Guten Tag, Reader,

Here we are again, the liminal week that the Germans call “Time Between The Years.” Neither here nor there, neither now nor then. I was going to mention the term “lame duck,” often used to describe the time between one administration and the next. But then I thought it was lame imagery, so let’s move on.

This is the 100th letter. The first one came out in January 2021 as a continuation of the inaugural email advent calendar.

If you’ve been here since then, thank you, Danke, for still hanging out with me.

If you are brand new, welcome, Wilkommen, to the journey.

My ego obviously wanted 💯 to be a super duper extra special letter. The one you’d print out and frame. The one you’d forward to everyone you know. The one that would make you put hundreds of dollars into my tip jar.

You know what happened?

NOTHING.

Or let’s say a whole lot of things happened that had nothing to do with writing this letter.

• I broke my record time for solving the difficult NYT Sudoku.
• I researched* how to make beads from recycled paper.
• I skied and watched others ski on TV.
• I fixed a jacket, sorted through clothes I no longer want, ate a pleasurable amount of baked goods…

You know what I mean, especially if you’ve ever faced a blank page that your ego decided to turn into your breakthrough piece of writing.

Lucky for me, this is not the first snowball fight between my inner perfectionist, my imposter syndrome, my ennuied writer, and the wild child who just wants to play with words as if they were magnets on a friend’s (or perhaps better, an enemy’s) fridge. The fight probably involved a few more committee members in my head, but the candidates above were undoubtedly the loudest.

So, again, I quieted them all by calling on the one member we’ve all agreed to always listen to: Curiosity. She simply asks the best questions. Like:

• What would happen if you skipped 100?
• Who says that 100 is special?
• What is the opposite of 100?
• Are numbers even real?
• What is the un-special-est thing to write about?

The answer to the last question was New Year’s Resolutions. Why? Let me count the ways:

A) Because everybody writes about them this week,

B) Because I have written about them again and again and again,

C) Because I don’t like them (in case you haven’t figured this out by reading what I’ve written about them).

When I re-visited my past musings on the matter, one part of last year’s letter stood out to me:

It tracks what my Acupuncturist and Qi Gong teacher tell me and what indigenous wisdom teaches us: winter is the worst time to begin anything new. Instead, it is a time to come inside. Preserve energy. Tend to our Qi. Rest. Reflect.

What if we didn’t resolve to be different/better/more?

What if that’s what we have in common with my 100th letter?

A celebration of what is, the path that took us to the here and now, the wisdom we assembled along the way, and trust in the enoughness of it all.

Calling Midlife Women to Adventure

If the above is how you want to walk into 2025, consider the Winter Session of the Midlife Wilderness Expeditions. It will feel like a gathering around a warming fire.

In two monthly group sessions (via Zoom) plus self-paced invitations (via Email), we’ll explore the stories that made us, limit us, and allow us to expand into the kind of joyful midlife we desire**

​Details and Registration (open until Jan 9)

This will be the last chance to enter the Midlife Wilderness Expeditions in their current form. If you have questions or concerns, please reach out.

I will see you back here in 2025. If you liked this letter, please forward it to a friend.

Always on your side, truly,

*I did NOT google it because I use Ecosia as my search engine, and you, too, could plant trees with your search queries.

**These are the kinds of questions we will ask:

📚 What are you telling yourself about your Self? Where are the doubts, fears, resentments, and criticisms coming from? Who wrote them? And when?

📚 What are your shoulda-coulda-woulda stories keeping you from thoroughly enjoying midlife? If-only storylines are the villains, and we shall defeat them.

📚 What is the story you want to write into being about yourself and the world? You are the protagonist and the author. You have all the resources to create your best ever-after.

p.s. If you got something from today's letter, why not buy me a coffee? I am keeping my writing AI-free, so I put much work into it. You can leave me a tip here.

p.p.s.: If you want more of me than a letter every other week, you might enjoy hanging out with me on social media:

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