Kimberlee K.

I got my word for 2025 very early in 2024.

So early that I thought I was making it up, but decided to write it down just in case.

So early that I couldn’t help but write about it back in January in the hopes that if anyone had a word flashing at them they too might write it down.

I love getting aggressive confirmation of my word. Even when it’s scary or altogether not what I want.

But when it came to wonder, I was on board minute one.

Wonder? You mean the word that by definition means, “cause of astonishment???”

SIGN ME UP!!

I’d love to be astonished.

I’d love to feel, in an entirely new way, wonderFULL.

You wouldn’t believe the things I was picturing for my year. The big, the grand, the jaw dropping. I half expected to wake up at the end of 2025 completely disconnected from who I was at the end of 2024. That’s how MUCH I expected out of wonder.

So it would come as an absolute shock to 2024 me to find out that I took very small steps in 2025. That I lived a very quiet year. That the feeling I felt most in these last 365 days was small—but not in a derogatory way.

Smallness, I think, can be assumed to mean useless, unexciting, unimpressive, even boring or unnoticed.

When describing something small—something we don’t think will affect us, something that we barely want to give the time of day—we might wave our hands, as if flicking the thing away, making it trivial.

“It’s just a small _____, it’s not a big deal.”

I don’t think it’s anyone’s initial intention to live a small life, to be perceived as small, or to do things that feel small.

In fact, the only smallness I’ve ever chased was in clothes, because that was the only time it was celebrated. Otherwise, I’ve always seen the calls for grandiosity, the challenge to break through the limits of expectation. I thought it was my job to be BIG and loud, to be known and seen, and to live a life that would not go unnoticed.

And that’s where I thought wonder came into it all.

I thought that with a word like that, I would see that grandiosity enter my life, in any number of forms—in my career, in my relationships, in my finances, in my impact.

I kept thinking, I’m on the verge of something big, and felt like I was sitting beside a phone that I was promised would ring by December 31^st.

But then there were these moments during the year, these little pockets of time where I would feel so at peace, so full of love and joy and hope, so seen and understood that I would think wait, THIS—this is wonder!

And the more I focused on that, the more I zoomed out and then zoomed in, finding these small moments of pure magic that would have otherwise zipped by unnoticed, the more I realized how much wonder exists in every day.

Wonder thrives in the ordinary, in the small, and to find joy in the small things, I think, is to be rich in wonder. So I mined for it wherever I could, and my hands never came up empty.

I found wonder in my niece and nephew, whose smiles, laughs, hugs, and requests to “pick me up!” brought me such purpose that I sometimes had trouble remembering what I was doing before they got here. I found wonder in conversations, in the ways it can be deep and uplifting and casual and relaxing and funny. I found wonder in art, in the magic of human creativity and the ways we can express ourselves and connect with others. I found wonder in flowers (and learned peonies are my favorite!), in watching my houseplants grow little by little, and in going on long walks that made my neighborhood feel infinite.

What I thought would be a year of big became a celebration of the multitudes in the small.

I really learned how to marvel, how to seek and find delight, and I felt my meter for “wonder” calibrate to the natural rhythms of the day.

I got everything I hoped out of “wonder” in every place I wouldn’t have looked. And as the year came to a close, I couldn’t help but feel relief because I could be sure I was there! I was there for it. I looked and looked and I noticed. I savored and I was more present than I have perhaps ever been. Over and over again I found myself astonished—even when the world was scary and the news was dark and there were days when everything was confusing and hard.

Look at that, I’d think, finding something tiny, like a little flower blooming, or a pop of pink in the sunset, or my favorite banana bread mix on sale, or my nephew smiling when I said his name. Look at that little wonder.

Check out my previous words of the year: 

Give, Patience, Surrender, Shine, Faith, Start, Believe, Peace, Color