Hi friends, I am interrupting my blog break to tell you my exciting news:
ZOMG I cannot believe it, friends. It’s here it’s here it’s here! Full book description and all the purchase details are available at nicolemacpherson.com (and it’s such a pretty little website!!!), but here are some shortcuts:
I am very excited to share this with you, friends. Many of you asked me about my writing process and publishing journey, and I promise – I PROMISE – I will give you all the details! But now I am FOR REAL on blog break for a little bit and I will be back to talk to you all about my adventures, both in writing and in reality. xo
As I was putting together my Favourite Things this month, I realized that all of them started, or sort of started, with the letter C. So many C words! But not this C word:
My friend Hannah (HI HANNAH) sent that to me a few years ago and I think about it constantly. Every time I feel grumpy or irritated, including but not limited to around the holiday season, I think I’m a cunty reindeer topiary today! It is immediately cheering.
So I guess that IS kind of one of my Favourite Things.
Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Brought To You By The Letter C Edition
Correcting The Crepe
Listen, I am a Lady of a Certain Age, and while I do not, Nora Ephron-like, feel bad about my neck, I also don’t feel great about it. I mean, it’s fine. When I smile fully all the ligaments pop out like a striated tree trunk, and it’s slightly shadowed by jowls, but in general, it’s fine. It’s a neck. Nothing is going to change those features.
But I do want the skin on my neck – and decolletage – to be as smooth as possible, and so I was influenced by a podcaster to buy this cream from Gold Bond:
I must tell you that the influencer in question is in her thirties and so I question how much crepe she is correcting, here, but I have been using this for the requisite (for me) three months, and I can say that I do see a difference. I apply a little to my stomach and lower back as well, and I really think my skin is much softer and less crepey. At the very least, it’s extremely moisturizing and also unscented, so it would probably be great for anyone suffering from winter-dry, sensitive skin.
Caffeine, Inside and Out
There are people who don’t mainline caffeine like their lives and the lives of their loved ones depend on it, and there are people who don’t wear mascara. I salute them all. However, as we all know I am an addict of both items. In addition to drinking vast amounts of coffee every day, I also like to use it in my skin care routine, specifically in my daytime undereye cream. I used to exclusively use The Ordinary Caffeine Solution, but a few months ago I bought Neutrogena’s Caffeine Undereye Cream SPECIFICALLY because I got PC points for Neutrogena products at Superstore.
Does it work? I have no idea, because I do not know what I’d look like without using a caffeinated undereye cream. But it has a nice little tingle to it and my undereye bags do not look like steamer trunks, so I will take it as a win. I do have little wrinkles around my eyes but, as esteemed beauty editor Val Monroe says, those are the least unbeautiful lines on my face.
Casing The Joint
Speaking of the letter C, my beloved Aunty C (HI AUNTY) has been gently after me for years to use a silk pillowcase, and for years I have gently ignored this advice because I am half Scottish. I already have a pillowcase! I would think, in a miserly manner, looking at the price of silk pillowcases. Plus, if you have one you have to have two, as they are hand-wash-hang-to-dry items. What am I, made of money? However. Blissy had a wild Black Friday sale, and I quickly consulted Aunty C to get her opinion on the brand. She mentioned that a couple of other brands had a better gromme count, something I have zero knowledge about, but, as she says, at the end of the day, the sale wins. I crossed the Rubicon, so to speak, and she was right: I’m never looking back.
Not only do I see an improvement in my skin and less hair breakage, but it’s also cooler, and I think we all know that Ladies of a Certain Age enjoy a bit of coolness in the bedroom. We are Hot Stuff, literally and figuratively.
Plus it comes in such a cute little box! What I wouldn’t have done for a handy little box like this when I was a kid, in which to keep treasures and doll clothes and whatnot. I have saved the boxes and maybe there will be a treasure that needs a home.
