belonged together as a trio and would support a gentle shift of energy and purpose.
Whilst working out my word for the year I thought about how I had ‘rooted’ into my core self and worked out what I wanted to be and do in my life as a mum with a child at school. When thinking about ‘Evolve’ I had made it happen, I was beginning the evolution of a new career and identity for myself and through the evolving I rediscovered a part of me which I needed in this new phase and season of life.
I knew deep down the creative soul who I had purposefully sidelined to move forwards in my career in a busy job role, and then at the start of motherhood, wanted to return. I was needing a shift and wanted the creative parts of me to play a fuller role in my life and I wanted it to be part of my work too, rather than not having space for it and for it being pushed to the sidelines. The creative, soulful part of me needed enriching to support my evolution, and ‘Enrich’ would be the word to take it forwards and start to shape a new chapter.
How I plan to connect with my word this year
As I have always done I’ll be following along with Ali Edwards and her One Little Word class this year, but hope to do this holding a more enriched approach and will be looking at how enriching the prompts are for me. I want to do the prompts I tend to just read and watch and this time actually do, to help me fully sink into the process for me. I know I am determined to make it happen and will have space this year to enrich this project.
I’m interested in how I can enrich the experience with my guiding words of the year from the past 12 years, in a way which will help ‘Enrich’ come to life with the experiences and learnings I already have gathered and grown over the years.
I plan to connect with my word in my working week as I go about my business and how I can enrich what I do. I’ll connect as I usually do at the seasonal shifts at the equinoxes and the solstices throughout the year with my word, making notes of how it feels and where my word is showing up and what I’m feeling about it.
I hope to enrich the process of working with my word this year. I intend to continue to use the journal I have dedicated to my words but I want to return to, and lean into, being creative with the prompts and making an album for my word this year. I know beyond the journal being creative, crafty with supplies and making space to celebrate my word each month, helps ground the process even more than just journaling my thoughts. It becomes an artistic way and hands on way to explore my word. It will help me print out more photos and include visuals in my journal and not just words.
How it feels to have a new word of the year
Right now I’m feeling excited and reinvigorated to be journeying with a new word. I struggle to let go of my previous words as each have shaped me during the time I spent with it. They stay with me and always do. It’s why many of my business offerings hold a variety of the words I’ve held over the years, as I appreciate and know the powerful effect they have had.
‘Evolve’ last year was pivotal for me in working through this next shift in life and deciding what it meant, what I wanted to let go of, and what I wanted to invite into my life. We evolve in each season of our lives and I know I can lean into the wisdom I gathered during the year with that word.
A new word creates a new lens on how I want to shape my life. I have a new set of perspectives, ways of being to try out and know how fulfilling it is to hold a word and trust that something will shift in the year when I connect regularly.
This year I have even more of a fizzy excited feel about my word, perhaps it's because it's a year I have under my own terms to shape, being self-employed, not studying and retraining, and moving into a new era of my career I have been longing to shape for many years.
My word feels like there is a quickening about to happen with Enrich, perhaps it's in my senses and in my gut. The words ‘Root’ and ‘Evolve’ which I’ve most recently held over the past few years have felt like words ‘below the surface’, they feel like winter words and perhaps hold an intentional slowness and depth about them. Enrich feels like I’m on the cusp of autumn and spring, mulching of the soil and creating the spaces ready to absorb the nutrients to help me with that shift of growing something.
During the year I sometimes share how my word is going, but know it is a very personal experience for me and will only share if I feel called to. Most of my thoughts end up in my journal just for me and I know that’s how I like this process to work. The world doesn't need to know these parts about me.
I’d love to hear if you have chosen a word to journey with this year. I hope this blog post about my experience with holding a word of the year is enriching for you. It’s why I’ve written it. I know for me it’s helped me connect with my word at this point in the year.
Onwards with Enrich. I wonder what my word will bring me this year.
I work with people as a personal development and life coach and also as a garden designer. A mixture of work in my business Frondescence, each offering is created to help people unfurl the potential of the spaces in their lives, to support them to nourish their wellness and find ways to elevate their everyday. Inspired by the seasons, connecting with nature and the wisdom of metaphors seen in nature I want to positively support people to move forwards in life and hold gratitude for their life now. To work with me you can visit the other pages of my website here and click on my Contact page to get in touch.