The Year I Needed
🌼 Date: Thursday, January 01, 2026
⚡ Energy: Reflective, grateful, quietly powerful
💓 Status: Still standing. Still here. Still learning.
💪 Outlook: Entering 2026 clearer, braver, and done playing small
🥢 New Year’s Day, the Way We Do It
For as long as I can remember — and I mean single digits old — our family has had one non-negotiable New Year’s Day tradition: we go out to eat Chinese food.
It started as family, back when the only places open on January 1st were Chinese restaurants. Over the years, it evolved into family plus whoever was lucky enough to snag an invite. Some years it’s small. Some years it’s chaos. Last year we had close to 30 people show up. This year? Just 9.
You never know what a year will leave you with — and that’s kind of the point.
This year’s table was smaller, quieter, and honestly… perfect.
Casey wore one of his favorite shirts —
“Her fight is my fight. I wear pink for my wife.”
I wore mine —
“Pink! Spread the hope. Find the cure!” —
paired with a hot pink bandana, because obviously I can’t leave well enough alone.
We ate. We laughed. We sat together in the aftershocks of a year that changed everything.
✨ The Year I Needed
I didn’t get the year I wanted.
I got the year that cracked me open.
The kind of year you don’t post highlight reels about.
The kind where the goal isn’t “thriving” — it’s making it to the end of the day without falling apart in front of the wrong people.
This year taught me how heavy life can get.
How plans can dissolve even when you do everything right.
How promises can stretch thin.
How people change.
How sometimes effort isn’t enough — and that truth hurts like hell.
There were long stretches where I felt behind.
Like everyone else was moving forward while I was just trying to stay upright.
Some days I was exhausted from being strong.
From explaining myself.
From pretending I was okay when I absolutely was not.
There were nights I questioned my worth.
Wondered if I was failing at life, at work, at healing — at everything.
Cancer will do that to you.
So will being told “just wait” long enough that waiting becomes a cage.
But somewhere in the middle of all that mess, something shifted.
Quietly.
Without permission.
I learned how to show up for myself — even when no one else did.
How to stop chasing things that weren’t choosing me back.
How to rest without guilt.
How to set boundaries without writing a dissertation to justify my pain.
I learned that growth doesn’t always look like progress.
Sometimes it looks like loss.
Losing people.
Losing comfort.
Losing the version of yourself who kept shrinking to fit where you no longer belonged.
But I didn’t lose myself.
I found her.
Stronger.
Clearer.
Less willing to settle.
More aware of my own power.
So no — 2025 wasn’t gentle.
It wasn’t pretty.
It wasn’t fair.
But it changed me in ways that matter.
And if you’re ending this year tired, disoriented, or quietly proud just for still being here — hear this:
You didn’t fall behind.
You survived the year that shaped you.
And the woman walking into 2026?
She’s wiser.
She’s braver.
And she’s finally aware of just how big she really is.
Bring it on, 2026.
I didn’t ring out 2025 with champagne.
I rang it out with clarity.
And if 2026 wants to test me —
it should probably stretch first.
💗 Tina —
One Badass Day at a Time
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