Happy New Year’s Eve! I had to get my last words in for the year of 2025. I honestly really liked a lot of my 2025 experience and I almost feel guilty writing it. It seems that it is almost a universal thing to say and to read and to hear that “It’s just wonderful that this ‘god-awful’ year is over.” And yes, the political drama has been exhausting. And everyday life seems to have grown exponentially expensive. And it has been so painful to witness the wars and atrocities that are taking place all over the world. And it is frustrating that we can never seem to get on the same page to focus on solving the world’s biggest problems. And many, many people have suffered terrible personal tragedies and grief in their own private lives in 2025. AND ALSO – people got married in 2025, people had babies in 2025, people found the loves of their lives in 2025, people healed from dire sicknesses in 2025, and if you need more positive examples, there are outlets to read about everyday kindnesses, every single day. And I clicked on one of those “stories about kindness” just now. The article talks about a city in Texas that is running a “Grandma Stand”, where three grandmas rotate being at the stand, in order to offer free comfort, love, hugs and advice for anyone who comes up to the stand asking for it. One Grandma, whose daughter volunteered her for the job, had this to say, “Grandmas are nonjudgmental and loving people. Sometimes it’s nice to talk to someone who’s basically a stranger, but you still feel a connection with.”
Maybe we all could work on being better “Grandmas” in the coming year. No matter our ages, our sexes, our family situations, we could all work to be better examples of kindness, lovingness, compassion, and connection. If we woke up every day with the idea that our job and our purpose was to work the “Grandma stand”, wouldn’t the world be a better place? We all have an “inner grandma” and she’s just itching to come out and to offer up some sweet love to a world that we all seem to universally agree, needs more of it. If we honestly believe that 2025 was the worst (or perhaps feel a little “survivor’s guilt” because we don’t think that 2025 was all that bad, at least in our own personal lives), what would our inner grandma say to do? I imagine her advice would be something along the lines of doing and being more of the simple things we often universally associate with good grandmas – softness, kindness, wisdom, sharing treats, support, cheer, reassurance, warmth, unconditional love. Our inner grandma is essentially love wrapped up in the most comforting of packages. We just have to remember to give that package away. Our inner grandmas are strong in the softest of ways, wise in the most reassuring of ways, and beautiful in the simplest of ways.
I wish for you in 2026, to become more intimately involved with your own inner grandma and to accept her love, and her comfort, and her reassurance, and her wisdom. I wish for you in 2026, to share more of your own inner grandma with everyone whom you come in contact with, every single day, so that when we roll around to this time again next year, the universal judgment of the year we just experienced together won’t seem so harsh. It won’t seem so negative and hopeless and full of division. It won’t seem so desolate, frustrated, and hardened. I hope that at this time next year we will be reflecting on our past year, with our inner grandma’s lens and heart. And we will be focused on all of the everyday experiences we had throughout the year, and feel nothing but overwhelmingly grateful for this experiment of living “a one and only lifetime.” Maybe, just maybe, on this last night of 2025, we could connect with our inner grandma, and look at this past year through her lens and her heart and feel just a little bit better, as we enter a whole new year of our precious lives.
“If nothing is going well, call your grandmother.” — Italian Proverb
“Grandmothers are short on criticism and long on love.” — Janet Lanese
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
