Day: January 14, 2026

A wise friend posted a New Year’s Day message about self care that resounded with me. It went something like this:

Be willing to accept limits.

Use that heating pad when you need it.

Build your schedule around your actual energy level, not some demand that you believe you must endure.

Let your body be whatever it is telling you it needs to be.

Be truthful about your feelings and uncertainties instead of attempting to be a silent stoic.

Hibernate when you feel it is necessary.

Let January be slow and maybe a bit strange.

On most first days of the new year I find myself critiquing my flaws from the previous year and pledging to be my best self in the coming days. I almost always feel that I could have done more, been a better person, a more wonderful version of myself. I am loathe to admit that I am human until I get reminders like the one that my friend presented to urge each of us to allow our humanness to be okay. As another friend has suggested to me perhaps it is time for me to join the club dedicated to slowing down and still feeling good about myself. I keep getting messages from people who care about me that it is not just okay but preferable that I do what I feel like doing even if my only desire is to spend a quiet day ignoring the dust and the pile of laundry that will wait while I treat myself to just being myself. 

I spent New Year’s Eve with my brother and sister-in-law. We had a glorious time but also know the the coming year will be challenging for each of us. My brother has Parkinson’s Disease that is slowly but surely progressing. My sister-in-law was injured a few years back when she fell without any kind of warning and awoke to find that she had endured many life changing injuries. She and I are both scheduled for orthopedic surgeries this year that will hopefully allow us to move around without the ever present limps or pains that have plagued us all through the last year. On New Year’s Eve time stood still for a few hours while we simply delighted in just sharing a very quiet and low key evening in each other’s company. 

My sister-in-law is as brilliant in her assessment of how to live gracefully as my friend who left the post that I quoted above and the classmate from my past who welcomed me to the club of reality. All of them maintain that we don’t have to be always striving to be perfect versions of ourselves all of the time. It really is okay to admit that all we want to do is be honest in admitting to the slowing simmer of our lives. If truth be told none of us we want to impose unrealistic demands and restrictions on ourselves. We ponder the possibility that maybe it’s time to hire a gardener instead of spending hours creating a perfect landscape in our yards. Maybe someone else should clean our windows and haul the Christmas decorations into the attic. 

The fact is that my sister-in-law has been willing to sit back out of the limelight that she once navigated so well. She has a wall filled with evidence of her achievements and awards that she earned as an engineer at NASA. Now she is content to sit in her easy chair reading or enjoying the delight of watching her grandchildren at play. She has scaled back her life in ways that allow her to admit the she has entered yet another phase of living and she does not pretend to be someone that she is not. Her honesty shines through and makes her the smartest woman in the room. She is content to find happiness in the slow pace that she and my brother have taken. Her joys and her needs are now as simple as having a day without aches and pains and having a good book to read. 

I remember when both my mother and my mother-in-law decided that it was time to be real. They announced that they would no longer be able to host large galas and gatherings in their homes. They humbly admitted that they needed help from time to time. They honored their children by showing how much they trusted us to carry on as leaders in the world. They embraced their limitations with finesse just as my sister-in-law has now done. 

I recently had a luncheon date with friends who are my contemporaries. Each of them has changed the pace of their lives. They have transitioned to mostly doing what they want to do and not what they think that other people expect them to do. They are slowing down and loving life. They are eliminating annoyances and superfluous tasks they no longer believe are critical. They are finding happiness in the smallest of things whether it be finally making the quilts that they enjoy creating or taking short trips on a whim. 

I’m watching my father-in-law wither away in this moment. His downfall happened in the blink of an eye. Before that he forced himself into a daily routine that allowed no deviation. He tried to be the man in charge even as his daily habits became unsafe. He insisted with an iron fist that there was no reason for him to use a cane when his gait was shaky. He stubbornly drove his car when his reflexes were slow. Unlike my sister-in-law who is twenty years younger than he is, he insisted on being in charge, not trusting others to take on tasks that he should no longer have been doing. Now he is bedridden and must rely on people to take care of his most basic needs.

I see now that my father-in-law and I are very much alike in our hard headed determination to keep a strong hand on our power even as I preach my personal belief that there is a time and a season for everyone. Perhaps I would do well in this first month of the year to practice letting my perfectionism go and giving the younger generations the honor of my confidence in them. The world will indeed keep turning without my involvement in everything. As a lifelong learner I need to be willing to evolve like my friends and my sister-in-law have done. It is the wise and generous thing to do. Perhaps therein lies the pathway of the coming months of this year.