Goodbye, 2025

 2025 is coming to a close, if you can believe it. If you’re feeling stressed (and maybe a little relieved) that the end of the year is here, you aren’t alone. This week, Nora’s sharing her strategies for finishing out 2025 and ushering in 2026 – without the expectations that you have to become a shiny, brand new, unblemished version of yourself. If you want a gentle, helpful guide for starting 2026, this is the episode for you.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Hi.
Hi.
Hi there.
Hi.
Hi. Hey, Nora.
I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking, a call-in show about what matters to you. I have always been bewitched by the idea of a fresh start.
I love a new notebook, I love a new word document, a Google document, I love a new carton of yogurt that nobody has taken a spoon to, it’s just smooth on top. I love the idea of a blank space waiting to be filled. And that is the magic.
And that’s the magic that a new year promises us. But eventually, it’s just a notebook. And eventually, it is just another document with like three thoughts in.
Eventually, it is just a carton of yogurt. Eventually, it’s just a year.
And I say that because the pressure of a new year often feels like pressure to be a new you, to burn it all down and start over and be the kind of person who believes that they are a specific kind of person.
But in my experience, life is not really like that. I am a morning person when I get enough sleep and when I’m ready to wake up before the sun. I am a creature of habit except on days when I’m not.
And when I’ve used newness, specifically the new year, like a self-hazing ritual meant to reinvent myself, it hasn’t gone well. I know myself well enough to know that I can’t bully myself into big resolutions and huge commitments.
I know that the most important thing to me is that I like myself and that I like the life that I’m living. And yet, I have had my 2026 planner for months, and I can’t wait to use it. I have several 2026 calendars ready for my workspace.
They are already hanging up. One that is every single day of the year, laid out on one page right above my desk, so I can see the entire year at a glance.
And then another one that has several individual loose pages, one for every month of the year, so I can zoom in and look at the month that I’m in. But we’re still here in 2025. This year is not over yet, even if we are over it.
And I think that we are over it. 2025 has been like, so many years before, just a doozy, a doozy. That’s really the only way to properly describe it.
I have been told by many TikTok astrologers that we are finishing up the year of the snake, that Pluto is finally leaving Capricorn, that the final Mercury retrograde of the year has just finished. And I don’t know what any of that means.
I know when they’re saying it, that it makes a lot of sense and I’m nodding along. As soon as somebody is done explaining astrology to me, I have no idea what they’ve said. I just know that they were correct and it all made a lot of sense.
And to quote my friend Kate Kennedy of the Be There In 5 podcast, astrology is like a group photo.
4:19
Apple Podcasts

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I’m only looking at myself. I’m only looking at Capricorn. Everyone else, you could have your eyes closed.
I don’t know what kind of year you are about to have or what kind of a year you just had. But in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about 2025. I want to give 2025 a proper sendoff.
Earlier this week, our paid subscribers on Substack got a bonus episode with a recap of 2025, an annual report for the business side of things that is linked in the episode description. But this time, this episode, it’s personal. It’s personal.
I’m sharing a few things that I do at the end of the year to close it out, send it on its way and welcome a new one. These are things that feel helpful and nurturing and not judgmental and punitive.
And I’m going to talk about a lot of things in this episode. So I will also be linking to the Substack post that has all of this laid out inside of it. So you can see it all in one place.
You can reference it if you would like to. And like with anything, take what you like and leave the rest. Maybe it’s because I’m self-employed and spend most of my days alone in this room.
Maybe it’s the fact that my sense of time was fully destroyed by the pandemic, and it feels like we have just been in an extended cut of 2020 for half a decade. Maybe it’s because I’m just so present.
Maybe it’s because my memory is degrading, but I have a hard time even remembering what happened in a year. By Q4, by December, I couldn’t tell you a single thing that happened this past year. I don’t know how old I am.
I don’t know if anything big happened, anything small happened.
6:10
Calendar as Journal
Several times this week, preparing for this episode, I asked somebody, did this thing happen this year or last year? And they told me it happened three or four years ago. I swear it felt more recent.