Creatine-ing a Monster
My husband and sons have used creatine “for gains” for a number of years, and I was always quite critical of this. My husband would assure me that creatine is “the most researched supplement on the planet” which is probably true, because men. However! I dug in my heels and argued against it, and my argument was an unresearched “that’s stupid.”
Well, well, well. How the mighty have fallen. Just like everything I have viewed through the Judgmental Lens in my life, this has come back to bite me. It all started when my husband started telling me about new research regarding perimenopausal women and creatine, and how many benefits accrue from its usage, including increased bone density. And that, right there, is my kryptonite. I feel that I spent my prime bone-building years neglecting my poor skeleton, if not outwardly abusing it. I have been trying very hard to make up for those lost years, and so I now grimly scoop some creatine into my morning BCAA mixture.
I’ve been using this for, again, three months, and I really have gotten stronger. The econometrician in me would like to note that it is impossible to net out the changes from regular strength gains through the routine I’ve had in place for the last five years, as I am not living a sliding-door kind of double life. However, I have noticed a real increase and that makes me and my skeleton happy.
Cardio Queen
To me, there are few things less interesting to read or write about than the details of workout routines, but I got a very fun, workout-adjacent question in my Ask Me Anything from Lindsay (HI LINDSAY): How do you select your Peloton classes? Do you plan them in advance or go with vibes on the day?
This summer will mark six years since my husband, in what can only be called an act of self-preservation, rearranged our basement in order to fit the Peloton which he had ordered for me. It is never a chore for me to do my nearly-daily ride, and that is because I have a very specific, very joyful way of choosing them: I have a backlog of “bookmarked” rides based on the instructor and the playlist. Over the past six years I’ve developed a roster of favourite instructors based on general vibes and class programming (more climbs, fewer sprints): Ally, Cody, Hannah, and the entire British team. I rarely, if ever, take classes outside of that roster. But that’s not enough – I am very motivated by music, and so I always check the playlist first. My preference are “decades” rides, specifically from the 80s and 90s. If there is a disco ride? I can’t hit “start” fast enough!
I typically have a length of time in mind based on the day of the week, and so I look at the bookmarked classes and choose one. To answer Lindsay’s question, it’s a little bit planned and a little bit vibes, but it’s always great music and a fun, usually but not always British, instructor.
Sweaty selfie! Disco ride! Strange neck ligaments! This photo has it all.
Outfit of the Month
I was toying with discontinuing my favourite monthly outfit, but you know what? I love seeing other people’s clothes and so I’m going to keep it up for a while yet.
I have a few girlfriends – Florence, Carolyn, and Darlene specifically (HI FLORENCE HI CAROLYN HI DARLENE) who wear a lot of white and they look like snowy foxes. So crisp! So lovely! And I love the way I look in white so I always want to emulate that Snowy Fox Look, but practicality must, occasionally, prevail. All these gorgeous women go about their days in white tops and even white pants, looking fresh, and I do not know how. I know if I so much as buttoned up a pair of white pants, seconds later Rex would lean against me after rolling around outside, or I would sit in something, or I would immediately spill food or drink, or I would suddenly and unexpectedly experience an epically heavy rogue period. But every once in a while I throw caution to the wind and put on a white top, like this sheer Lululemon one with a white-and-grey striped tank underneath, a grey cardigan for warmth, and jeans.
But of course I spend ages in the kitchen every day and so I try to keep things pristine with an apron; this one was brought from Scotland by my parents many years ago.
Sadly, at dinner I managed to somehow spill salsa on my sleeve, rendering the apron useless for the intended purpose. I guess one of my Favourite Things is also Oxy Clean, for such occasions.
Friends, I am taking a blog break for a couple of weeks, and when I’m back I will have news, stories, and adventures to share. Take care of yourselves tenderly, and I will see you all (C you all?) in February. xo
I ended 2025 as a War History Buff, having listened to every episode on the World Wars and the leadup to those wars and interesting one-offs like the Christmas truce of 1914 on the podcast The Rest is History. I learned so much! And now, here we are, fully into January 2026, and I have become obsessed with a podcast about Sweet Valley High, Double Love, in which two Irish women around my age deep dive into each book in the 180 book series.
