Rooted, Simple, Sacredly Woven

A quiet threshold into 2026

This festive season has been the quietest I’ve known in ages.

Work has still flickered slightly at the edges, but if i'm honest, I don’t think that ever fully switches off when you run your own businesses. Yet something has felt profoundly different this year.

Like a long, overdue exhale. A loosening. A softening.

After an emotional, demanding year, my body and mind finally got to say: enough now. And honestly? I needed it more than I realised.

It’s been slow days, late mornings, nowhere to be. Ritz biscuits eaten without guilt. Rest that wasn’t earned or justified. And in that rest, I've realised just how deeply exhausted I had been. How much my nervous system was craving quiet, steadiness, and space.

As the year began to turn, I found myself reflecting on 2025, not in a “new year, new me” kind of way (January is wildly out of sync with that nonsense), but in a low, winter way. The kind that listens. The kind that notices what has shifted now that the noise has died down.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. Never have. But I do usually choose a word, or should I say, a word chooses me. It arrives unannounced, settles into my bones, and becomes a compass for the year ahead.

This time, three words came. Unexpected ones. Quieter than usual, but the meaning feels deeper.

Rooted.
Simplicity.
Weaving.

Rooted is the heart of it all, it's my core word for 2026.

Because 2025 was big. Loud, even. A year of growth, visibility, and courage. I launched an entirely new venture with Wild Goddess Candles. I showed up at markets, sent out countless orders, guested on podcasts, reached out, made connections, pushed myself to be seen. All necessary. All expansive.

And at times all exhausting.

That growth happened alongside deep grief, increased responsibility, and emotional weight in my personal life. It stretched me. Shaped me. Changed me.

I am deeply proud of the woman that 2025 year carved me into, but I am also acutely aware of what it cost.

So this year feels different. I feel different. And I want different things.

I am craving simplicity, which to be honest is rather new for me! and I don’t think I’m alone in that.

It feels like there is a collective fatigue humming beneath the surface right now. Years of global upheaval. Constant crises. Endless scrolling. AI everywhere. Marketing shouting from every corner. Too much information. Too many options. Too many expectations.

It’s overwhelming and massively overstimulating.

For me, simplicity doesn’t mean stripping life bare or pretending I don’t love beauty (I’m a maximalist — there will never be bare monk energy here). It means intentionality.

Doing less.
Saving more.
Saying no more often.
Setting boundaries without apology.

It means pausing before I buy something just because the money happens to be there. Asking myself: Do I really love this? Do I need it? Will it last? Choosing quality, craftsmanship, and meaning over mindless accumulation.

It means fewer platforms, fewer half-formed ideas acted on impulsively, fewer subscriptions signed up to in moments of excitement. It means choosing rest over obligation, staying in over forcing myself out, honouring what my body actually wants.

Less clutter for the sake of it.
More beauty that means something.

Rooted weaves through this too.

I want to feel rooted in myself, in my nervous system, my sense of identity, my inner steadiness. I want my work to be rooted. Meaningful. Enchanted. Not reactive. Not trend-chasing. Not novelty for novelty’s sake.

I want to build my savings so I feel grounded and safe, knowing there’s a cushion beneath me. I’m saving towards a long-held dream of a small cottage in the countryside, a life closer to the land, seasons, and slowness. Actual roots.

So my choices this year need to reflect that. Not rushed. Not scattered. Rooted.

And then there’s weaving, this is my creative word.

Because I don’t want my work or my life to feel fragmented. I want everything to speak to each other. To be woven together. My values, the land, story, myth, magic, emotion, real life.

I want my stories to carry deeper threads. To reflect lived experience. To help people navigate grief, change, longing, uncertainty, not escape it. I want what I create to feel like a world you can step into, not a performance designed to please algorithms.

There’s a quiet beauty to 2026 that I can already feel. Less urgency. More depth. Less noise. More meaning.

I don’t know exactly where this year will lead, none of us ever really do. But I do know this: I am ready to follow what feels true. To move intentionally. To live and work in a way that is thoughtful, enchanted, grounded, and deeply rooted.

This isn’t a year of striving.
It’s a year of tending.
Of choosing with care.
Of sacred weaving.

And I’m walking into it barefoot, open-hearted, and steady.