Now, I keep a planner, I keep a journal. I have several paper calendars all around that I just mentioned, but someone told me once that our calendar, like our calendar on our phones or in our planners, our calendar is actually a kind of journal.
And for someone who puts their entire life into a digital calendar, and again, two paper calendars, yes, I fully agree. It is really the best representation of how we spent our time.
And a calendar really is the best representation of how we spent our time, what we did in a day, a year, a week. And looking at my year month by month really honestly jogs my memory and reminds me of what actually happened this year.
I sometimes often feel like I didn’t get enough done. I didn’t have enough fun. I wasn’t a good enough mom.
I definitely wasn’t a good enough wife. I’m a terrible friend. I’m a terrible daughter.
I’m a terrible sibling. The list goes on. A lot of evidence, to the contrary, is in my calendar.
I went through my year month by month. I wrote out highlights, any lowlights, if there were them, and really got a picture of what my year was like. Not what it feels like when I’m about to start my period and my brain has fully turned on me.
Not what it feels like when things go wrong, and I think they have never and will never go right, but the reality of how my year really was. And I think it was Brandi from the Lady to Lady podcast who said that.
7:52
Apple Podcasts

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I’m pretty sure. I’m pretty sure she is the person who told me that. But since then, I have really used my calendar in a different way.
So if it wasn’t on my calendar to go and get breakfast this morning by myself, I will go and add it in. I will go and say like breakfast at Sophia’s so I can remember next year. Oh yeah, I did.
I went and did stuff. Like I was a part of my neighborhood. Like I went out to breakfast, things like that, right?
Any little thing. I go to yoga with a friend, and I didn’t add the class to my calendar when I signed up for it. I’ll add it in, right?
We get lunch afterwards, I add that in. Maybe that sounds silly, but it really is a way to document my life. And some of those things might end up in a journal, but to actually see it all laid out on the calendar is pretty helpful.
So looking at all this, I did have a good year. I had a good year. I saw my friends.
I spent time with the kids. I went to the dentist several times. I love going to the dentist.
I had hard times. Yes, of course, some really, really hard, crappy things happened this year, but put into context month by month, the good days far outweighed the bad ones.
So that is my first recommendation, is to go through your 2025 calendar and audit your year. Think about what worked. Think about what didn’t.
Think about what was new. Like, what did you try that you didn’t before? Who did you spend time with?
Who did you not get enough time with? And if you are a person who sets goals or sets resolutions, how did you do? What did you learn?
Zora Neale Hurston wrote, There are years that ask questions and years that answer. What was 2025 for you? Was it a year that asked questions or a year that answered them?
And there is no time like today to start using your own calendar, like a journal, moving forward, to just add in the things that happened once they’ve happened on your calendar. I mean, I don’t know, just try it.
Try it for a week, try it for a month, and see what it does for you. What are the ways that you measure or define your year? One of the ways that I measure or define my year is by how well it aligned with the vision that I set for the year.
10:07
Annual Mood Board
For the past few years, I have spent a day, usually New Year’s Day, I think this year it might have to be December 30th, we’ll see, making a mood board for the coming year.
I do this after I’ve taken the time to reflect on the year that I’ve had, and I do it analog. This is a practice that I learned from Elizabeth Cot of the Two Niche podcast, who I will link to. And she does these workshops online.
If you ever want to attend one and do this with a group of people. Some people actually like to make a mood board, a vision board quarterly or even monthly.
I like one big mood board for the year, and I like to do it once that I’ve really looked at the year that I’ve been through. All year, I save magazines and thrifted books, and I have tons of both of these things.
I put them out on a bunch of tables with glue sticks and washi tape and paint markers, and I get together with friends and family, and we hang out and we make a mood board, a vision board if you want to call it that.
I call it a mood board for the coming year. You can do this online. People do this on Canva.
You can do it on PowerPoint. I like the tactile experience of paging through magazines, paging through books, like finding bits of ephemera that I can use to kind of assemble something. I think that’s important to my process.
Mine are not super literal. So I’m not writing out something like, I will write a book this year, or I’m going to make X amount of money. I don’t do that.
