Goodbye, 2025

This year has been marked by awful people doing and causing horrific things. The answer to the question, “Can anyone (especially someone in a position of power) who works to dehumanize a group of people (especially an already marginalized group) be a good person?” is an easy NO. Yet I see people every freaking day who idolize these hateful excuses for human beings.

Apparently, my inability to be ok with this fact means I have a stick up my ass.

This might have bothered me a few years ago, but I’m officially 40 and embracing it. Now, I just laugh at the idea that refusing to condone hate somehow makes me stuck up. 40 is wonderful. 40 is no different from 39 or any other number that came before, except that it comes with the narrative that women in their 40s are out of fucks to give.

Another thing cultural expectations taught me to expect with 40 was a lessening of my value as a sexual object. See, I was objectified when I was younger than my daughter is now, so I have reveled in the lessening of that kind of attention that’s come with motherhood and aging. Then theatre happened. (In a good way!)

This has been an excellent theatre year. I tumbled into one show when a friend asked me to come out for it, which led to an offer of a role in the second show, then my daughter and I auditioned together for a musical that goes up next spring. But those first two roles were hyper sexualized in very different ways. Which was not casting I ever expected to get at 40.

The first role: a nurse in The Sunshine Boys. I assumed it was the snarky home care nurse. I discovered my error at the read-through: I was the fake nurse/human prop for sex jokes. You know it’s bad when the director apologizes for not being able to cut the role. Part of me was wondering if I could back out, but I’d already said I’d do it. So I took the script home and studied the single scene my character appeared in to see if I could make it any less predatory.

For it to not be predatory, it needed consent. For consent, the character needed to be a fully active and willing participant in all the tension and innuendo. The director gave me her blessing, so I ran with it.

I didn’t expect how freeing it would feel to play a character who was so unapologetically sexual and I ended up having an absolute blast. At the end, I was actually sad to let the character go.

But I didn’t have time to dwell, because the next show started up only a week later. I played Doris in Same Time, Next Year, which is a lengthy 2-person show that follows the characters as they have an affair spanning 25 years.

See how this character might be sexualized?

The script is this gorgeously nuanced. I could connect with the character so deeply in so many ways, and the challenge of it all had me so excited that I was off-book by our third rehearsal. For a play that ran close to three hours.

Next up and very different: Frozen, the musical, with my eight-year-old! I’ve been threatening that we would do a show together, and she’s been fully on board with this idea, and it’s finally happening. Rehearsals start next week!

My kids continue to be amazing and both are thriving in school. Having my youngest in full-day pre-k has been amazing for my ability to make experiences happen for them (as well as get back to having a life that isn’t wholly defined by my role as mom).

I’m also loving work as a substitute teacher. I still have so much to learn before I might say I can do it well, but I’m getting better every time I get called in.

This year in writing, I had a short story published in Trollbreath magazine (which is putting out amazing stories and run by two wonderful people, and you should absolutely support them), so it’s eligible for award nominations, if you are the nominating sort.

In other short story submissions, I’ve had four rejections–two form responses, two personal–and I have four more pending. I’ve received three rejections so far from novella queries and only one pending a response, so more queries will be a priority after school starts up again.

And I’m officially mentoring writers! I’ll write more about that soon, but this is something I’ve dreamed about doing for years. It’s terrifying in the way of things you’ve wanted so badly for so long, and I’m psyched.

This year broke my reading streak of 200+ books in a year. I “only” managed 103, which doesn’t include the read-aloud books with the kids. No one has time to count all that.

My knitting has dropped off, too, and these might be related. But I picked up crochet for the first time since I was 7 and made cute little suns for the cast and crew of The Sunshine Boys. Then for Christmas gifts, I made a couple sets of trauma dumplings (here is the original meme that led to amigurumi patterns that became gifts).

So despite the horrors and dumpster fires, I have found a lot of quiet, personal good in the year.

And for 2026, may you and your loved ones have a safe and healthy year, and may your stories, and art, and hope make the world a little kinder, a little better.