Hopefully this isn’t having a negative impact on my brain. I hope all my World War knowledge won’t be nudged out by dramatic 80s teen antics, but I don’t see how it won’t be. I mean, Elizabeth gets kidnapped by an orderly while candy striping at the hospital, the very same hospital that Annie is recovering in after an intentional overdose following her failure to make the cheerleading squad, due to Jessica’s bullying and rumour-spreading. How can reality compete with THAT?
There is SO much drama. There are so many dances, and dates, and tragic events! It’s making my daily drudgery so much more enjoyable. Never have I been so entertained while folding the laundry. On the topic of drudgery, in a recent discussion about social media, a friend expressed astonishment that I follow a number of authors on Instagram. What could authors possibly be posting on Instagram? she wondered. Wouldn’t their lives just be boring, sitting in front of a laptop all day?
Well. I was quite perplexed by this question because really, what does anyone post on Instagram? Most, if not all of us lead very ordinary lives filled with many dull and monotonous tasks every single day, and what is Instagram for if not to highlight little glimmers that add sparkle to those lives? It feels like the social media equivalent of Mary Oliver-ing, of paying attention and being astonished. Yes, we might spend hours in front of a laptop screen, or folding laundry, or chopping vegetables, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate our blooming amaryllis, or a sunset that knocks our socks off.
We might also appreciate how unhinged and weird Duolingo is these days.
Eddy! I am scandalized.
Not every moment is a flower or a sunset or even a weirdly sexual language app. But the truth is I actually DO love seeing the very mundane aspects of other people’s lives, and I probably WOULD enjoy seeing a whole scroll of photos of people typing busily away on laptops or folding laundry. And if a person posts a photo of their hair or outfit? I am HERE for it. I am nosy, is what I’m saying.
I have had a number of meetings lately with promotions and social media specialists, in advance of the release of Inhale Exhale, which is coming out next month, if you can believe it.
I’m very excited, of course, but am also practicing non-attachment. Sending creative work out into the world to be examined and critiqued and possibly loathed is a very vulnerable thing. This week I read The Ten Year Affair, which is one of the best books I have ever read, and guess what: it’s largely panned on Goodreads. I did what I never do, which was to read reviews, and I was absolutely shocked by them. Everyone has different tastes, of course, but I felt like so many of these reviewers completely missed the point of the book. I started to wonder if we had even read the same book, at which point I put my phone down and slowly backed away.
I was looking at my Ask Me Anything form and typing away at my laptop over the holiday break, when I looked up at my older son, who was milling around. My blog readers want me to talk about parenting adult children, I told him. But the thing is, I don’t really do anything. He shrugged. Maybe that’s the point, he said.
Putting a book out into the world feels a little bit like that. It feels like letting go and seeing what happens. I had so much fun writing it, and it turned out the way I wanted it to, and that feels like the whole point. It was pure joy to write, and I hope it brings joy to readers.
And if that doesn’t, maybe my next project will be Sweet Valley: The Midlife Years. A Botoxed Jessica gets lip fillers and they are way too overdone! The mole on Elizabeth’s shoulder has changed, and it turns out all those years of tanning on the beach were unwise! Lila’s getting her third divorce after having an affair with the guy who cleans her pool! Everyone’s skin has turned to leather! Todd’s depressed because his dreams of being a basketball star amounted to nothing and now he spends his days watching General Hospital and eating onion dip! Bruce Patman gets drunk and drives his Porsche off a bridge! Can Roger, who against all odds did make it to medical school and is now a renowned emergency medicine doctor, save him? Tune in!
