let it linger
reflections + art + a prompt for the new year
Happy new year, friends! I’ve been absent from this newsletter for a bit but I am excited to be back and I have some fun things to share in the coming months. Here’s an excerpt from my journal, and a 2026 journaling prompt for paid subscribers. Sending you all love ♡ Kika
It is the second day of the year and the house is a ‘swallow-you-whole’ kind of quiet.
Andrew is on the yellow sofa working on a lesson plan, and I am at the kitchen table, waiting for my coffee to be cool enough to sip.
We just finished a deep house clean, prompted by the past 24 hours where we did nothing but eat cereal, binge-watch the entire final season of Stranger Things, and snuggle on the couch. We knitted too — that’s something.
My family left town after the holidays yesterday, and we immediately collapsed into the dream day of our 12-year-old-selves. It was magnificent. Spending time with family does that to you — it awakens your dormant child, and reverts something in you.
This last week with relatives, I kept thinking about how big family gatherings are like participating in a group remembering, re-living a shared memory. We are there to play-act our childhood, and our parents childhood — not in the literal sense, but in the sticky dynamics and habits and patterns that form between people who’ve known us since the beginning.
It is sweet and sentimental, frustrating and naive, tender and inevitable. And I feel so lucky to do it often, and to have people who remind me of the child inside. So I’m glad Andrew and I gave ourselves a day to linger in it — especially because today is January 2nd. And January 2nd is the type of day you re-awaken your adult self, clean your house, get back to work, and start to look ahead.
So my first intention, on this new year, is to try and stay in this specific, post-family post-holiday-haze a bit longer. To carry forward my inner child this year, too.
Lots of love,
Kika
