What's happening: I'm 3 weeks post-surgery, navigating life on a walker, and I've chosen "adventure" as my word for 2025—not despite the hardship, but because of it.
What you'll find here: The story of how a traumatic December led me to reframe my entire year, why I'm giving myself permission to not "start fresh" until I'm actually ready, and what adventure really means when you can barely walk.
The real talk: Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is call your pain an adventure and see what happens next.
Hey {{first_name}},
Every year I pick a word of the year, but before I share it, I need to tell you how I got here.
Last December, I thought I was gearing up for the "final hardship" of 2025. After everything—the brain tumor, the layoff, the grief —I kept telling myself: okay, just one more thing. One more mountain to climb, and then maybe I could catch my breath.
Then, just two weeks before my hip surgery, something truly traumatic happened.
I'm not ready to share the details here, and I'm not sure if I ever will. But it broke me. Shattered me in ways I didn't think were possible after everything else I'd already survived last year.
I felt so defeated. Why did this thing have to sneak in right when I thought I was almost through? Why did I have to experience so much "bad" in one year? I was drowning in the victim mindset—and truthfully, I had fallen victim to something awful. The pain was real. The trauma was real.
But in that darkness, a word came to mind: adventure.
Not as a way to downplay everything I'd been through (porque let's be clear, nada de esto has been a fun little journey). Rather, it came as a lifeline—a way to view life as a series of short adventures. Regardless of how they feel, they're not permanent. They pass. They're here for me to grow in resilience and strength, to learn more about myself, about this world, and about the path I want to carve.
This Isn't My First Word
I've been doing this practice for about four years now—choosing a word or short phrase to guide my year instead of making resolutions or vision boards. Last year, my word was "resilience," which (looking back) feels like the universe was preparing me for 2025.
But this year? This year needed something different.
I'm at week three of recovery now, and let me tell you—those first few days on the walker were rough! The pain was at its worst, every movement required calculated effort, and my independence-loving eldest daughter self was struggling hard with needing so much help.
But more importantly, thinking of recovery as an adventure kept me going. It reminded me that this isn't permanent.
What Adventure Looks Like on a Walker
You want to know what adventure means when you can barely walk? Let me paint you a picture.
It means taking a shower now requires twice the time it used to—carefully navigating with one leg, planning each movement, celebrating when you decrease how long it takes you to go up and down the stairs on crutches.
It means your mom moved in to help, sleeping away from your partner (on the couch), and your house is not organized the way you (the neat freak) likes it. There are things in the wrong places. The kitchen isn't "my" kitchen right now. And I have to keep reminding myself: the house can wait. Eventually I'll be able to reorganize everything back where it belongs. This is temporary. This is an adventure in letting go.
It means learning the difference between pain that's "normal" (your body healing from being literally broken and reconstructed) and pain that signals something's wrong. It means actually listening when your body whispers instead of waiting for it to scream.
It means watching my progress take its own sweet time. I'll need this walker for at least six weeks, quizás más. And instead of treating recovery like something to achieve or accomplish, I'm trying to create actual space to rest and heal.
My family keeps telling me "échale ganas" and I love them for it. But I'm also learning that sometimes échale ganas means giving yourself permission to go slow. To rest. To heal at your body's pace, not your mind's expectations.
Starting My Year in March
With all of this happening to me (and the many awful things that continue to happen in our world), I feel very strongly that you don't actually have to start fresh on January 1st.
I'm giving myself permission to truly start my year in February or March or whenever my body tells me I'm ready. Right now, my adventure is simply surviving recovery (maybe even continuing to survive this chaotic world). Meeting each moment where it is. Not forcing productivity or transformation or "new year, new me" energy when what I actually need is rest.
The start of a new year doesn't always mean go, go, go. Sometimes it means honoring where you are and trusting that your time to leap will come.
My word has been this quiet companion, this private reframe that helps me navigate moments when the victim mindset creeps back in.
Because here's what I keep coming back to: even when life deals you experiences you never chose, you still get to choose how you hold them. I can't control what happened in December. I can't fast-forward through recovery. I can't make my house magically organize itself or my hip heal faster.
But I can choose to call this an adventure. To get curious about what this season is teaching me. To rediscover parts of myself—some new, some forgotten—in the slowness and the stillness and the enforced rest.
Some adventures involve climbing mountains. Some involve learning to walk again. Both require courage. Both deserve to be honored.
I'd love to know: have you chosen a word or intention for this year? Or if setting intentions feels overwhelming right now, what would it look like to just... let yourself be exactly where you are?
And here's the deeper question: what would change if you viewed your current challenge—whatever it is—as an adventure rather than an obstacle?
You don't need answers. I barely have them myself. But maybe we can explore this together.
¿Qué dijo? / What did she say?
porque - because
nada de esto - none of this
quizás más - maybe more
échale ganas - give it your all