The Year Didn’t Start the Way I Expected

It’s March and I’m still waiting for that feeling of arrival.

You know the one. The sense of fresh momentum that’s meant to appear when a year turns over — the clean slate, new energy, let’s go feeling.

I thought it might arrive in December when my season (Capricorn season) rolled around — it didn’t. I thought January might deliver it with that familiar “new year, new energy” moment — still nothing. Then February arrived with the return of school routines and the slow re-entry into normal life and I thought surely this would be the moment everything clicked into place — it didn’t.

What did arrive instead was a broken ankle and a surgery that forced me into the kind of full stop I probably needed long before it happened.

So rather than charging into the year with plans, goals and resolutions, I’ve been sitting with a slightly different question:

What does it mean to move forward when discipline and momentum aren’t really accessible?

The answer I keep coming back to is alignment.

Alignment asks something gentler of us than goals or resolutions do. It asks for discernment. It asks us to notice when something isn’t working, when something feels heavy, when something quietly isn’t growing the way we expected it to, and from there, it invites small adjustments.

A pivot, a recalibration or a different way forward.

This issue explores that idea from a few different angles.

A story from my garden about the small missing piece that changed everything, a reflection on what it means to keep tending our lives when the calendar says we should already be moving faster, and a practical guide to recognising the quiet signals that something in our life may be out of alignment.

Also new this year — I’ve stepped away from social media entirely.

Instead, I’m inviting deeper connection, conversation and community right here instead. Comments are now open on posts and I’d love to encourage you to share your thoughts, reflections or experiences with me and others also reading along.

Each issue will arrive in your inbox a little like this one — a short note from me and a collection of the latest pieces I’ve published. Sometimes they’ll follow a theme, sometimes they’ll simply reflect what’s been moving through me that season.

Either way, I’m really glad you’re here.

Until next time,

Rhi xx