Well, hello. 👋
Welcome to the final edition of Life, Almost for this year – we made it!
For reasons previously written, the end-of-year dance of looking-back-looking-at-what’s-next often leaves me feeling a little out of step. As I’m sure it does many people. I really don’t know why we do it to each other, to be honest: the ‘2023 wrap reports’, ‘the best of…’ lists, swiftly followed by resolutions and ‘goals for 2024’.
It all feels like contorting ourselves into a structure that life just doesn’t adhere to.
I won’t be alone in having painful parts of this year that I don’t especially want to revisit and which I cannot spin into a shining narrative of lessons learned and valuable failure. And next to that sits a reluctance to plan too much – expect too much – from the next year either.
The beautiful trouble of life, always, is the inability to know how it will all unfold. Both the best and worst things that will happen to any of us next year will be things we don’t plan, can’t predict, won’t know to control for.
Sitting with this – knowing it in your bones – might mean you want to give the highlights-reel-goals-goals-goals tango a miss, but it’s not necessarily a pessimistic stance. It doesn’t mean having no hopes or dreams at all for the next year, it’s just…quieter.
Something I would like to take a brief moment to celebrate is that there are – drumroll please – twice as many of you here than this time last year. 1,210 at the last count! This feels really quite special to me. I’m also just one subscription short of being a quarter of the way to my goal of making this newsletter financially self-sustaining, which a few months ago I wasn’t convinced would ever be possible, so thank you all for this enormous vote of confidence. I’m excited to see what 2024 brings for this newsletter, which I think (hope) is slowly becoming a community, too.
After today, normal newsletter service will resume on January 11th, although I do have a couple of fun things planned for the slow days between Christmas and New Year, particularly for paying subscribers (paying subscribers, if you emphatically do NOT want any more emails before January, feel free to let me know). And if anyone needs a safe space to talk through difficult festive feelings, this thread is for you. There are also some suggestions for comfort reading here.
For now, I thought I’d leave you with a few uterus-related glad tidings…
In the news…
Delaying cutting the umbilical cord for two minutes could save the lives of a third of premature babies, according to two review papers published in The Lancet. (New York Times)
A preliminary study suggests that giving progesterone in the first trimester of pregnancy can reduce the risk of pre-eclampsia by 39 per cent. Sidenote: The data this was based on came from studies originally designed to see if progesterone could reduce miscarriage risk – just one more handy reminder of the myriad possible benefits of more research into pregnancy loss…. (University of Birmingham)
And finally…
The greatest love story you’ve ever read…about parrots ❤️ 🦜
That’s it from me. Do take care of yourselves – and know that I’m wishing you all a peaceful Christmas break.
Until next year,
I love this refreshing perspective on not doing the looking back stuff. Thank you for sharing this! Look forward to more of your wise words next year Jennie 😍🙏