Weekly Reading
Of course, anyone who follows my Instagram knows that my feed is largely made up of books that I’ve read, but one thing I don’t do is talk about my DNFs. This is mostly because, in the past, I rarely DNF a book, but that is going to CHANGE in 2026, people. I am going to DNF whenever I feel like it! And I had one this week, but I will say I hesitated greatly before putting it aside, and that is because this is a book that actually lives on my shelves. I bought a copy of The Dud Avocado after a friend recommended it, because the library didn’t have a copy. Maybe it’s because I started it after The Ten Year Affair, and I was adrift not knowing what to read after a masterpiece, but it just seemed stupid to me. But I didn’t want to abandon it because I spent money on it. This is very silly. It’s a sunk cost and if the worst comes to the worst and I never pick it up again, I can give it to a Little Free Library, where hopefully it will be loved, or at least tolerated, by someone else.
Best Laid Plans. From Childhood Reread Week to Important Adult Behaviour! Some of you may already know this author as Sarah from The Shu Box– she is part of the blogging community and also a podcaster (HI SHU). It was great to “hear” her voice on these pages. There are a lot of takeaways here for planning and organizing one’s life to achieve goals. The book has templates for annual, seasonal, monthly, weekly, and daily planning, but my favourite part was seeing quotes and anecdotes about my friends in the blogging community, shoutout to Jenny, Lisa, Elisabeth, and Kae. I felt starstruck! I KNOW THEM! (HI JENNY LISA ELISABETH KAE).
The Ten Year Affair. As noted above! Wow wow WOW. Friends, this book blew me away. Absolutely blew me away. It follows a woman who escapes the drudgery and disappointment in her life by having an affair…but only in her mind. This mental affair with a man she meets at baby playgroup lasts for years, and then the lines blur from fantasy to reality. At the end of the day this book is about the sublime and also the mediocre, the little boring ordinary details that make up a life and also the striving to make something extraordinary. The characters are complete and nuanced, and there is a lot of subtext and unwritten backstory that makes this a literary gem. It is also really, really funny. I cannot say enough about this book except that it is truly an exceptional read about a non-exceptional world. A perfect book!
Games and Rituals. After I finished The Ten Year Affair, I was in a bit of a slump, a bit bereft, a bit “what now.” So I stared at my bookshelves and saw my Katherine Heiny books and thought YES. YES, that was exactly what I needed, to reread a collection of pure delight. Friends, I cannot say enough about this author and her ability to convey deep emotion and build worlds in only a few sentences – her writing is so tight, so smart, so evocative, and so incredibly funny. This collection of short stories is just one wonderful read after another. Every single one is perfect and absolutely delightful and made me both laugh out loud and stare at the wall thoughtfully.
Happy Monday, friends. I hope you are all taking care of yourselves in these very distressing days. May I suggest listening to Sweet Valley High recaps to dissociate from the news? It works like a charm. Take care, friends. xo
I was chatting with my dear friends Hannah and Allison last week (HI HANNAH HI ALLISON) about the skin care regimes of our youth. How, I ask you, do we even have skin after the 80s? I don’t know what you were doing in 1988, but in addition to pinning my future on being a mayor of an undisclosed jurisdiction, I was also using a Buf Puf to apply St Ives Apricot Scrub to my face twice daily, and following that procedure with a bracing application of Sea Breeze. Hannah and I recalled also applying toothpaste and rubbing alcohol to our pimples, and all I can say is that I’m glad my skin has forgiven me my trespasses.
My skin care routine has evolved greatly since those days, but my love of makeup, and my basic makeup procedure remains the same. Since I started wearing makeup circa 1987, I have always maintained a dark eye and a dark lip, although I do not wear Revlon’s Love That Red anymore.
This perfectly sums up “Nicole at Sixteen.” This was my favourite outfit of all time – Canadian girls of a certain age will remember Le Chateau, dream store, and I adored this swing top with a matching miniskirt. I mean, I’d probably still wear it now. And of course, Love That Red! Note the spiral perm.