I’m really just setting a tone for the year. I’m setting a theme for the year. I’m setting a mood for the coming year.
And in the process of making what is essentially a collage, this little piece of art, it really reveals to me what is important and what the vision is that I’m holding for the year ahead. It’s not me creating one.
It’s me kind of uncovering what is in my subconscious almost. Now, when I’m done with the mood board, when I have, you know, mod podged it, sealed it up and it is dry, I scan it and I make it the background image on my computer and on my phone.
And I also frame it so that when I walk into the studio for work, five days a week, sometimes six, that it’s the first thing I see. So I am seeing this mood board every single day, several times a day. And you can laugh at this.
Some people will find it silly, but there is evidence that this works. Not that what you put on your vision board or your mood board fully comes true.
I have a complicated relationship with the term manifesting because what in the privilege are we really talking about when it comes to that? But there is evidence that visual stimuli can prompt and prime our thoughts and behavior.
So when you see something every day that is meant to get you to think of the ideal version of your life, you might start to take actions and have thoughts that align with that ideal version of your life.
And again, these are not really literal accomplishments that I want mostly. This is like a kind of energy, and it reflects the priorities that I have for this year.
Front and center on the 2025 mood board was this little sort of scrap illustration that I found in a magazine from like 2022 that I had somehow saved and it said, get offline.
This was the year that I really ended up using my brick regularly, like repeatedly using it almost all day, every day, like cutting down my screen time extremely. I also had Diane Keaton on my mood board for the year for a lot of reasons.
I just, I loved her. I loved her energy. She died this year.
Was that my fault because I put her on the mood board? I don’t know, but I am having a Diane Keaton December. And if you’re watching this as a video, you will see, you will see that I am wearing many layers.
I’m covering up, I’m adding scarves. No one’s going to see my neck again, not in the month of December. I’m wearing so many turtlenecks this month.
And so I don’t know, these things are helpful, and they’ve been very helpful to me.
Like when you see something every day, and that something is, you know, reminding you of how you want to live your life, it really can help you make decisions that align with that ideal version of yourself, that vision that you have for this year.
Two years ago, my theme for the year was I Will Enjoy This Life. It is from a poem by Kate Bear. And during that year, I was offered a very big opportunity.
And I say big opportunity with finger quotations around it. You can probably hear, even if you’re just listening to the podcast, because opportunity is such a, ooh, such a word.
Sometimes when people mean, say opportunity, they mean a soul sucking obligation. And I could tell that this is what that was about to become. This was with a very, very famous person.
Like famous, everybody on earth has heard this person’s name, a dazzling opportunity. Truly one where I was like, can you believe this? And everyone in my life was like, what?
And it directly conflicted with the vision that I had for my year. That mood board, that vision board was like, peace, flowers, chickens, rest in peace to the chickens that I had until a coyote had them for breakfast. And I said, no, I can’t do this.
I can’t do this. I could not put all of that on a mood board. That poem, I will enjoy this life on a mood board.
Look at it every single day and choose that job opportunity that was definitely not going to pay off with money.
So I swear to you, I swear to you something that I have learned is the bigger the name, the more famous, the more rich, the less they will actually want to pay you to do your work. They will offer you less than just a regular person would pay you.
I think because regular people know the value of the work that they are asking someone else to do and that’s something that I’m willing to, I will state that on the record and I’ve said that to people who probably didn’t want to hear it.
Ask me about my one-way grudge with an American royal. Just ask. It’s not Meghan Markle.
I will tell you because I have a big mouth and I guess I’m just messy. But I don’t think I can place all of that decision on a mood board.
I think that therapy, my therapist specifically, the work that I’ve done on myself in the past few years, probably contributed to that, sure.
But again, I could not look at that vision board 100 times a day, maybe more, that showed how much I ache for simplicity and ease and take on that project. Experts call that alignment between ourselves and our values and our goals self-concordance.
And that has also been shown to improve our happiness. So look, is a vision board or a mood board going to change your life? Yeah, maybe, maybe it will, maybe it will.
