The Quiet Alchemy of Beginning Again
New Year New You
I love this strange little pocket of time between the holidays and “real life.”
The decorations are still up, but the urgency has slipped away. The calendar is blank. The emails slow down. I give myself permission to read trashy novels or dense theory books, depending on my mood. I make vision boards. I wander around the house in socks. It’s a liminal season, and I’ve always loved it.
This year, the stillness wasn’t optional. I was sick, which meant no fancy New Year’s Eve plans, no sequins, no elaborate dinners. We ordered pizza and ate apple pie, the three kids, my sister and her fiancé, and me. It was… surprisingly perfect. When no one expects anything of you, the body can finally exhale.
I don’t exactly know who I’m becoming...yet.
As I’ve been recovering, my energy returning one slow notch at a time, I’ve found myself looking back at the year behind me.
2025 began with me four months into the divorce process. Audrey and I were sharing the house on Pierce Street with our two Labradors, Axel and Cooper, trying to create something cozy and stable out of the instability.
Now, at the start of 2026, all three kids are living home again. Axel died on December 23rd from liver failure at age nine, and Cooper is wandering the house a little lost, unsure of how to be an only dog. It feels like the year pressed itself into me with equal amounts of grief and grit.
And somewhere in all of that, something new began.
A childhood friend and I started a project called RecodeNOW — a workshop born not from theory but from necessity. We’ve now run two beta groups, one in San Francisco and one in New York, and the feedback has been incredible. But what’s most meaningful is that the whole thing started because I needed it myself.
In the middle of divorce papers and vet visits and kids coming and going, I became aware of the voice in my head that had been running the show for decades — the one that whispered limits, not possibilities. The one that said I was behind, or not enough, or too much, or out of time. The old code.
RecodeNOW came from the simple, almost laughable realization that the brain believes whatever story you tell it. It doesn’t sort true from false; it just repeats. And if that inner voice is full of old programming, you end up living a life shaped by ghosts.
The process we teach has six steps, but they unfolded for me long before they had names:
Awareness was the moment I finally heard the script running in my mind.
Clarity was turning the harsh sentence into something true.
Energy was letting myself feel even a flicker of possibility.
Action was choosing the new thought again the next day.
Integration was the slow, quiet shift in how I carried myself.
Freedom is the sense I have now — not of being done, but of being in motion by my own choosing.
Change doesn’t happen overnight. It happens with repetition, gentleness, and the willingness to disrupt our own patterns. It happens through the practice — catching the old code and offering the brain a better story. Sometimes that looks like journaling. Sometimes meditation. Sometimes taking a walk, or breathing differently, or simply noticing the thought before it spirals.
It isn’t dramatic. But it is powerful.
As I move into this new year, I’m thinking a lot about Mary Oliver’s reminder that this is our “one wild and precious life.” I’ve wasted enough time letting my inner narrator run amok. I’m ready to chart my own direction — slowly, imperfectly, intentionally.
I don’t know exactly who I’m becoming next.
But for the first time in a long time, I can feel that I’m the one in the driver’s seat.
And that feels like the real beginning of the new year.
Tarot Pull
Every time I pull a card for my blog, I am surprised by how perfect it is. The Ace of Swords is no different for today's blog. The Ace of Swords is about mental clarity, cutting through the fog, the birth of a new mindset, a clean, uncompromising decision point. It points to having agency to move forward. All this speaks so perfectly to today's post. I hope you carry the Ace of Swords energy with you as you enter the new year.