Becoming: A Word, A Season, A Promise to Myself

For last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice.

~T.S. Eliot

Each December, I choose a word to guide the year ahead. Not a resolution, not a task list, not another impossible standard—just a word that steadies me, stretches me, and reminds me of who I want to be on the inside as I move through my days on the outside.

Some years the word arrives softly.
Other years it lands like a truth I can’t ignore.

This year, it arrived with both weight and clarity.

BECOMING.

It’s a word that holds movement and mystery.
A word that acknowledges both where I am and where I’m going.
A word that gently confronts me with the reality that, for all the support and encouragement I offer to other women, there are still places where I have held myself back.

Not because I don’t know better.
But because I didn’t always believe better.

There have been moments when I stayed quiet instead of stepping forward.
Times when I waited for permission I never needed.
Days when I stood just outside of my own life, watching instead of participating.
And seasons when I let old stories—outdated, threadbare, and ready to be released—keep me from letting myself be fully seen.

Becoming changes that.

It asks me to stop hiding behind experience, elegance, and expertise and instead show up as the woman I am now—more real, more honest, more tender, more visible.

It invites me to trust the process of unfolding, not perfecting.

It gives me permission to evolve out loud.

And it acknowledges what is deeply true for so many of us:

We are always becoming.

Becoming wiser.
Becoming softer.
Becoming braver.
Becoming more ourselves.
Becoming the women we needed when we were younger.
Becoming the women we’ve been walking toward our whole lives.

This isn’t about reinvention.
It’s about revelation.

A shedding of what no longer fits.
A claiming of what finally does.
A willingness to take up the space that was always ours.

As I move into 2026—into a year of gentleness, intuition, connection, and visibility—I can feel something shifting. Something opening.

This is the year I stop waiting.
The year I stop diluting myself.
The year I stop apologizing for wanting more.

This is my year of Becoming.

And if your heart whispered “me too” as you read this, then perhaps it’s your year as well.

If so, come with me. Let’s become together.

One truth at a time.
One choice at a time.
One brave, beautiful step at a time.

Copyright: Helene Oseen 2026