RECLAIM: 2025 WOTY
How will you shape your year?
2024 was a doozy for me. Not only did my dad slide into a free-fall health crises that culminated in a diagnosis of Lewy Body Dementia and his death in September; but my brother, our families and friends were consumed with getting my mom into a place that would be safe and manageable before the year ended, which meant dealing with 30-50 years of theirs, my brother Lake’s and my grandma (who died in 2006) stuff in order to get the family home ready to sell.
Adding to this stress and heart break was watching an election result where, if you know me, was totally devastating, This, as well as the never-ending drumbeats of war outside our border made 2024 reach an even higher level of suckitude than usual.
Every year I pick a word (WOTY) to help guide me or provide a theme on how I want to live, basically a talisman of what sort of outlook that I wish to convey. After Trump won in 2016, I along with millions, spun out. I dropped what I was doing and marched, wrote letters, made calls, and OBSESSIVELY followed the news as if I needed to know what was going on every moment of his administration to emphasize the violations, the horrors, and the destruction of norms. I sacrificed my time, creativity, and sanity, which in the end, doesn’t feel like it helped. Yes, it was great to make new friends as we formed the “resistance,” and I learned a few new tactics to help preserve our way of life. But it feels like nothing we did worked: not the marches, letters, postcards to voters, calls to Congress, or canvassing, because we are not only back where we were in 2016 (despite the respite with Biden), with Trump as President, but somehow we’ve landed in a worse place. In 2016 we were outraged about his rhetoric, his racism, and his callous behavior. By 2024 he’d been convicted of 34 felonies, ripped children from their parents at the border, banned an entire religious group from our country, turned the presidency into a cash grab, snuck home top-secret documents, been impeached twice, AND encouraged his supporters to storm the Capitol, yet he was elected by a higher margin of voters than in 2016.
So, when searching for a word that would shape my year, it wasn’t too hard. RECLAIM. That’s what I’m doing this year. I’m reclaiming my sanity, my time, my voice, my writing and in some cases, my money from the shit show that is the Trump presidency. Since the election I’ve delated X (always known to me as Twitter), quit watching any coverage of him, barely read any news about his antics and get a general run-down of politics every morning from Heather Cox Richardson. It’s been calming to not obsessively follow what’s happening. Just think of the gallons of ink that were spilled writing about Matt Gaetz’ nomination for Attorney General, only for him to pull out after a couple of weeks. In that case, hours of my life were spared a cortisol spike as my emotions were not jerked around through the outrage and dismay cycle. I think a misnomer that I grew up believing, is that the more you watch the news, the more informed you are, as if that’s a badge we’re trying to earn on the cosmic scout sash. But I find that I’m not more informed watching the news as much as I am reading books on any subject, which usually provide better context.
I don’t think reclaiming my time is giving in or being selfish. It feels more like establishing boundaries, which is vital to our well-being. In fact, I seriously question whether the tools that we were given to fight autocracy actually work and I am becoming more convinced that there are deeper ways to stand up to Trump’s latest onslaught. I told my family this winter that I want to volunteer for an organization close to my heart, where I can be part of a community and help contribute towards a mutual aid society for people most vulnerable to the whims and chaos of Trump and his minions. I’m also going to channel more of my concern through my writing, here on Substack as well as towards a few novels that I’m writing. Over the past dozen years, I’ve witnessed serious limits of social media on protecting our rights or effecting action, long gone are the days of the Arab Spring, where we saw regular citizens gain a global megaphone for the first time and so I’m pulling away from Meta platforms.
Reclaim has resonated enough with me and several friends who want to use the word—feel free—I don’t own the dictionary, that it feels empowering and helps remind me of my values and priorities. And so, while I feel trepidation, unease and a bit of fear as we enter the next chapter of the American experiment, I know where I want to stand and most important, that I my stance will be on my terms, so far as I can dictate them.