🍋 Zest 🍋

My Word of the Year

Onions, carrots, and celery simmer in the buttered pan, filling my home with an intoxicating foretaste (foresmell?) of what’s for dinner: sneaky veggie bolognese¹.

Once I’ve browned the turkey and added tomatoes and a touch of cream, it’s time for the lemon zest. This is my favorite part. I zest directly into the aromatic carrot, celery, onion, butter, turkey, and tomato sauce mixture. Rind in my hands, dimpled and waxy. The scrape scrape and scritch scritch of zesting (what a great verb!). The tangy tingle in my eyes and nostrils. Fresh.

As I add the zest, I like to picture the whole pan awakening–each component becoming more itself.

The turkey becomes more savory, the tomatoes bright and acidic, the carrots sweet and earthy, onions pungent and translucent, the powerhouse of the recipe that reminds me of my grandmother’s onion-heavy spaghetti and meatballs.

I want to approach my life this way, filled with zest that awakens each component of my life from creating to mothering, resting to serving to playing.

***

In the summer of 2023, I drove with a friend from San Diego to San Francisco (an 8-9 hour drive) to attend my first International OCD Foundation Conference. The whole experience triggered my anxiety and forced me to be brave. In the OCD world, this is called an exposure, or the act of purposefully triggering your fears so that you can respond in a new way (without any of the compulsive safety behaviors). Even though I was a couple of years into OCD recovery, every aspect of the conference was an exposure for me. From driving such a long distance with a new-ish friend from my church’s small group (what would we talk about for 8 hours?), to sharing a hotel room with a woman I had never met (surely, I had learned nothing from all those true crime podcasts and was about to be murdered), to even deciding which workshops to go to (what if I missed the one workshop that would solve it all?), I was a nervous wreck, but doing it anyway.

The conference offered multiple workshops and lectures at each time slot. The whole weekend I was scared I was going to make the wrong choice. I wanted to maximize, optimize my recovery. I was convinced I needed to pick the one session that would unlock the key to my recovery. I needed to speak to everyone possible so that I could meet the one person who would unlock the key to my advocacy success.

Are you getting the picture? OCD has a way of convincing you that you are just on the cusp of discovering some life-changing information or plummeting to absolute ruin.

It’s an exhausting way to live.

With this mindset, I wandered into a workshop titled, “Living Beyond Shame” that focused on self-compassion and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT.)

I knew I had a problem with shame and self-punishment. I knew I would never treat a friend the way I treated myself internally.

“Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with your failings.” (Dr. Kristin Neff)

I was familiar with the concept of self-compassion in theory; in practice, rewiring 35 years of defaulting to shame and judgment was a slow, tedious process.

I have shared a lot about my own journey with self-compassion, and you can find many self-compassion themed posts here.

I bring up this workshop for another reason. It was in this workshop that I learned a key value driving all of my fears.

The presenter guided us to reflect on our inner critic (I was very familiar!). She asked, “What is this critic trying to remind you of that is important to you?”

My inner critic’s name was Poison and I had depicted her as mean, angry, strict, rigid, unrelenting, critical, and out of touch.

What could she possibly teach me about what I value? I pictured Poison as a protective older sister who was effing with my life. Was there anything real she was trying to protect me from? She tried to protect me from mistakes and failure and feeling stupid and looking stupid and forgetting something and being irresponsible and and and…

I decided to write directly to Poison.

“I see how concerned you are. Thank you for reminding me that life is important to me. Your way is not working for me. I’m going to try this my way, in a kinder and compassionate way.”

Life. I would have never pinpointed this as a value. I thought I valued excellence and responsibility and integrity and consistency and growth. When I looked deeper, I could see all those other values spoke to a life well lived. I wanted my life to appear right and good and free from mistakes. And yet I was missing out on actually living.

I put so much weight into every single decision because I cared about life. The cruel, sad, irony was that all the worrying about how to live stole the life from me. Stole my joy and enjoyment.

At that workshop, I committed to living a different way. Though I didn’t know how. Though I was still stuck thinking the whole conference was a test I could pass or fail.

A cheesy phrase popped into my head, “I won’t know if I chose best, but I can live my life with zest.”

Zest felt so far off. A mockery. I was making choices and living with the consequences, building my discomfort and uncertainty tolerance, but I wouldn’t call it zest. OCD recovery felt more like torture and tedium. Responding over and over and over again to OCD’s attempt to ruin the moment, draw me out of my life and into my head.