Either way, this is a big bookend to my year. This is something that I look forward to doing.
And I will share those on the post as well so you can see what my last few mood slash vision boards were and when this year’s is ready, I will share that too because it is interesting to see how I think about a year coming up, write about it on
Substack and then look at it 365 days later. And I hesitated at the number 365 as though I didn’t know what it would be. How many days are there in a year? All right, it is time for an ad break and we’ll be right back.
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25:18
Family Awards Night
So, December 31st, 2025 will be our third annual Family Awards Night. This is something that I made up. This is something that I would love for any of you to steal, iterate on, and make your own in any way.
It is pretty much what it sounds like. I can’t look back at the year that I’ve had without looking back at my whole family’s year. And I like to take the opportunity whenever I can to make up a holiday, to make up a celebration.
In our house, we celebrate half birthdays with half of a cake. You just make a round cake, cut it in half, ice the middle, stack it on top of each other. It looks like half a cake.
It’s so cute. Kids love it. Adults love it.
Half birthdays are a thing. And so now is family awards night. The older kids are right now 19 and 24.
So obviously they have their own New Year’s Eve plans. So this starts very, very, very early in the evening. Basically in the afternoon.
But I try to make it special. I am the Academy. I am the MC.
I am the presenter. I make a presentation. I talk about what each person has to be proud of for the year.
I go through their highlights for the year. I give them an award that was named and made, especially for them. So the first year, Matthew got the MVP award for being our family’s most valuable player for many obvious reasons.
But I got to talk about all of the things he does for our family, the kind of unsung parts of his role in our family, and really show him how much I appreciate him and how much everybody appreciates him.
Last year, Ralph got an award I called the Try Guy Award because he tried so many new things.
And part of the fun for me is coming up with something that is really unexpected for them, something that they should be celebrated for, that they wouldn’t normally get an award for, that they wouldn’t get a trophy for, wouldn’t get a certificate
for. I want to celebrate those things and really show the people who I love, that they are seen and they are known, and that we care about them, and that even little things are worth celebrating and being proud of.
So, yes, there are always big milestones, and I will recap those in my talk as I talk this person up, but I really try to find something unexpected to give them an award for and really shine a light on that part of their lives. And you could do this.
You could do this with your own family. You could do this with your friends, with your friends who are your family. You could have people pick a name and they make that award for a specific person.
And they do that part of the presentation. You don’t have to take all of this on yourself. That is just a specific form of self-harm that I like to do.
And you can do this at any time, right? Not just the new year, but I do think it’s a fun and special way to make the people who are special to you feel special.
I saw something on TikTok a few days ago, and I wish I would have downloaded or saved it, but it was girls who were in their 20s, and there was a big cake that they had made. The camera’s set up in front of the cake.
Each of them had made a little flag on a toothpick. Something they were excited about. They got to celebrate something that they were excited about, where one girl was like, I went for a walk outside every 365 days this year.
What? Okay, that’s wild. Boop, yay, everyone cheers.
I got a promotion. Yay, everybody cheers. And that is so fun too.
I think anytime you can get people together to feel good about the things that they have done and the things that other people have done and kind of just spread that kind of positivity, it can mean a lot.
And it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money, right? Like these can just be like, they can be paper plate awards that you make each other. But I think it’s really about the effort and seeing each other.
That is what really makes it special. So we end awards night with three questions. I give everyone a sheet of paper, and I have them answer these in writing.
And they don’t have to share their answers with anyone else, but I do think that it is important for everybody to think about these questions.
I at least want to put it into their minds and give them this kind of little self-awareness exercise to think about the past year and gear up for the new year. And again, you could do these at any time. So the three questions are these.
What do I want more of this year? What do I want less of this year? And how can the people who love me support me?
So think about those questions yourself as you go into the new year. Maybe bring them to your friends, your family, three simple questions. What do you want more of?
What do you want less of? And how can the people who love you support you? I think that last one is so important because we don’t always know what we want from other people.
