A new year's wish for 2026

Well. Here we are. We have survived 2025, which, you know – win, really. Yay, us!

Which does all sound rather sarcastic and like I’m doing one of those slightly despairing posts where I’m about to list all the things we had to survive to get through the year, with a lot of slightly frantic laughter that suggests I’m about to break out the gin, but you know me by now. I don’t drink, and that’s not where I’m going with this.

I’m also not about to turn this into a “Hey, look at me and all the things I accomplished” post, while I pretend I’m not trying to impress you/make you feel rubbish enough about yourself that you buy my Reinvent Yourself Into a Better Human (TM) course. Nor yet is it a post about all the things I intend to change about myself so I can feel worthy in 2026, or (far worse) a list of all the things you should change/aspire to/reinvent yourself into so you can be considered tolerable, because of course none of us are Enough, and we must change all the things!

Ahem.

No, I have not been increasingly irritated by the annual inundation of Fix Yourself Now for only $77.99 per day posts that have once more been going around, featuring workouts, diets, meditation programs, self-help guides, self-improvement exercises, and shape wear. Why do you ask?

(To be fair, I rarely actually get these now, as I barely go on Facebook other than to check into the group, and my Instagram feed, when I bother to look, is mostly comedians, musicians, and cats. But I know they’re out there. I can feelthem … (picture me hissing like a vampire at fitness influencers and the like).)

Ew, new year advice!

Anyway. Anyway. Apparently I haven’t yet used up my allotment of italics for 2025, so I’m getting them out of my system now.

That aside, though – this blog is about none of those things. When I say surviving 2025 was a win, I do mean it, lovely people. Life isn’t easy, not for any of us, even when it looks that way from the outside. Even when we look at our reality and that of others and not only admit we’re lucky in many ways, but feel guilty for even suggesting otherwise. Even when we have a roof over our heads, and some degree of health, and the safety to go about our lives in small and large ways. Even when we have access to food, and water, and all the things that should be a given for everyone, but aren’t.

None of this means life’s easy. It doesn’t mean the days are never a struggle, whether that’s external or internal. It doesn’t mean things are good. Things can be not good even when others have it worse. We can be hurting, or struggling, or facing down loss and heartbreak and a simple grinding weariness of the world, even while others face more urgent things. All of these can be true. And acknowledging our own struggle in no way takes away from others’. In fact, it can allow those who feel too deeply that they ‘can’t complain’ the space to feel their own difficulties, and to see their own courage in facing them.

Because it does take courage, lovely people. Life, living, being in this world. It takes courage, and trust in oneself, and a certain steadfast determination to survive. And, beyond that, to dream. To believe in beauty, and joy, and the goodness of others as well as oneself. To believe in magic, because what are all those things but magic?

We humans are small creatures in a vast universe, persisting through that magic. Persisting through trust, and hope, and belief. Persisting because even when the world is nothing but sharp edges and hard roads, we can see beyond it. We can hope beyond it, and in doing so we find the pockets of relief that sustain us.

Connection. With those we love, with those we know, with strangers we share a momentary smile with when we dodge each other in supermarket aisles, with people we’ll never meet in person but who sustain us and lift us online.

Joy. In those beautiful moments of connection, in sunrises and sunsets and changing clouds and weeds blooming through the bricks, in art and music and the love of animals and birds and other small things.

Kindness. In the stranger who picks up your dropped shopping, in the woman who compliments your hair, in the giving and receiving of smiles and quiet words and the softness of sunshine after hard times.

Magic. In all of these things. In each other, and in the world, in the utter wonder of what it is to be a small creature in a vast universe, capable of dreaming.

So, lovely people. Here is my wish to you, as the old year fades and the new year rises.

May you be kind to yourself, even when you feel you could have done more, or better. May you see that every day is different, and you are always different, and so is your best, and you will always, always have done enough.

May you be generous with yourself, and give yourself recognition – or praise if you can, but that one’s always harder – for navigating another year of challenges and difficulties and complications, and know that you did it with all the grace and courage and strength you hold within you, and this is no small thing. This is so much, and this is so beautiful.

May you find joy in the year to come, in that first cuppa on a frosty morning, in the sound of birdsong and the smell of cut grass, in the swirling colour of lights on rainy streets. May you find magic in every corner of the world, and connection where you least expect it, and deeper connections where you already know they exist. May there be beauty amid the difficulties – because there will always be difficulties – and may there always be kindness in your world, to soften the hard edges.

I wish all the good things for you, lovely people. You deserve them. You deserve the kindness, the joy, the beauty, the calm. You are not just enough. You are worth everything, and you are magic.

Please remember that as we go into the new year.

Thank you for being here, and for making my world that much kinder, and brighter, and full of joy. You are loved.