71 ~ Word of the Year for 2025

As they welcome 2025, Brenda and Catherine explore their practice of choosing a word of the year as a guide. They each share and digest their words of the year from 2024 and how their words integrated and grew them over the past 12 months. 

Through reflections on their past years and the themes of trust, softness, and commitment, Brenda and Catherine encourage listeners to embrace their desires and share their own words.

Episode Highlights:
• Benefits of exploring a word of the year
• Brenda's exploration of SOFTness and femininity
• Catherine's journey through CONSISTENTLY COMMITTED
• The difference between commitment and discipline
• Encouraging reflection on personal words for 2025

>>TAG US ON INSTAGRAM with your Word of the Year!  @desireasmedicinepodcast

>>Blogpost we mentioned to support you in choosing your word of the year, if needed: HERE

Thank you for listening in, we appreciate you and always love to hear from you.  Happy New Year!!

Chapters

• 0:08 Exploring Words of the Year
• 13:21 Exploring Words for 2025

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

Speaker 2: 0:16

I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life. Motherhood relationships and my business Desire has taken me on quite a ride and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher turned coach and guide of the feminine.

Speaker 1: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married. I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of tired and wired and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker and a forever student, even after decades of inner work.

Speaker 2: 1:00

We are humble beginners on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

Speaker 1: 1:12

On the Desires Medicine podcast. We talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire, piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire. Welcome back to another episode of the Desire as Medicine podcast. I am joined here today with the lovely Brenda. She's an amazing co-host. I can't even tell you how much I have loved doing this project with her. She's absolutely fantastic. We even had an episode in 2024 where some women just fangirl over her. And who would not fangirl? Because she's just amazing. I also want to share that hopefully we're dropping this episode on New Year's, which means, like, happy New Year everyone. And if we don't, don't kill me. I just really am obsessed about the arc of these episodes. You probably like I don't know if you're as invested as I'm invested, but I look at the beginning and the end and the middle and the meat and all these fabulous things. So much so that we decided to drop two episodes on the Christmas season as a gift to all of our listeners. So if you haven't had a chance to do that, to go look at the year-end reflection please, please, please go do that. We really poured so much love into that project. It actually felt really expansive to do that, to push up against our edges, like where we think what's right and what's wrong, and so now we're excited, We've made those choices and now the question is what's going on from today forward, as we look back at 2023 and 2023's word of the year 2024, word of the year 2025, word of the year let's just see if we can find some delicious arcs.

Speaker 1: 3:06

For me, 2023 was trust. After the pandemic, I tried to. I found myself so tired that I really wanted to have more ease or like more slowness in my life. But there was a part of me that was just like go, go, go, go, go, Don't put it down, Don't put it down, Don't put it down so afraid that my life would just collapse in some way, shape or form, or myself that I really had to be with trusting myself to a different degree, like a deeper level. And then, when 2024 rolled around for me, I felt like, okay, I trust myself a little better, but I still there's something missing and lacking for me. So I pushed up and was like consistently committed, that's it. Pushed up and was like consistently committed. That's it, and before I give any more juicy details, I'm going to ring on Brenda and see what's. Yeah, let's hear from you, babe, Come on in.

Speaker 2: 4:01

Happy new year, everybody. 2025. Wow, didn't that seem like a distant, crazy, futuristic moment? 2025? And here we are, so exciting.

Speaker 2: 4:14

I love this topic of word of the year. I started doing word of the year in about 2019. I had a big down in 2018. And before that I didn't really do resolutions. I don't like resolutions. I really live my life every day focusing on my desire and what I want, and so I let go of resolutions, but I didn't really have anything in the middle. And then, in 2019, I started with word of the year and I found it to be a really juicy exploration. I would choose a word and it would come in kind of like from the field of like what was going on in my life, and I would spend the year exploring that word. So, 2019, my word was expansion, because I had a big down in 2018.

