The One I Keep Leaving Out

New Year’s Day always makes me want to deep-clean my life, which is hilarious, because I still haven’t fully unpacked from the move we did months ago. We upgraded from a house that felt like living in a clown car for nine humans and one dog at least part of the time to one that technically has room for everyone, but somehow still doesn’t have room for everyone's wardrobes and sports gear. The old place had us stacked on top of each other like laundry you keep meaning to fold. In this house, everyone just escapes to their own corner and yells everything down the halls and stairs.​

Last night was our first New Year’s Eve in our new house. Sparkle and Lulu had friends over for a sleepover, the boys yelled at the TV while the Buckeyes lost, and there were pizza boxes and wing bones scattered across the basement bar and table like a very on-brand portrait of our holiday food pyramid. As it got closer to midnight, the house did this weird magic trick: the kids just disappeared. One by one they melted into bedrooms and screens and FaceTimes with friends, and suddenly it was just Cash and me on the sectional in the basement family room, watching the ball drop in our “more space for everyone” house and feeling the bigness of it in a way I wasn’t prepared for.​

I used to write New Year’s resolutions like it was a competitive sport. New planner, new pens, new color-coding system for all the ways I was going to finally become a better human. (I did, in fact, buy a new planner this year; it is gorgeous and it will be here Saturday, so clearly this is still an area of growth for me.) By mid-January I’d be staring at the lists thinking, “Wow, I really committed to being hugely disappointed in myself this year.” So I’m tapping out of resolutions. They don’t make me better; they just give me more creative ways to feel like I’m failing.​

This year I’m going with one word: grace. Not the delicate, inspirational-quote kind of grace that belongs on a throw pillow. I mean the kind of grace that lets me admit that 2025 was a hell of a year, that I struggle to relate to other people, and that I’m really, really tired. The kind of grace that makes space for the ways I self-sabotage and arm-wrestle my way into being noticed, because deep down my greatest desire is just to feel seen. The kind of grace that says, “You’re allowed to be a work in progress without turning your whole life into a renovation project.”​

There is a lot underneath why I am the way I am. Some of it is old stories I’m not ready to tell on the internet yet. One day I might unpack more of that, but today is not that day. It is, after all, only the second date. Today is about the woman who finally sat still on the couch, in a house that once felt like the answer to all the chaos, and realized that the person she most needs to stop abandoning is herself.

So here’s my wildly ambitious plan for 2026: I’m going to try to be a little kinder to that version of me. I’m going to catch myself when I start narrating how I’m failing and ask, “Would you say this to one of the kids?” If the answer is no, then I don’t get to say it to me either. I do not have a five-step strategy for this; my best ideas so far are clinging to Bible study, keeping my standing date with my therapist, and fumbling my way forward. No before and after photos. No “new year, new me.” Just the same old me, in a slightly bigger house, learning how to extend grace to the one person I keep leaving out.