And I think often other people are loving and supporting us the way that they want to be loved and supported, not necessarily the way that we want to be loved and supported, and how could they possibly know better when they don’t have the
information? And how could we communicate the information to them if we haven’t taken the time to think about it? So those are the three questions.
And it’s been so amazing to have that information from the people I love to kind of show me what they need from me, even if they just hand me the piece of paper afterwards and I read it, right? Which is what several of the children did.
I say several children, there’s just four, but let’s say half the children did that, and I read it and I was like, okay, I never would have known that, buddy. I’m so glad that I know. And, you know, our, this is the first year.
So at one point, we had a first grader, right? We had a first grader, right? He’s scratching out those sentences as best he can, but like he had really insightful answers.
And, you know, it’s, you can be surprised. You can be surprised by what people will come up with if you give them the opportunity to think about these questions.
31:55
Try New Things
You know how you get your dog to sit, how you get your dog to shake hands, how you get your dog to make your bed in the morning, brew you a cup of coffee, and then bring it to you on a little tray while dressed like a maid?
It’s called positive reinforcement. And you are not a dog, of course, but you are a soft little mammal who deserves a life that is not just based on avoiding negative consequences.
So you do not need to walk into a new year, holding out your palms for the world to slap them with a ruler if you don’t fully reinvent yourself or become your best self. You get to be nice to yourself.
You get to reinforce your choices with little celebrations or with just the baseline appreciation that you are a person who is doing your best and knowing that your best is going to change.
So why not approach this new year by saying, not I resolve to or I will, but I want to try. I want to try to wake up earlier a few days a week.
I want to try a new sport and see if I like it, not I’m going to commit to playing pickleball 300 days this year. I want to try a new sport. I want to try a new activity.
I want to try to get along with my mom’s new boyfriend. That’s a hypothetical. My mom is very single and in my opinion, ready to mingle.
She’s a beautiful 76-year-old woman. She can do several pull-ups. She’s interesting.
She likes art enough. I’ve already sold my mother on this podcast several times over. Enough about my mom and her dateability.
I’ve already fished for a boyfriend for her on this podcast numerous times. For me this year, I want to try to learn mahjong and how to spell it. That’s a social game.
I have one friend who is interested in learning how to play. Shout out Alisha. I’m willing to add more people to that if you’re in Phoenix proper.
Okay. All respect to the suburbs. I can’t go out there.
So if you’re in Phoenix proper, you want to learn mahjong with me and Alisha, you let me know. I want to try a stained glass class. I’ve been talking about this for years.
I love stained glass. It’s so beautiful. It’s an intricate hobby.
It costs a lot of money. My habit when I say I’m going to start a new hobby is I’m going to commit to a new hobby and I’m going to commit financially first before I know if I like it or if I’m good at it. I’m going to go to a needlepoint store.
I’m going to spend, I didn’t know how much needlepoint costs. Let’s just put it that way. Let’s put it that way.
They ran my credit card and I said, here’s hoping. Okay, woo, woo, all that for, okay, okay. How many needlepoints have I finished?
Several, in a way, they’re done. I’m done with them. Let’s put it that way.
I’m done with them. I love needlepoint. I’m always going to like needlepoint.
I will never be good at it, but I’ve tried needlepoint and I’ve said, I like it, okay. I want to try stained glass in a class setting instead of buying all the things. We also don’t have room for a hobby in our home.
So, I just want to try it. I want to try a class. I want to try letting some of my gray streaks grow out just here at the temples, okay.
I just found my perfect hair color. This is the best that I’ve ever looked according to at least five people. But also, there’s no, I can’t just keep dying over these little pieces in the front.
They fade. They’re committed to being gray. And I think it would be cool to just go fully Polly Walnuts from The Sopranos and have those streaks.
So that is something that I want to try. And again, try, try. These are not blood oaths.
These are not things that I have to do. Nobody will die if I don’t learn mahjong. These are just things that I want to try.
And if I don’t get around to them or if I try them and I decide that they aren’t for me, big deal. I was just trying something. I am a big routine girl.