Speaker 2: 5:01

2020, I have no idea what my word of the year was. I really can't find it and I don't remember because 2020 was kind of a crazy year for all of us. So forget that 2021 was home. I was exploring home. 2022 was abundance. 2023 was flourish, and I ended up creating a program my first motherhood program called flourish, which I didn't plan it that way, but it was so beautiful and so natural and so right, which led me into 2024, which was soft. So 2024 was me exploring what it means to be soft after all the expansion and the abundance, and building myself up after that really big down where I really just lost everything. I lost my home, I lost my money, I lost my identity. I was just like really starting from the bottom and building up, which is why I was exploring home in 2021 and abundance. I was like, wow, what does it mean to now have more in my life? And let go a little bit and explore what it means to be soft. And I'm going to quote one of our guests from last year, clara, who talked about strong back, soft front, and for me, that's a really big part of what soft means. Like strong back, having my spine, having my feminine spine, powerful, I'm in my desire, I'm committed, I'm showing up for myself every day, and yet there's this soft front. And yet there's this soft front, like there's this soft feminine letting my ego go, letting my protections go, and softening in to let in more love, softening to trusting myself more, more because I had fallen and failed so many times and lost everything that I did build up a level of trust with myself. Coming up from all of that and I can I was able to just be more soft and not have to worry about having it all together, because I was able to trust myself when it all fell apart and be more receptive. So that was my exploration of soft.

Speaker 2: 7:38

And one other piece I want to add in about soft, which is on a completely different subject, but it's really interesting. How it came together was at the end of 2023, I had my color palette done. Was at the end of 2023, I had my color palette done, and I am someone who always loved wearing jewel tones. I'm a New Yorker, so give me a good black outfit and I'm good to go. Well, my color palette came in as a soft summer, and what that means is silvers, lavenders, lavenders, pinks, white, no black, no jewel tones, and it really messed with my identity. So I bought my first soft pink hat at the end of 2023, knowing that I was going to be exploring that word and that feeling in 2024.

Speaker 2: 8:29

And so, 2024, not only was I exploring what it means to be a softer woman, but also my outsides were matching, because anything new that I bought was this new color palette, and it was a lot of fun. I look really good in grays and silvers because my hair is graying, so I'm like, wow, I don't look good in gold at all. So I bought new silver earrings and by the end of 2024, this was my big moment. I was shopping with my partner and this jacket found me. Jacket found me.

Speaker 2: 9:19

This jacket is capital S-O-F-T Soft, fuzzy, lavender. My God. I can't even tell you how soft this coat is. I tried it on and I put it back on the rack and then it called me back. It was like you don't know it yet, but you're buying me and there's something about putting that coat on and, yes, of course, I own it. Now that it completed this feeling of softness for me, and when I wear it I just feel so luxurious and so feminine and so like myself, which I think is the key. These words are bringing us closer home to ourself.

Speaker 1: 9:57

It's such a beautiful share, closer home to yourself. That's so soft, so generous. I can't say that I've been as loving with my words. I mean trust was a. I'm sure I've had words prior. I don't remember I'd actually have to look at my previous desk calendars. I probably have written them. I do that. I write it at the top of, I write my word at the top of every month so that I can remember and feel into what's coming Like. I don't have it in one sheet of paper, I kind of reuse it over and over again.

Speaker 1: 10:34

For me I had really been feeling like what is commitment? Because I was around, I was sort of sitting with discipline and commitment. Are they the same? Is it interchangeable? Where does it really land?

Speaker 1: 10:55

And I didn't want to take on discipline because I used to have a really loud inner drill sergeant and I wanted my drill sergeant to be less loud. And so it was like how do I commit to something without force? How do I commit to something and just continue to show up, continued to show up? And one of the things that I learned this year for sure that was really evident, is that every time I recommitted, the stronger my commitment became to something and the easier it became. And so I was really pleased that I chose the phrase consistently committed, even though it wasn't just one word. It had me feel into oh, I said I was going to do X, y or Z. I'm not doing X, y or Z. Why am I not doing X, y or Z? And I think years prior I would give it so much weight. Why don't I do this? Why don't I do that?

Speaker 1: 11:56

I think there's a lot of conversation around sabotage, self-sabotage. We don't give it to ourselves. It has that sort of hindsight location where you're sort of looking back to see why can't I do this thing in front of me, and consistently committed had me basically be able to shut the door behind me, and it doesn't matter what happened or why it didn't happen. It doesn't matter if yesterday, this morning or this afternoon I sabotaged, I can just do it now. If I remember right now, then I do it right now. I consistently commit in this moment, and the more that I committed, I realized, oh, commitment is sort of this ongoing thing. I consistently choose it. I'm consistently choosing to commit to the things that I said I'm going to do for myself. And I really loved that experience this year. It really made me warm and fuzzy inside and it really helped me choose my word for 2025. What about you this year?

