Glue Sticks, Shame Spirals, and the Jeans That Finally Fit….

This year, I scheduled three post-Christmas vision-boarding dates with friends.
At the time, it felt reasonable.

There is that strange stretch between Christmas and New Year—liminal, slippery, unclaimed—when you imagine yourself doing glue-stick projects and calling them meaningful. (Also: who still has magazines?)

Let me record this now for next year. What we actually want during that week is this: sleep, hide under the covers, see no one, attend nothing, and possibly never emerge again. At one point, I caught myself wishing—truly—that I would get a mild cold. Just enough to cancel everything without guilt.

One afternoon after lunch, clarity struck: I want to be in bed with my cat, watching Netflix, eating popcorn for dinner. Luckily, I have enough experience ignoring my body to recognize when listening is the smarter option. I dropped my to-do list, mentally hung a DO NOT DISTURB unless you are actively dying sign on my door, pulled on flannel pajamas, and climbed into bed.

British television. The kind where the biggest crisis is a cake that refuses to rise.

Even then, I cried.

There I was, wiping snot on my t-shirt, fingers sticky with popcorn, cat tucked against my ribs. It was perfect.

Still, the vision-boarding loomed.

The next morning, we gathered with intentions: sacred fires, glitter, art supplies, ancestral-pattern-releasing, North-Star-for-the-year energy. Instead, we went to brunch. Wine. A French omelet. Shockingly good sourdough toast. Then Anthropologie, where we met other fifty-year-old, divorced, empty-nester women in dressing rooms and spent the entire afternoon trying on outrageously expensive jeans that made our asses look excellent.

We didn’t even buy them on sale.

That was the vision board. Cute-ass jeans not from Ross Dress for Less (you can pay more, but why?). And for the record: these are not desperate, please-help-me asses. These are yoga, hip-hop, structurally sound asses.

Our vision for our fifties is simple: when someone says, “Wow, you look good in those jeans,” we say, “Yes. I know.”

We are done pretending we don’t see our own assets.
That’s the plan for 2026.

The second vision-boarding date arrived under darker skies. Not because of the friend—I adore her—but because I was in a shame spiral. The night before, I had humiliated my daughter in front of her friends. Not the charming kind of embarrassment. The kind where you notice the horror on everyone’s faces halfway through the story and respond by adding more details.

It did not help.

I fled upstairs. She texted devastation. I hid in bed. By morning, I was still spitting shame-shit out of my mouth and was in no mood to envision my radiant future self.

Luckily, my friend arrived sobbing—her friend had died. So we skipped vision-boarding and cried on the couch instead. It was excellent.

By day three, I thought: Now I’m ready. Now we’ll do it right.

I gathered supplies. I texted my Sauna Sisters—eight women I’ve known for over thirty years who meet weekly at my house for soup and sauna. Someone brought magazines. I had glue sticks.

But after soup, no one wanted to do it.

We had too many memories of sticky fingers and dreams that never materialized. Men who didn’t show up. Cancer that did. Vision boards that failed—except for one bathtub that miraculously arrived and remains the best bathtub any of us has ever known.

So we abandoned the project and collapsed into couches, chairs, and floor cushions in a chocolate-fueled heap.

Eventually someone said, “I can come up with a word for 2026.”

That felt manageable.

Doing less.
“How about never?”
“Does never work?”

One friend, unemployed and delighted by the possibility, announced she wanted to be a treasure hunter. We cheered. Another chose elevate—she’s walking her dog again. Another offered micro-thriving as a rebellious act of anarchy.

We cheered louder.

My words were thriving ecosystem and mycelium network—the unseen threads that hold everything together.

We weren’t naming what we wanted from the year.
We were naming what we intended to bring.

Here’s what I know now—mostly for myself:

Do not schedule vision boards between Christmas and New Year. Schedule bed-with-cat days instead. Buy the jeans. Apologize when you screw up. Choose a word or two and let them be enough. And hold onto the friends who will flop beside you, unbutton their pants, and laugh when the plans fall apart.

Because that—more than glitter, glue sticks, or perfect intentions—is how we actually make it through.