I have to do the same things every day. One, it just feels good to be consistent, and two, if I don’t do the same thing every day, I kind of feel like my life is gonna fall apart, but that is a topic for my therapist, not for a podcast ad.
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It’s like chocolate mint flavored at the end of the night and just helps me wind down, relieve some stress, relax my mind, and get ready to sleep. It’s supporting my natural sleep cycle so I can wake up feeling refreshed, not groggy.
Right now, you know, tis the season, AG1 has their best offer ever. Go to drinkag1.com/thanks.
You’ll get a welcome kit, a morning person hat, cute, a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2, an AG1 flavor sampler, and you will get to try that new sleep supplement AGZ for free, which has been really a lovely addition to my nightly routine.
That’s drinkag1.com/thanks for $126 in free gifts for new subscribers. We get support from Skims and I am currently being supported by Skims. Right now, I am wearing the Fits Everybody T-shirt bra.
I’m not wearing a T-shirt, but I am wearing a very, very thin sweatshirt, a sweatshirt that I, it’s vintage. I’m wearing a thin vintage sweatshirt. I bought it in Louisville.
It was like $20. It’s from the 70s, but it’s still soft on the inside. This is how I know it hasn’t been worn.
But I love the T-shirt bra because yes, it’s an underwire, but it is so comfortable. It is so supportive. Gives you a nice shape, not padded, but very supportive.
It’s a great everyday bra. I love it. Mostly, I’m wearing, mostly I’m wearing the triangle bralettes.
Just got the racer back bralette, so I could wear it underneath tank tops.
I’m mostly a bralette girl, but you know, I will, on occasion, I’ll wear a real underwire bra, but only if it is the Skims Fits Everybody, or if I really wanna like have like gazooms, which Marcel has asked me to stop saying, I’ll be wearing the Fits
Everybody like push up bra. Everybody loves Skims because Skims fits everybody. Huge range of sizes, huge range of skin tone shades, and they just feel so good.
I am a full butt coverage underwear girl that fits everybody full brief, really truly fits everybody. I wear a medium, my daughter Sophia is like five feet tall, she’s a foot shorter than me.
We were in an emergency situation where she needed a pair of underwear, but the underwear fit her. I can’t explain it, I just know that it is magical. It is the season to gift other people, but I think it’s also the season to gift yourself.
So go ahead, shop my favorite bras and underwear at skims.com. If you want to support our show, here’s what you can do.
When you make your order, you can select podcast in the survey, then you select our show Thanks For Asking in the drop down menu that follows. Is this a lot of work? Yes, but you are a very hard worker.
So shop gifts for everybody on your list, including you at the Skims Holiday Shop. That is open now at skims.com. They’ve got jammies, they’ve got cozy closies.
Ooh, they’ve got a panty advent calendar. That is interesting. That’s skims.com.
Let them know we sent ya.
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Now, I have a caveat, I have a reminder, I have a little thing that I really want everybody to take to heart. Open up your heart, wrap up these words, tuck them in there.
You can always take what you like and leave the rest, and that goes with everything in life. There’s nothing actually magical about a new year. This is a date on the calendar.
You are allowed to start over, you are allowed to walk away, you are allowed to reset, restart whenever you want to, and whenever you need to.
And that might not be on January 1st, when the days are short and cold and you are barely recovered from the holidays.
It could be January 30th, it could be March 23rd, it could be June 16th, it could be September 8th, it could be literally any day of the calendar year, and it won’t be any more or less special or meaningful.
You do not need to let an arbitrary date on the calendar push you into an endless and mostly fruitless quest for self-improvement and self-mastery. You don’t need to set resolutions and huge commitments.
You can just try things and decide what works as you go. You do not need to charge into the new year trying to be your best self. Your self, as you are right now, is more than good enough.
Now, I can’t hold an awards night for all of you, but I still wanted to help you celebrate what you are proud of.
42:25
Listener Achievements
There’s nothing too small. There’s nothing too silly. It is no small thing to make it through another year in this busted up world.
So if you have something small to celebrate about this year, I want you to celebrate it. Okay, make yourself a cake, cheer for yourself, and in the meantime, let’s celebrate each other.
