Stop Resisting Ease: My 2025 Challenge

Every year I choose a WOTY, as many of you do, no doubt, and many of us here at Fit Is a Feminist Issue. I was having so much trouble choosing my word for this year, that I couldn’t even contribute to our group post. I kept saying to people, I want a word like ease. Something that captures the lightness and flow of ease. The way we can be more present when we are at ease. And I kept not wanting to choose the actual word. Ease. One friend sent me this fabulous Japanese expression, ichi-go ichi-e, which basically means for this time only or cherish this moment. It’s a version of Marcel Proust’s madeleine or the Heraclitus’ line about never stepping into the same river twice, with a dash of gratitude added, for the beauty of the river we are stepping into or the deliciousness of the madeleine we are eating. As beautiful as all these ideas are, ichi-go ichi-e felt heavier than what I was looking for. I try to make a practice of being grateful for as much as possible in my life. And that gratitude does not necessarily bring me ease. Gratitude demands attention and intention, especially in hard times. I was looking for a word that captured a feeling of less effort, if not full-on effortlessness (if that’s not a contradiction).

As I was effortfully trying to write this, pushing words and ideas around on the page, as if they were one of those sleds people push in CrossFit, I came across this quote from Norman Fischer, a Zen priest, poet and teacher: In the full intensity of the present moment there is never anything to fear—there is only something to deal with. It is a subtle point, but it is absolutely true: the fear I experience now is not really present moment based: I am afraid of what is going to happen. So, maybe ease is less about gratitude and maybe more about finding a way through fear. Not that that is simpler. Yet softening around all my myriad fears feels like it just might be a route to ease.  A few days later, while writing something else, I came up with this formula:

What I was wrestling with was the idea that if I can move into the future with trust and find the grace to dance with what the universe delivers, then I will be able to move through my boat load of fears. And there, on the other side of fear, is where I will find ease.  

As I headed out to meet a friend for a run on January 1^st, in a cold winter rain, which turned to snow just in time for our run and then switched back to rain as we took our last steps (thank you, universe, for that opening gift of 2025—an easy gratitude!), I realized that I was resisting the word ease, because it felt so impossible, or like I don’t deserve it. Here’s a sampler from that voice in my head: It’s coming up on 3 years since your marriage started falling apart and you still can’t find ease? What’s wrong with you? Why are you not over it already? If you can’t find ease by now, you never will. Also, that’s your fault. The inside of my head is not always the most cheerful place to be.

When I realized that my dis-ease with the word ease was about resistance (my fear!), and not my usual, there’s-a-more-perfect-word-to-describe-what-I-mean, I knew what my word of the year had to be. EASE. Sometimes my word is aspirational and other years it is a beacon. This year it is the former—an aspiration, which I will try to hold lightly, mindful of the paradox that if I aspire too hard, then I will surely not find ease. What will ease look like? Less time in my head, worrying about the future. More time just being (trust!). Making choices rooted more in pleasure and less in financial fear (grace!). Less fighting against what is, like taking my medication (grace!). More noticing the gifts on offer, like how well my medication works (trust!).

This year I will trust and dance with grace. Aspiring. Letting go. Moving through fears. That’s where I’ll find ease. If I do. Not that I’m attached to the outcome. Okay, maybe a little bit. Here goes.