You are not stuck.

But I know it might feel like you are.

A postcard is propped up beside me that I found in a pile in a wicker basket while decluttering nearly two years worth of whathappenedtous in our bedroom over the weekend. I found it under an inordinate number of orphaned fuzzy socks, my missing vibrator charger (there is a God!), and a sand art kit some kind stranger mailed me back when time was a flash flood.

As soon as I saw the postcard, I remembered the warm light of possibility I felt reading it for the first time, knowing that my friend was holding hope I could barely hold for myself.

That’s the thing about stuckness; it’s only accurate from one vantage point.

On the postcard is a scene from Chiyo’s Garden in Seattle, with blooming trees and a Japanese frog/toad situation in the background that my friend Susannah definitely didn’t know represented my favorite childhood special interest. On the back she wrote:

“Chiyo was a young, chronically ill Japanese American girl, was a writer when confined to her bed. This garden is a memorial to her and her siblings, and I wanted to share her space for vigil with you.”

I held that postcard to my chest the first time I read it, in late September 2023, stuck in bed with no escape in sight. My two biggest tasks that autumn were 1) staying out of the hospital and 2) trying not to despair. The thought of a young sick girl writing from her bed some eighty or ninety years before me gave me strength to keep picking up my pen, even though my thoughts were as fragmented as my hopes.

I kept picking up that pen, and the nearly daily ritual of recording my days and desires formed a scaffolding I was eventually able to climb down from bed back into the land of the upright.¹

Most days, I didn’t want to journal. I often still feel that resistance, the annoyance that opening the gate into whatever goodness is here requires slowing down. It hurts to slow down when you are somewhere you wish you could escape, because it means more fully sensing where you are.

You cannot feel the ground beneath your feet without grieving that you are there and not where you wish to be. Of course you resist that.

You cannot step into more goodness without sensing where you are.

Happy new year?! Why Is This Lady Being Such a Downer?!

Why am I talking about grief at the start of a new year?

Because, with every flip of the calendar into a new year, we carry old losses with us.

Because, I entered last year so afraid that I would stay stuck extremely sick forever that I cannot enter this new year without passing along what the old one taught me.

I guess this is my virtual postcard holding vigil for you.

As I look back on 2024, I see a string of steady and small choices that pulled me out of the depths of despair and back into a life that feels luminous. I am entering 2025 humbled by the challenges that remain—the legs that aren’t healing like I wish they would, the mind that can’t leap and recover like others’ seem to, the heart that is still heavy, the relationships that feel off.

And I am entering 2025 humbled and hopeful, because in 2024 I learned that small actions chosen repetitively over time can lift you back up into a life you love.

Each choice we make to move into goodness requires sensing grief.

When I started swimming last January, I had to sense how out of shape I was after months in bed post medical crisis, fresh out of being diagnosed with Lupus and two dead bones in my knees. I had to feel the sadness of showing up in the pool slower than most of the old folks beside me in the therapy pool. I ended the year swimming laps five days a week. Day after day in that pool, I had to face the presence of pain I couldn’t overcome. But day after day, I became stronger.

I ended 2024 snorkeling in Mexico and the Bahamas among fish that glowed neon bright, and all the small choices I made to show up sad and struggling yet willing to reach toward the strength I want is what made that possible.

Yesterday the snorkeling company sent me this precious photo of me and my dad in the water in Cozumel, and I can’t stop smiling about it. One year ago me would not have believed it was possible to end the year snorkeling in a distant ocean, so strong the waves felt like nothing but joy.

I still have to use a wheelchair (technically, scooter,² because the wheelchair’s too rough on my damaged wrists and shoulders) to get to the lap pool. I still sense grief every time I show up to swim. But I’ve practiced this long enough to know that grief is a gate into goodness.

Yesterday my new editor emailed me the first little snippet of her feedback on my next book—she’s loving reading it.

For so long I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to write another book. I didn’t wait until I was sure I could do it. I showed up with the little bit I could muster.

For months, the effort of scratching out a few sentences took all the energy I had. One year later, I somehow have a whole book written for you. Small choices add up. Small choices carry us into larger goodness.

It’s simple, I know, but here in the morning of a new and daunting year, I want you to know that if you feel stuck, the power of your small choices is more potent than you can yet see.

Small things lifted again and again build strength.

You don’t have to see how and when you’ll get unstuck for it to happen. You just have to show up and lift something small.

Holding hope for you and wishing you a gentle new year,

KJ

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Here’s a little extra for paid subscribers—a poem I wrote this past week. It’s about writing, but, really, it’s about living.³

Small Things