my year of devotion

and my three experiments for January

Each year, I choose a word of the year. This year, my word is devotion. Devotion is about discernment. It means clarifying what I want to devote my time, energy, presence, money, etc to (and what I do not), and acting accordingly. It asks of me to show up in devotion to each person or experience that is in front of me. It serves as a reminder to ask myself throughout the day: How can I show up in deep devotion to this moment? - whether that be a client in front of me, my child, or doing the dishes. And it is about evoking the feeling of devotion more often in my life by pausing to light a candle and burn some incense, or placing my hand on the ground and speaking words of gratitude.

And so, as we spiral into a year that feels both brutal and beautiful, I’m calling in devotion for 2025.

Do you choose a word of the year? If so I’d love to know what it is! I’d be oh so delighted if you’d share it with me in the comments.

Today, on the first day of this new Gregorian calendar year, I was chatting with a friend on the beach after cold plunging in the ocean. She shared that one way she likes to approach the turn of the new year is to create twelve different, smaller resolutions throughout the year, one for each month. I love this idea of monthly experiments as a way of deepening into my broader theme of devotion.

Each month this year I hope to pick one (or a handful) of ways I want to show up with greater devotion in my life. Beyond that, I’m not making too many rules for myself. Some months I will pick one thing. Other months I might pick more than one. Some months I might repeat past experiments. I’ll follow the river of devotion wherever it takes me.

Of course, there are always things I am devoted to. I am deeply devoted to my daughter, each and every day. And I am in a constant dance with devotion to my husband and our family. I am in devotion to keeping our house clean, and paying the bills, and earning money, and cooking food that fuels our family. So all of these wheels will continue to be turning. And throughout the year I will likely highlight some of them.

My focus for each month, however, will simply be whatever area(s) of my life I am feeling called to tend to a little more when it comes to this over-arching theme of devotion.

And so, here are the ways I want to show up with greater devotion in January.

1. Cultivating daily practices of ritual.

This is about creating the feeling of devotion in my life that I mentioned above. To me, devotion feels like presence, peace, and sacred reverence. I know when I can evoke that feeling, it helps me to be more intentional about other choices I make throughout the day. So I’ve chosen a few daily rituals to begin to implement to help me establish a commitment to this devotion experiment.

I want to create beauty and reverence first thing in the morning by lighting a candle, making a cup of something yummy, and turning on some music - even if it all happens imperfectly. I’ve been trying (trying being the key word here) to get up at 5:30am so I have some quiet time to myself before my little one wakes up. This has happened only occasionally at best, and if it doesn’t occur perfectly, I often jump right into rushing to get the day started. I want to pause and mark the start of a new day regardless of when or how it begins. If it’s at 5:30am and a luxurious hour and a half - great! If it’s waking up to getting punched in the eye by my flailing 7 month old - beautiful! I want to make room for the sacred everywhere.

I also want to light a candle at dinner time again, and slow down the process of dining and eating. My husband and I have been sharing gratitudes at the dinner table recently, but I want to deepen this practice and maybe add some further layers to it. I want to speak words of gratitude for our food, and perhaps bring a question to the table to chat about each night.

And finally, I want to practice marking transitions throughout the day. Instead of simply rushing from one thing to the next, I’d like to practice bringing a small ritual to transition moments. For example, this might look like lighting a candle when I sit down for a meeting, or taking a moment to pause and take three breaths before I put the car in drive. Often I feel too busy to do something as simple as making a cup of tea before moving onto the next thing. That’s simply not true. And I want to stop denying myself of these small pleasures.

2. Showing up regularly for my writing.

My second devotional practice for this month is to show up for my writing. I’ve re-started a solid little rhythm for my writing after being away from it for the past six months. I’ve been showing up here consistently again, carving out some time most days to write. And it has felt so nourishing. I’d like to keep that up, with less focus on outcome and more simply on showing up and getting words on the page and sharing them, whenever and however I am called to.

3. Not buying anything new.

Devotion to living with less consumption, and living in greater alignment with my values, is important to me. I recently watched the documentary Buy Now on Netflix, and I highly recommend it. It was a good kick in the pants to start being more discerning about what I buy new.

For the month of January, I’m not going to make any purchases of new items (unless something in the house breaks that we absolutely need replaced in order for our household to function). I will still buy food and regularly consumed household goods. And I can buy used. Experiences are okay, but no new material goods. I plan to keep a list every time I feel the desire or urge to buy something, and assess that list at the beginning of February. If there is anything I still really want or need, I can buy it then.

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I’m already bubbling over with ideas for future months but realistically I know I can only focus on so many things at once. And, I remind myself, it’s not as if those other things I want to pour some extra energy into aren’t being tended to at all. They are! I’ve started couples therapy with my husband, I’ve made a commitment to hike every week with a group of mama friends… but those balls are already rolling so they don’t need my added attention and experimentation this month. I’ll return to them when they need some new life breathed into them.

For now, these are the parts of my life I want to sprinkle some devotion into in January. And sharing them with you here makes me feel both more committed and more excited to actually show up for this experiment and then report back a month from now.

What small shifts, changes, habits, or experiments would you like to engage in for the month of January?