Everyone seems to want a neat takeaway before January arrives.

I don't have one.

What I have is a story about wanting to skip ahead and learning, slowly, to stay with what is visible right now.

Last week, it was the em dash; now the Oxford comma is the new “AI tell,” according to my daughter. I've been writing for nearly 30 years; it’s appalling that fluency now proves AI use and errors prove humanity. I think we’ve taken the “to err is human” thing a little too far.

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Sometimes I ache watching my teens live the lives I didn’t get.

Their laughter, their ease, their joy—it’s beautiful, but reminds me of years lost.

And yet, in those same moments, I feel a soft, quiet mending. Each choice I make to parent differently chips away at inherited grief.
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Everyone assumes I write because I’m disciplined or called to it. The truth?

My thoughts turn feral if I don’t give them somewhere to live.

Writing is containment, not ambition. It’s a lifelong companion — a tool that keeps reshaping itself as we do.
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“Connection isn’t about winning. It’s about knowing what matters to you—and noticing what matters to them.”
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I stopped writing about my kids for eight years — not because nothing was happening, but because everything was.

That silence taught me that writing isn’t always about documenting, but noticing what deserves a closer look.
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