Speaker 2: 13:02

Ooh, I love that. That's really beautiful, catherine, the recommitment to yourself and letting go of yesterday or even this morning or anything in the past, and what matters is right now, baby, right now, the present moment. And I want to say for our listeners, catherine holds the pole for us, dropping episodes every week. That is Catherine, and I am such a yes to that because her commitment and I've committed as well but she holds the pole for every week. I'm so grateful to that and you hold it so beautifully, with so much love. And I want to say that when we hold ourselves to a standard that we're exploring inside of ourselves, it really does affect the people around us. Like I know, my softness has affected my partner, my children, my family, no question, and your commitment. I have felt the beautiful effects of that as well. It inspires me so much and I love how the words kind of overlap a little bit, because I really hear you being softer with yourself and it's really comes back to that strong, back, soft front. When you're committed every day and you recommit with love, you can be softer because you're trusting yourself. And that brings us to this year 2025. Year 2025.

Speaker 2: 14:47

So my word of the year came in. It's really kind of a simple one, but I'm really excited to explore it. It's ease, ease. It just dropped in as true for me and I want to explore having my desires, having my aligned life, having my softness and my flourishing and my abundance and my expansion and my home all the years from the past easier. I've had a couple of experiences in the last few weeks where I put my attention on a desire and boom, it just manifested beautifully and it dropped in. Oh, I want it to always be that easy. Abraham Hicks say you can create castles as easy as you can create buttons. I want to. I want to dream big, I want to have more and I want to show up for myself and I'm going to take all the lessons from softness and all the lessons from before and bring it into this year to have all my desires with so much ease. So I'm really excited about that.

Speaker 1: 15:55

Amen, having all of my desires with ease. May that be an even better. I will now Dremrel, share that. Often, words of the year for me have been around what are my challenges or what am I prioritizing? And this year, this 2025, will be the year of skill. I have been updating I guess is the word or up-leveling updating, up-leveling my skills in 2024. And it's been tough because it's sort of in 2024. And it's been tough because it's sort of we often say on this podcast you have to sort of meet yourself where you are.

Speaker 1: 16:48

Brenda and I are close in age and, as tech really changes so rapidly in our outer world, it's really easy to say, oh, that's just too hard. Or oh, my goodness, this is so above my head. Or, oh, I just don't want to whatever. X, y or Z, as Brenda told me the other day, I say X, y, z, a, b, c, 1, 2, 3, a lot. But, all jokes aside, tech is something that's continuously evolving and I do feel a little behind in certain areas, or a lot behind in certain areas, and instead of looking at like, oh, I want to get better at this one thing, or better at that thing, better at this thing, I said, all right, what is it exactly about these skills that I really want to learn? And I was like, oh, it's actually that I want to get better at these skills. That's the actual word for me, and I can feel already that focusing my eye on the prize being skill sort of eliminates the judgment.

Speaker 1: 17:51

For me, it's less about if I'm really good at this or really bad at that. It's more of, oh, I'm just getting better at this skill. It doesn't matter where I am, I'm going to be better. I may not have mastery because my word isn't mastery for this year, because I'm not looking at just one thing. It's sort of skills across the board, skills over here, skills over there, skills, just like dancing skills. It's just one dancing umbrella. There's so many things that it's covering and Consistently Committed was so generous to me this year. I learned so much and I feel so expanded from it. I cannot wait to be doing 2026 with you and just looking over 2025. So good.

Speaker 2: 18:32

Well, so shall it be, and even better than you can imagine, like we like to say here on the Desires Medicine podcast. So we are really excited for this year. We have our words, we're going to explore them, we're going to build on last year, and we are curious what your word of the year will be, and we invite you to explore that in yourself. I have a couple of questions that I'm going to ask you. Maybe your word already dropped in, maybe you already know. Feel free to use our words if you want, and I'm going to give you some questions to really think about. If your word hasn't dropped in yet, what might your word be for 2025? These questions are not in any particular order, but just to get your juices flowing, here you go. What moves you to tears? What makes you feel loved? What is something you would like to get better at in 2025? What would you like more of in your life? What risks would you like to take? So those are just some contemplation questions to get your juices flowing for 2025.

Speaker 2: 19:58

We're also going to drop in the show notes a blog post that will give you some more food for thought, if you want it, and we would absolutely love to hear from you. We would love to know what is your word of the year. You can email us our emails in the show notes. You can tag us on Instagram desire as medicine podcast. We would love to hear your word of the year or your reflection of 2024. If you practiced a word of the year, we wish you a very happy new year, with all of your dreams and desires coming true and even better than you can even possibly imagine. Until next time. Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

Speaker 1: 20:55

Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.