In my younger years I was made to feel a lot of shame about my love for makeup, vanity being a grave character flaw. But for me, makeup is actually self-care. I do not feel ready for my day without my makeup on, and I refuse to feel badly about that. I wear a full face of makeup every single day, no matter what I am doing, no matter who I am seeing or not seeing, and no matter where I am going or not going. It’s such an important part of my day. I cannot write unless I am showered, dressed, made up, and sitting at my desk. Basically I can’t function without that routine. And yes, I probably do think that song is about me, but it’s more than that, it makes me feel good about myself. I guess I work from the outside in.
Last month my friends Elisabeth and Sarah (HI ELISABETH HI SARAH) posted about their makeup routines; Elisabeth’s specifically is “3 Minute, Cheap, and Minimal.” I would say mine would be whatever the opposite of that is, although to be fair, it probably only takes about ten minutes. It’s not minimal, and it’s not particularly cheap, although I do use some drugstore products. The only time that I would say it is minimal and takes three minutes is post-exercise, pre-walking the dog, where I put on a mere four products: SPF moisturizer, pressed powder, mascara, and tinted lip balm.
My post-walk-and-shower face includes many more products:
First I put on undereye cream (currently Neutrogena Caffeine) and the Ordinary serum on my forehead.
Then comes Smashbox Primer and Ilia Super Serum Skin Tint with SPF 40, although between early morning walks and general winter cloudiness, my face hasn’t been really exposed to the sun since Morocco.
You can take the girl out of the 80s, but you can’t take the 80s out of the girl: this is too dewy for me to leave it on its own. Matte face is part of my deeply ingrained sense of self, and so I add L’Oreal pressed powder.
The eyes are what takes the most time, and I use an Annabelle liner in dark brown plus Maybelline’s The Falsies Surreal in black. Or meta black, or whatever ridiculous shade of black I happen to pick up.
Next up, L’Oreal blush and Maybelline Express Brow to smooth out the greying, patchy eyebrows.
And then to finish it off, I put on some lipstick, and I have many brands that I like, but Maybelline Ultimatte in Taupe is my favourite. Pictured is Clinique’s famous Black Honey.
You know those quizzes where you are asked what three things – products, books, food items – you would take with you if you were to be stranded on a desert island? I hate those quizzes, probably because I think way too hard about them. I get actually stressed, thinking what would I cut, the eyeliner or the lipstick? I can’t cut the SPF! I mean, the probability that I am going to be stranded on a desert island with my choice of three things is, as we say in statistical analysis, approaching zero, and even if I was, I would probably be desperately trying to survive rather than rereading three favourite books. If I’m going to be stranded on a desert island, I am going to be Mrs Howell, or I’m not doing it.
Weekly Reading
Speaking of my wayward youth, I decided this week would be Childhood Reread Week in the Boyhouse, and wow, was it fun. Here we go!
Eight Cousins and Rose In Bloom. From the author of my number-one childhood book, Little Women, these books were loved (as you can clearly see) by me. I decided this would be the week to revisit childhood favourites and I can see why I loved them so much: Rose is an heiress and an orphan who is brought up by her sea merchant uncle, and she has a whole passel of aunts and cousins as well. Her uncle has some pretty radical ideas about girls and women – namely, that they are not memerly ornaments but actual humans with brains and spirits and flaws, and should engage in outdoor exercise and shun corsets and other unhealthy things. Well, it was wildly radical back in the 1870s. Anyway, it was a fun reread, other than the very weird and unsettling plotline that all the aunts are proponents of Rose marrying one of her cousins to keep her fortune in the family. That part is not great. But the description of gowns and ballroom dances? Yes please.