All right, Olivia wrote to us and said, I just bought my first home, four exclamation marks, and it’s all mine and my cat’s. Round of applause, round of applause. That’s actually a huge thing.
I hope you feel so proud of yourself. That is no small feat, especially in today’s economy, as they say.
Congratulations, I literally, I hope this is everything that you dreamed it would be, and I hope you and your cat, and maybe future cats, I mean, you own a home.
No one can tell you how many cats that you’re allowed to own, unless there are city ordinances. But look those up, but I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to have quite a lot of cats in most places.
Hey Nora, you asked what I’m proud of this year, and I’m proud of keeping the faith. I’ve been running a Scrappy Arts nonprofit, and we didn’t get state funding, but I moved my body practically every day, and I made some beautiful art.
Kids are growing up, and I am too. What are you most proud of? Don’t turn this around on me.
Don’t turn this around on me, how dare you? But I walked into that. What am I most proud of this year?
I am proud of just keeping it together. I feel like this was like my most even keeled emotionally here, I know the bar is low. You’ve heard me cry on this podcast pretty much almost every episode.
But we also just had like a lot of fun as a family, and that means a lot to me. So I feel like I was very present with my family, and did not let work and work anxiety take over my life. So that’s just off the top of my head.
I bet there’s something I’m prouder of, but that was the first thing I thought of. How dare you? What am I proud of?
Giving birth to my first kiddo. Baby girl was born December 6th. I was so scared and anxious about becoming a mom, but I already can’t imagine life without her.
That is also huge. December 6th, that was so… When I’m recording this, that was five days.
You had a baby five days ago. You better be so proud of yourself. Wow.
The way my whole body just kept the score and said, five days ago, I’m engaging my pelvic floor. Please take care of that pelvic floor. You just had a baby.
You didn’t ask for advice. You’re in the honeymoon, the bliss stage. May you stay there forever.
Babies are wonderful. I can like smell this baby. The smell of a baby head has to be one of the most intoxicating smells in the world.
But you take care of that pelvic floor. I don’t care how you gave birth to that baby. You make sure you are taking care of that body.
It is such a, you went through a thing, a huge thing. Wow. Congratulations.
I’m, this, we’re just supposed to be celebrating, not telling people what their bodies, you were there. You know what happened to your body.
Okay.
Hi, Nora. I don’t know what called me to finally answer a prompt, but probably because I have a tendency to be hard on myself and not remember all the good things that I’ve done or that have happened. Anyway, what, did I text this in?
No. Okay. The thing I’m proud of, this year I started a craft club in our small slash medium sized town and it’s been such a source of joy.
The IRL connection that is fostered for the group feels major. It is. It is.
We are in a loneliness crisis. I am so happy that people like you exist and that you made a craft club. I love this.
We’ve grown from three people to 15 people and it’s now twice a month. It’s a gab session with other crafty people in our town. It’s not surprising.
We’ve also found some political solidarity in an area that is, well, similar to many small towns in America. People, start the club you’ve always wanted to be a part of. I cannot recommend it enough.
Following the IRL connection emphasis into the new year for sure. Thanks. And you’re the best.
Megan, you are the best. I am so excited for your craft club. And honestly, I do want to know more about this craft club.
We should all be starting a craft club. We should all be getting together. We should all be doing our part to make connections out in the world.
It is so important. We’ve got a couple more. I know we’re going to get more.
And by the way, you can always text me the thing that you are proud of, and I will always be excited for you. I will always celebrate with you, and especially this kind of thing, right?
I finished my master’s degree, and it feels like no one gives a shit. Granted, it took me a long time, but I’m the first one in my family to get a bachelor’s and a master’s. I started during COVID, had a kid, worked as an ICU nurse the entire time.
Just a smidge of recognition would be nice. I agree, and I’m so proud of you. I’d be proud of you if it took you 10 years, five years, by the way, is not that long, and you’re working, working as an ICU nurse.
That’s like double, that’s like triple working and raising, right? Yeah, had a kid, not even just raising a kid, had a kid at the same time. Yes, you deserve recognition.
