Looking back on 2025: Word of the Year - Discernment

Every year, around the soft in-between days of December — usually somewhere near the 30th — I choose a word.

I don’t make a vision board. I don’t set grand resolutions. I listen.

I sit with a notebook, a cup of something warm, and the question: What quality do I want to walk beside me this year? Not what do I want to achieve — but how do I want to move through what comes.

For 2025, the word that rose, steady and unmistakable, was 'discernment'.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand why. I rarely do. The word always knows more than I do in December.

Discernment isn’t sharp or flashy. It doesn’t shout. It isn’t about judgement or superiority. It’s about truth — quiet, embodied truth. The ability to sense what is mine to carry and what is not. What is nourishing, and what simply looks good on the surface. What is aligned — and what is just familiar.

Looking back now, at the closing edges of 2025, I can see exactly why this was the word I needed.

Discernment as a Practice, Not a Personality

This year has asked me to slow down in places where I would once have pushed through.

In my body — learning, again and again, to listen rather than override. To honour injury as information, not inconvenience. To teach yoga not from a place of performance, but from lived, breathing honesty. To let ahimsa be something I practise with myself, not just talk about on a mat.

Discernment showed up as choosing how I move, not just that I move.

It also showed up in a harder lesson: accepting that I cannot fix people.

No amount of empathy, patience, explanation, or self-betrayal will heal someone who isn’t willing to look at themselves. Discernment taught me to stop confusing compassion with responsibility — and to recognise when my desire to help was quietly tipping into rescuing.

Alongside this came another quiet reckoning: that being safe matters more than being kind.

I have learned that kindness without safety is not virtue — it’s erosion. That I do not owe softness to those who make me feel small, unsettled, or unseen. Discernment has helped me choose steadiness over approval, and self-trust over people-pleasing.

Letting go of these old patterns has been both sobering and freeing.

Discernment in My Work

Running my businesses has always been deeply personal — an extension of my values rather than a separate “job”. This year, discernment helped me refine what I offer and why.

• Not everything that could be created needed to be.

• Not every idea needed to be rushed into form.

• Not every opportunity was a yes — even if it was flattering.

Discernment helped me ask better questions:

• Does this serve the nervous system — mine and others’?

• Does this honour the season of life I’m in?

• Does this feel rooted, or does it feel like grasping?

It shaped my retreats, my workshops, my women’s circles, my courses. It allowed me to prioritise depth over breadth, intimacy over expansion, integrity over urgency.

It reminded me that enough is not a failure of ambition — it is often a sign of wisdom.

Discernment in Relationships and Community

This has been a year of clearer eyes and firmer edges.

Of recognising where I was over-giving out of habit rather than love.

Of noticing when compassion had slipped into self-abandonment.

Of understanding that calling something “fine” doesn’t make it so.

Discernment has also brought the uncomfortable realisation that not everyone is who they say they are — or who we hoped they might be.

This hasn’t been about becoming suspicious or closed-hearted. It’s been about trusting patterns over promises. Actions over words. Consistency over charm.

And in the space created by letting some things fall away, something beautiful has grown.

New friendships.

Stronger support networks.

Connections rooted in mutual care rather than obligation.

This year has reminded me that safe, steady relationships exist — and that I am allowed to choose them. To be held as well as to hold. To lean without apologising. To belong without performing.

Discernment as Returning to Centre

Perhaps the greatest gift of this year has been a deepening sense of centre.

A remembering that I don’t need to be everything to everyone. That my work is not to fix, rescue, or prove. That rest is not a reward — it’s a rhythm.

Discernment has helped me choose what I let shape me.

The books I read.

The voices I listen to.

The pace I keep.

The stories I tell myself about what success looks like.

And quietly, almost without fanfare, it has helped me learn to love myself a little more deeply.

Not in grand declarations — but in small, daily acts of loyalty to myself. In choosing rest. In honouring my limits. In believing my own experience. In staying.

It has been a year of subtle but profound recalibration. November marked a full year off antidepressants, after seven years of relying on them to keep me afloat.

It hasn’t been an easy or linear journey. There have been crushing lows — days where the weight of everything felt almost unbearable — and I don’t want to pretend otherwise. And yet, in the wider landscape of the year, I have felt clearer, more present, and more myself than I have in a very long time.

My emotions feel sharper, yes, but also truer. I trust them more. Discernment has helped me listen without panic, to respond rather than suppress, and to meet my mental health with honesty instead of fear. Paradoxically, in allowing myself to feel more, I have also found more steadiness.

In many ways, despite the depth of the lows, I have never felt better.

Carrying It Forward

I don’t yet know what my word for 2026 will be. That will come, as it always does, in the hush of late December. But I have a feeling it is going to be something fierce.

And I do know this: discernment will remain a companion.

Because once you learn to listen — really listen — to your body, your energy, your truth… You don’t forget how.

2025 hasn’t been about becoming someone new.

It’s been about seeing more clearly who — and what — I already am.

And choosing, again and again, to live from that place.

If you'd like to - you can join me on Tuesday 30th December for a special reflective gathering to gently honour your journey and set intentions for the coming year. Find out more and book here.