Fostering Imagination
My 2026 word/phrase of the year
Every year I try to come up with a word of the year. Some years it is hard and I come up with something random that I have forgotten by the end of January and never think of again. Some years it is the theme of the year. Some years the word changes mid year as it did last year. I can’t remember what I started with but by June my word became “Gentle”. Gentle healing, gentle with myself and my body as I processed and learned to move forward again. Gentle with the people around me, gentle with my expectations. It got me through.
As this year came to an end and I reflected on 2025 I knew immediately what I wanted this year to be. In some ways an extension of what I learned in 2025 but hopefully with more purposefulness.
“Fostering Imagination” is my word/phrase of the year.
What does this mean? It is about developing our creative mind, it is about giving space to process experiences and ideas, it is about asking questions and learning new things.
One of my early posts was about imagination. I explained what I meant by it with this story about college:
My first conversation about imagination came when after telling a friend how we have come to realize we raised our son with an expectation he would go to college but with no sense of what he would do once he got there. She made the comment that he couldn’t imagine college. I had never thought of it that way. That in order to go forward to the next stage of life we need to be able to imagine in on some level.
I went to college for one semester before marrying John. I then took night classes for a few years before starting a family. I never circled back to another class after that. I had wanted to but I just never could imagine how it would work. We could imagine a life where we raised a family without a college degree, a life where we were self employed, a life where I was a homemaker. John’s parents also didn’t go to college and his dad was self employed making that easier to imagine. And so that is the life we pursued. As a result we had very limited college experiences and never really talked about them with our son. Just “go to college”. We wanted more for him even if we didn’t know what it would look like when he got there.
All our friends went to college and we ask lots of questions so by the time John was 40 and we had more life experience we were able to imagine what college was about and a world where John was in school. We didn’t imagine all the details but enough to take the plunge and figure things out along the way. Our son married and joined the army when John was in school but our daughter watched her dad navigate classes, study and work. She heard us discuss history and psychology and APA formatting and nursing ethics and more. We visited the campus to have lunch with him. Her ability to imagine what college would be like and what she would do there has been particularly easy because it isn’t based on stories but based upon her own observations of college life.
Read all my thoughts from that post here. It will be a helpful addition to this post.
Fostering imagination is about living a life that helps me expand my experiences and give myself space to process them. While my college story is a practical application the other side of it is giving space to process ideas and experiences. Turning off the devices and taking a walk with my own thoughts. Letting my mind wander in the morning as I am waking up without grabbing my phone right away. It is about reading stories and information that expand our views and ideas. It is about trying new things. It is about developing my creative mind.
More than any other year this phrase is defining some of my goals and behaviors of 2026. Here are a few things I am trying:
I have set up an adult coloring station by the couch in John’s studio/speakeasy so when I am down chatting with him I can do some creative work as well. I also pulled out a notebook where I had practiced fancy lettering a few years ago. I am not great at it but I enjoy writing the month on my Thankful board1 in fancy fonts.
We are going to Europe for a week in March. This is a longer future story but the reason it is part of fostering imagination is two fold. We have had enough friends go there and read enough about it that we can imagine the experience and do something unknown. And also, we have an idea that we would like to do a longer trip at some point where we spend a couple months there in our practice retirement season (60’s) so this is gathering some information which allows us to begin imagining an experience like that and decide whether we would really enjoy it or not.2
I bought a walking pad. This is both a practical item as I am finding a functional colon3 requires daily walking and a practice in fostering imagination as I get off the gym treadmills that have several TV’s bombarding me with stimulus while I try to walk during the winter. My walking pad is in my office looking out on the maple tree. So far I have watched the snow fall, the winds whip and talked on the phone with friends. Along with just walking quietly with my thoughts. All expanding my imagination.
I’m thinking about my social media different this year. Still working on what my full social media philosophy is but realizing that the question “what is my brand?” is no longer limited to businesses and professional influencers. We all are presenting a version of ourselves to the world on social media whether we realize it or not. I have all come to realize I don’t have to share every part of my life, it is annoying when people only share the good stuff, and it is dangerous to share too much. So looking to imagine who I will be on social media, what I want to share, what is the purpose and what am I keeping to myself. Imagining who my public person is and who gets to know my private person.
I’m also planning to do more evening reading and got a couple more embroidery projects to work on while watching TV. My daughter and I are thinking about learning to crochet, an activity my mom is quite good at. How about it mom? A little family crocheting class this year???
Excited to see how these practices and this focus changes who I am in 2026.
How are you fostering your imagination this year? What creative endeavors are you planning to pursue in 2026?
Writing this while sitting at a Discount Tire, where I told a friend “you get the service you pay for”, and wishing I had thought to bring my book on walking in Paris to escape the block room and smell of rubber. Then again maybe I don’t want to associate this smell with Paris.
Starting to accept the possibility that I will have to manage this new length colon the rest of my life but still hopeful there is more healing to be done and I won’t have to think about it every day the rest of my life.
I remember that initial essay about not imagining college and had never thought of it that way. Really got me thinking about things I avoided because I couldn’t imagine myself in those scenarios. I think it’s why I feel so passionate about representation in stories (books, movies, TV) — so kids who are Black/gay/poor/whatever can imagine themselves in the world beyond their own.
I love your phrase! Life can be so much bigger and exciting than we usually explore. This also makes me wonder how we are fostering imagination for the future with kid....