2026 Word of the Year: Adaptation
I chose Adaptation as my word of the year because it keeps showing up in the quiet places of my life. It appears in memory, in the way my body responds to wind and water, and in how my heart responds to change. Adaptation is not dramatic. It is steady. It is the practice of becoming flexible without losing who you are.
I have been thinking about the word asylum. Linguistically, it means sanctuary. A place of refuge. A place where harm is held back long enough for healing to begin. Long before the word became tangled in politics and fear, it pointed to safety. Historically, the role of the church was to offer that safety. Sanctuary was not only symbolic. It was a promise. If you could reach the doors, you were protected. Walls became more than stone. They became mercy.
For a few years now, my sanctuary has not been a building. It has been a sailboat named Simplicity.
Simplicity: My place where harm was held back long enough for healing to begin.
For the past five years, that small floating home has held me when I could not hold myself. It has been my refuge from noise, pressure, and expectations I could not meet. The water taught me how to breathe again. The wind taught me how to listen. Simplicity became my asylum. Not because it was perfect, but because it was honest. You cannot pretend on a boat. You adjust or you suffer. You learn the weather. You read the sky. You make peace with what you cannot control and you work with what you can.
My spiritual life during this season has looked different than what I once imagined. There has not been much of a gathered crowd. There have been long stretches of solitude, reflection that sounded more like questions, and moments of gratitude that happened with bare feet and salt air. I stepped away from gathering in the usual ways because I needed to gather myself first. Healing became my daily work. Growth became my teacher. Identity became the lesson.
That season mattered. It saved me in ways I did not understand at the time. Sanctuary is not always about hiding. Sometimes it is about staying still long enough to feel what hurts and why.
But now, something is shifting.
Adaptation is calling to me.
Not as a survival skill, but as an invitation.
I feel the pull to move from refuge into relationship again. From sanctuary as shelter into sanctuary as shared space. The ancient idea behind sanctuary was never meant to stay locked in walls. It was meant to live in people who knew what it felt like to be held, and then chose to hold others. My boat gave me a place to become whole. Now adaptation asks me what I will do with that wholeness.
Long ago, I titled this photo, “Leigh, In Her Element.” I wonder how the idea of one being “in their element” relates to adaptation.
I think adaptation is meaningful work. It does not deny the past. It learns from it. It does not rush healing. It trusts that healing has seasons. Winter kept me alive. Spring is asking me to step outside.
Adaptation looks like learning how to belong again without losing the quiet strength I found alone. It looks like opening my hands instead of clenching them around safety. It looks like letting sanctuary become something I help create, not only something I hide inside.
There is a strange courage in leaving refuge when refuge has been kind to you. Simplicity will always be sacred to me. That boat held thoughts I could not shape into words and grief I could not explain. It taught me that presence meets us where we actually are, not where we pretend to be. It showed me that sanctuary can float, and that faith or trust or hope can move with the waves and still stay upright.
But adaptation reminds me that sanctuary is not meant to be permanent shelter. It is meant to be preparation.
Once, sanctuary protected the hurting. Maybe it still can. Maybe it must. But that only happens when people who have known refuge decide to become refuge. When those who were given space choose to make space. When those who were protected learn how to protect others.
This year, Adaptation is my intention.
To adapt is to trust that meaning is found not only in the safe harbor, but also in the widening horizon. To adapt is to believe that healing was not the end of the story, but the beginning of another chapter. To adapt is to step forward without forgetting the place that saved you.
Sanctuary shaped me. Adaptation is shaping what comes next.
And somehow, both still feel like grace.
