A Farewell and a Hello
to 2026 and all the things
Well, Happy New Year!
It’s always a strange thing to say this to people when I don’t know how the year is actually beginning for them. “Happy” may not be the right word. It might be interesting, heavy, brave, disorienting, fulfilling, or tender. All the things that stretch beyond happiness. And still, I admit, I’m a sucker for a new year. I’ll take all the fresh starts, blank pages, clean slates, and the quiet permission to begin again.
I know the calendar year as we know it has roots in empire (truly, what doesn’t? If you’ve read Liturgies for Resisting Empire, you know this). In most Indigenous ways of being, the new year begins in spring, which makes far more sense. It’s the season of rebirth and regrowth. It feels logical to begin again when everything is blooming, not in the dead of winter, when so much is in a process of dying. And yet—maybe there’s a metaphor there, too. That we can still mark “hellos” and newness even in the cold, the dreary, the in-between.
2025 was, for me, all the things.