You deserve celebration. I truly am so proud of you. I’m so excited for you, and you should be celebrated for that.
So I hope you hear the applause coming through your speakers, through your headphones, because everyone who is listening to this is also so, so proud of you.
My husband died this year, and I am still here, still putting one foot in front of another for me and for our children. Again, again, these are not small things. These are very, very, very big things.
Making it through the world at any point in time, making it through a year is a big deal, but making it through the year when you’ve had a seismic loss in your life, you deserve more than the cake. You deserve more than a cake.
Hi. I’m calling about what I accomplished this year that I’m really proud of. I got pregnant on my own using a sperm donor via IVF and had a baby and survived a life-threatening infection after I had her.
And I was really afraid that I was going to be sort of a checked out mom, and I was also really afraid that I was going to die with that infection. And so far, so good. I’m not dead as evidenced by this voicemail.
And I don’t think I’m a checked out mom. I think I’m doing pretty well, especially solo parenting. So I’m really proud of myself for doing both of those things, living and becoming a parent.
I’d always wanted to be a parent. And I got divorced at 37 and made it happen for myself at 40, had the baby at 41. So yeah, I’m very proud of myself for those things.
I am so proud of you for those things too.
Not dead and became a parent in one year? Heck yes. That is worth celebrating.
Congratulations. I love this. What I’m most proud of this year is surviving.
Surviving a TFMR slash miscarriage for a very wanted baby. Forcing myself to start therapy and be gentle with myself throughout this whole brutal experience has been a challenge, but I’m proud to have done it. Hoping for joy in 2026.
All around you, everywhere you go, there are people who are surviving, have survived, something that you know nothing about in this world.
You might be one of them, one of those people who’s just walking around, everybody thinks you’re normal, only you know that you have this big secret pain that you are carrying around with you.
It weighs a billion pounds and you are the strongest person alive. It is not just you. There are people all over who are carrying a similar, a similar kind of pain, a similar kind of secret.
And I truly hope that you are proud of yourself for making it, making it through this year. And May 2026 bring you so much joy. We’ll see you next year.
Thanks for being here with us, guys. This has been Thanks For Asking. Remember, remember, remember, remember, what’s our phone number?
612-568-4441. You can call, you can text, you can email us. Thank you to everybody who has liked, shared, reviewed this podcast, okay?
Wonderful. Thank you for helping keep us going. We do have, you know, completely optional ways to support this show.
When is it going to that YouTube? Sorry, I’m getting hundreds of views there. Guys, I mean, is it taking off?
No. Am I gonna keep doing it? Yes.
Why? It’s fun for me. I can’t explain it.
We have a Substack where you can subscribe if you want to, if you want to throw something in, you know, at the $8 level. Thank you to Marcel Malekibu for producing this episode. Thank you to Grace for producing the videos.
Thank you to Geoffrey Lamar Wilson for making our opening theme music.
His albums are linked on Spotify and Apple in our episode description, but the music you’re hearing right now, that is from my young son Q, and he would like to write another song, but he also is asking for it.
He asked for a significant, he asked for a higher amount of money this second time around, and I said, buddy, we are on a budget. But thank you to our supporting producers. These are people who are paid subscribers to the show.
You could do monthly, you could do annually, or you get your name in the credits by paying a different level, a different level. And the only benefit is that you get your name in the credits.
So big thank you to Joy Heising, KM., Nancy Duff, Jenny Madain, Jordan Jones, Sheila Kathleen Langerman, Ben, Jess, Michelle Toms, Tom Stockburger, Jen, Beth Derry, Stacey Demaro, Emily Ferrizo, Stephanie Johnson, Faye Barons, Amanda, Sarah Garifo,
Jennifer McDagle, All Caps, Elia Filiz-Milan, Lindsey Lund, Renee Kepke, Chelsea Cernik, Car Pan, LGS, Stacey Wilson, Courtney McCown, Kaylee Sakai, Mary Beth Berry, my high school gym teacher, Love You Forever, Jothea Disopolis, Mad, Abia Rose,
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