I made a keychain with the word ZEST in small beads to remind me to keep living and stop focusing on whether or not I chose correctly. I kept up my ERP therapy and self-compassion practices. The keychain said zest and I hoped to one day live it.

***

My 2026 word of the year is Zest. 🍋

Last year, my word was Flow and I learned to embrace surprise and delight in my days. I discovered a zest for new experiences and let myself off the hook for being human.

I experienced life unhooked from OCD for the first time ever. And I had a freaking blast!

As I became unhooked from OCD, I found I missed the sense of purpose OCD gave me (in its own toxic way, like an abusive boyfriend.)

These days I want to be hooked, not stuck or caught or trapped, but fully immersed and invested in my own life like you would be hooked on a good book or tv show.

This, to me, is zest. Being present like this can only happen when you’re not consumed with worry or anxiety, when you’re not torn about what you should be doing or lamenting all the paths not taken. (If you’re in a season of being caught in anxiety or OCD recovery, I see you, and I hope you can find your way to zest and experience small moments of joy in the midst of recovery.)

Choosing zest is a major milestone in my OCD recovery journey. Zest is no longer a mockery or distant dream. I made it here, past the torture and tedium.

In the bolognese recipe, the author writes, “you can omit this if zesting a lemon sounds annoying to you right now, but it adds a nice freshness!’

The zest is a bonus. I want to live like everything is a bonus. Addition, not subtraction. Enjoyment of the moment, not pass/fail decisions.

I want to be zestfully creative, engaged, alive, open to the unexpected, committed to love and care and paying attention. I want to live a vibrant, zestful life with creativity, good friends, new experiences, delighting in rest and play with equal zest.

In the past, I have used writing to process my way out of pain, anxiety, and fear. This year, I want to write my way in to delight and enjoyment, connection and revelations, beauty and challenge, novelty and discipline.

I am moving from writing as medicine, therapy, necessity, to writing as zest, a way to add flavor, meaning, and depth to my days.

The opposite of poison, the ruiner all good things, is zest. Zest adds to, fully in, fully present and accepting. Zest adds to, makes things good.

Here are some definitions of zest I am leaning into:

zest= being present

zest=interest piqued

zest=energy and exuberance

zest=adding flavor or piquancy

zest= brighten (to make lighter, not righter)

zest=to spice up (embracing my neurospiciness and remembering that variety is the spice of life)

I’m sure zest will come to have deeper and unexpected meanings throughout the year. I look forward to being surprised.

I’ve had so much fun with the word zest already, like this lemon painting that symbolizes the juicy life I want to live.

Shout out to Andrea Nelson’s Youtube tutorial

Instead of artist dates, this year I will plan “zest days.” I’m also making mini-goals for each month called “zestipes” or recipes to sprinkle in creativity and fun. My January zestipe was to write 300 words a day and touch my paints. I am also embracing re-creation, admitting my need for novelty and rebranding. I used to see this as weakness, as a lack of consistency which pointed to an absence in integrity. I am learning to work with my brain chemistry and plan for re-branding and re-packaging with short creative sprint challenges. I’m also implementing “secrets themes” each month where I focus on a new creative project that is just for me. It adds a little mystery and intrigue to my days knowing that it’s my little secret. It also conveniently silences the shoulds when there’s no outside pressure to perform.

The news cycle of 2026 has started heavy. I often come back to this quote from Ann Voskamp, “I know there is poor and hideous suffering, and I’ve seen the hungry and the guns that go to war. I have lived pain, and my life can tell: I only deepen the wound of the world when I neglect to give thanks for early light dappled through leaves and the heavy perfume of wild roses in early July and the song of crickets on humid nights and the rivers that run and the stars that rise and the rain that falls and all the good things that a good God gives.”

While it feels a bit silly to write about zest, I believe I will only deepen the wound of the world if I don’t live into my healing and give thanks with my words and my life.

Here’s to staying zesty, being hooked on joy and mystery and presence, living a life of beautiful addition, and believing that God’s goodness hasn’t run out.

***

Do you have a word of the year? I’d love to hear it. What would your “zestipe” be for adding flavor, interest, or meaning to your day-to-day life?

1. I used to dread cooking, but ever since I found Caroline Chambers’s easy and delicious recipes and cookbook, I am surprised to report that making dinner (while the kids are still at school–this is key–is one of my favorite times of the day)