Word of the Year

Each December as one year comes to a close and another is just a glimmer of possibility, I try to encapsulate the outgoing year—and how I experienced it—in a single word. The year I regained my health by losing weight, went skydiving and took a pilgrimage to Italy with my mother, my word was Joy. The year my grandmother and my husband’s father died was Grief. The following year, which included memorial services, surgery and a new medication to control my chronic migraines, was Healing.

So as 2021 is just two weeks away, it is time for me to once again grasp for a word that describes the past year as a whole. Merriam Webster will tell you the word for 2020 is Pandemic. People’s Choice went with Unprecedented. Collins Dictionary chose Lockdown. And the Economic Times out of India simply called it 2020, which it says now means an “unending series of disastrous events.”

Personally, my year also included spending an extremely sick night in a Dominican Republic hospital, my mom moving out of state, the death of my friend Tara, adopting a second dog (whom I adore), and losing a friend and a family member to COVID-19. There are so many words that could summarize 2020 for me on a personal level. Pandemic. Death. Black Lives Matter. Derecho. Isolation. Challenge. Grief.

But also Balance, Release and Simplicity.

In the end, I think my experience of 2020 is best summarized by the word Breathe. It covers a virus that takes away its victim’s ability to breathe. It covers the death of a black man crying out, “I can’t breathe” as his life is taken by a police officer kneeling on his throat. It also covers the time we all took to slow down, retreat inward and breathe deeply into the isolation of social distancing. This time has been an incredible comma, a chance to slow down and breathe with what matters most to each of us.

I encourage you to spend some time with your outgoing year. What one word summarizes 2020 for you? What goodness will you take from this “unending series of disastrous events”? What will you carry forward, and what will you leave behind?

—Andi Lewis, Prairiewoods marketing coordinator