December 1st was Supposed to be a Beginning…

December 1st was supposed to mark something big for me — the first day of my last year in my forties.
In my mind it was symbolic, almost ceremonial: Chronic illness and disability were not going to keep defining me.I was going to rise, reset, reclaim something of myself before turning fifty.
And then… reality.

Within days, my daughter got hit with the winter virus — Covid, flu, whatever cocktail of seasonal misery is floating around — and now it’s my turn.
A week in, and I’m already surrendering.
Not the bold, empowered surrender that looks good on Instagram. But the real kind: the kind where your bones ache, your head swirls, you’re wrapped in blankets, and you realise your body has completely different plans for you than your mind did.

Honestly? 

I’m exhausted — physically, emotionally, hormonally, spiritually.This wasn’t the grand opening to “my final lap of the forties” I had pictured.
But maybe it is a beginning, just not the one I expected.
Endings don’t always announce themselves. Sometimes they make you lie down.
I keep thinking about the energy of 2025 — my personal Year Nine — the year of clearing, completion, endings, burning away what cannot come with me into the next cycle.
And as the year winds down, I’m being asked to do exactly that: to slow, to soften, to stop pushing myself through force and instead let the old patterns drain out of me like fever.
Because next year is my Year One. A new cycle. A new beginning. An invitation to step into a self I’ve always sensed but never fully allowed.
A self who accepts her body. A self who honours her limits. A self who dreams out loud — even the dreams that once felt “too big” or “too embarrassing” or “too unrealistic” to share.

**Maybe the universe didn’t want me to enter this last year of my forties fighting.
Maybe it wanted me to enter it resting.**

So here I am, seeing out the final weeks of 2025 from my bed, wrapped in fleece blankets, drinking lukewarm tea because everything tastes like nothing, surrendering not just because I want to — but because I have no choice.

And strangely, that feels like medicine.

Because this is the truth of being human, of being chronically ill, of being autistic, perimenopausal, burnt out, hopeful, heartbroken for the child who once was, rebuilding, dreaming:

Sometimes your greatest turning point happens when you’re too tired to turn yourself.

So yes — December 1st was meant to be a grand beginning.
Instead, it became a quiet one.
A soft entry into a year of unbecoming and becoming. A reminder that rest is not a failure but a form of preparation. A whisper: you do not have to rise dramatically to rise meaningfully.
As I crawl toward the edges of this year — my ninth, my ending —I’m trusting that the next cycle will meet me where I am: with gentleness, possibility, and the courage to finally chase the dreams I once thought were too big for me.

Spoiler:

they’re not.

I am entering my final year of my forties in bed, coughing, sniffling, aching…and somehow still hopeful.
Maybe that’s the real beginning after all