Wendy Smith

Most New Years Eve I choose a word for the next year. On one level it is a bit of fun and on another it is a powerful way to set an intention and stay aligned to a value or goal in the year ahead. In this context the word becomes a touchstone and a little bit magic. 

At some stage in 2024, I had picked up a ‘so ugly it is beautiful’ rock with the word Grow carved on it in an op shop. It sat on one of my bookshelves and I ended up choosing the word ‘Grow’ as my 2025 word. 

I didn’t do anything much with the word Grow during the year other than have it as an intention in my heart and mind and out in the universe. I would notice the rock from time to time.

Looking back, I did grow. It seems I actually had a growth spurt. One Saturday towards the end of the year, I was going to the movies with my friend Ros. We have been friends for about seven years and see each other at least weekly. As were walking to the cinema Ros said, ‘I didn’t realise how tall you are’. I told her that I was 5’7” so maybe a bit taller than average. ‘No, she said Kate (her daughter) is 5’7” so I know exactly how tall that is. You are at least 5’9”’. I know I’m not, so I didn’t argue. The next day I was having lunch with a group of women that I had been in a weekly online course with for a couple of years. We had met in real life once before. This time there was a woman there who hadn’t been able to make the previous face to face catch up but was always at the online sessions. She came up to me and exclaimed at how tall I was. That’s pretty common when we meet people that we have only met on zoom. But she persisted as if this was one of the most surprising things that had ever happened to her. She asked me if I was wearing heels. One look at my feet would tell her that I wasn’t. I thought this was a strange coincidence after my conversation with Ros the day before. 

The following day was Monday. For the last 18 months or so I have been part of a weekly walking group. One of the regular members was suffering from vertigo and asked if she could hold onto my arm. Of course I said. She took my arm and then stopped and looked at me and said ‘Wow you are so tall and strong I have never noticed before today.’ The next day I was thinking about people telling me how tall I was three days in a row. I had lost 22kgs in the last 2 years and I wondered if people were noticing my height rather than my width. 

My son was coming over on the Friday and I knew, that if I had had a growth spurt, he would definitely notice as we are extremely close. He is one of my soul mates. Also, he is very tall at just over 6 foot 4 and weighs over 100kg. He has always made much of me being his ’little mama’ and a visit doesn’t go by without him picking me up to prove how little I am and how strong he is. When we were walking up Lygon Street to go for dinner he suddenly remarked about how tall and straight I was standing. I filled him in on the three days of declarations about my height. 

I said to him that now that I have been weaned off a shitload of psych medications, not so stricken by grief and I have made other positive changes in my life I am not so weighed down and feel like I have come back to life. Maybe, I mused, people notice a different aura or energy around me that they label ‘tall and strong’. He said that when I told him in June that I wasn’t taking any medication at all, as my son and as a psychiatric nurse he had been worried about me relapsing. But mama, he said, this is the opposite of relapse! I don’t even know what to call it. He was so pleased and happy for me I wondered if he would forget where he was and pick me up and hold me aloft in triumph. ‘The opposite of relapse.’ I’ll take that!  

I would say that most of the considerable growth I experienced in 2025 was not about adding things or getting better at life but rather it has been through letting things go and coming to terms with loss. Also telling redemptive stories rather than sad girl stories centring myself as the victim. The sort of shedding that happens during the Year of the Snake. 

This year, I woke up on New Years morning and unbidden, the word Beloved presented itself to my mind as the word for 2026. I intend to make a more conscious effort to embody the word ‘Beloved’ as much as possible in my actions and decisions for the year ahead. Each morning, I will contemplate how I will do that. For example, the first morning I wrote a list of all the people, alive and dead, who are beloved to me. I allowed myself to think about them all day and why they are beloved to me. I wonder if like my growth spurt last year I will be, what do the young ones say, all loved up by the end of 2026 in a way that I currently can’t imagine.

Lifting up in Triumph

Copyright Wendy Smith, January 2026. All rights reserved; this intellectual property belongs solely to Wendy Smith.

About Wendy Smith

Wendy is one of the cofacilitators of the U3A Merri-bek Community of Writers along with Cathy Beesey. After retirement from a long career writing reports, briefings and policies for government, she enjoys being free to write for her own pleasure and share her work with others in the group.