Hi Reader!

I fully intended for the last newsletter to be the last newsletter for 2024, but then I woke up this morning with a wild hair, which we all knew was a real possibility.

Word for the Year - 2025

In the pre-pandemic years, I usually established a word of the year. Often the word would creep into my spirit in late November and I'd have a chance to marinate in it before the mystique of New Year's Day. Well, that hasn't happened in while. And last week, I noticed that a few things haven't happened in a while.

Last week I cried - for the first time in what feels like a really long time. I mean - like sitting on the edge of my friend's chair WAILING. In the moments when the rush of emotion took over, I realized I have been disassociated from my feelings. I thought I was just "doing okay." I wasn't okay. I've been observing and internalizing the world. And so much of the world has felt heavy and sad and lonely and disconnected and angry. And I really don't want to feel any of that.

AND I have great tools at my disposal - bubbles, labyrinths, family, friends, walks in the park, great food, y'all. . . . (yes, you are part of my feel good toolkit). . . And I STILL managed to bottle up some critical emotions. I'm glad they came pouring out in a series of safe spaces and that I didn't do any irreparable harm to anyone or myself while they were inside.

ANYWAY - underneath that first peeled back layer of feelings I found the word for 2025 - Kintsugi.

Here's the Wiki definition:

Kintsugi (Japanese: 金継ぎ, lit.'golden joinery'), also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, "golden repair"),[1] is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The method is similar to the maki-e technique.[2][3][4] As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.[5]

And here's an example that I created using Canva's AI Dream Lab.

I was first introduced to this concept about 15 years ago and although it really resonated, I could never remember the term. I couldn't remember it this year either, but I knew that's what 2025 needed to look like, so I looked it up. (Super grateful for vague searching on Google).

I've often referred to 2020 as the year the world cracked open and since then, I think we've all just been navigating the broken pieces. We've perhaps even forgotten what it looks like when it's whole.

Let's gather up our broken pieces. Let's repair ourselves and our communities and our county and our world. And let's make them beautiful in the process.

The Quiet Rebel's public facing theme for 2025 will be Stories that Shape Us. Over the course of the year, we will take a dive (sometimes deep, sometimes shallow) into stories from film, stage, literature, religion, current events and history that shape our view of ourselves and the world.

The first offering in this collection is a 4 week conversation series called Wicked-Ish Wednesdays which I will co-facilitate with my friend Megan Ratcliffe. We'll gather via Zoom for 75 minutes on Wednesdays in January, beginning next week on January 8th. Registration for the series and more information is available here.