Sweet Valley High Box Set Volumes 5-8. Wow, did I ever have a skewed idea of what high school would be like, when I read these in Grades 4 and 5. I mean, I basically NEVER went to the beach in my red Fiat Spider. Because I didn’t have one and also I lived in Calgary. There is a wild amount of death and near date rape in these books, and also a lot of bikinis. I recommend these as a hilarious reread, if only for the descriptions of the clothing and the references to Bo Derek. It’s well worth the 45 minutes it takes to read each book. First we have All Night Long, where Jessica narrowly escapes date rape after being at a party – that lasted ALL NIGHT LONG – with a college age boy, who sports a very sexy moustache. Worse luck, she misses her test to become a…tour guide of sorts? I don’t know. Elizabeth saves the day by doing the whole twin thing and pretending to be Jessica but a fight with Todd means she’s TOO UPSET to do well on the test. She makes up with Todd only to find out that…Dangerous Love: Todd has bought a motorcycle! And Elizabeth is NOT allowed on it, because her cousin (Rexy!!!) DIED in a motorcycle accident. But she’s scared to tell him. Finally she does and it’s okay, he’ll just give other girls rides. ON HIS MOTORBIKE, PEOPLE. But then he decides to sell it. Elizabeth goes for broke and decides she’s going to have one ride before the bike is gone, but, in a crazy twist of irony, they are hit by a drunk driver, and that drunk driver is the very person who was going to buy the motorcycle! And now Elizabeth’s in a coma. Is she going to make it? Dear Sister: Well, she wakes up but her personality is changed! Now she’s just like Jessica. She’s out-Jessica-ing Jessica and will have NOTHING to do with Todd. And she ends up almost being date-raped by Bruce Patman (1BRUCE1) but as he’s fetching them unlawful alcohol, she slips, falls, and hits her head – and she’s back to being Elizabeth! Escape from Bruce, Elizabeth! But as Elizabeth is being Jessica, Jessica is being Elizabeth, and winning over Bill, the surfer guy. Heart Breaker: But Jessica really doesn’t want anything to do with Bill, she’s just getting back at him for turning her down for a long-ago Sadie Hawkins dance. Jessica, like an elephant, never forgets. They are in the school play together and the worm turns when a Hollywood scout watches it and thinks that Bill is the next Robert Redford. Well! Jessica is now actually interested but too late, because Bill is going out with DeeDee the surfer girl. Unfortunately we will never know what happens next because I don’t have any more volumes. Will Lila really go out with Roger? Probably not; she’s rich and he works as a janitor so his family can pay the rent, and we do NOT cross socioeconomic lines in Sweet Valley.
Charlotte’s Web. I am finishing Childhood Reread Week with a classic – this isn’t my childhood copy, I don’t think I even had a copy, but I read it to my kids when they were little. And they don’t remember it at all except that the spider dies. But not before she saves the life of Wilbur the pig! No wonder I have an affinity for farm animals and spiders. Don’t squish them! They have a job to do, people!
I was informed that there is a podcast called Double Trouble which deep dives every single book and you can bet I will be listening to it along with Listen To Sassy, just to relive my youth. The good parts of my youth! Not the Sea Breeze and rubbing alcohol. Again, I am sending out gratitude to my face for still existing after all that agony. I hope you are all having a beautiful week, friends. xo
I have long believed that to be healthy we need to balance the yin and yang in our lives, and if we do not get enough yin – rest, recovery, rejuvenation – then our bodies force us to, in the form of illness or injury. And indeed, any time I look back on my life and remember times when I was completely taken out by a virus or, in one spectacularly debilitating case in 2019, injury, I absolutely know that the time preceding that was one of stress and exhaustion.
Sometimes that can’t be helped, of course. I had two babies in less than eighteen months and the second one was colicky, and the ensuing sleeplessness and generalized exhaustion was beyond my control. However, there are many times in my life when I had sleeplessness and generalized exhaustion and it WAS in my control; I am a high-energy person and I have a tendency to Do More, Push Through, Just Keep Swimming, etcetera. If I don’t balance that level of activity and energy expenditure with adequate rest, disaster ensues. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn many times.
And so these days I am very tender with myself, I take care of myself like I would a small child. I make sure I am nourishing myself on every level: I ensure that I’m getting the proper sleep, that I’m resting emotionally and mentally, that I have adequate nutrition and hydration, and that I am spending time with people who fill up my soul.
Recently a number of friends mentioned that they feel a deep sense of guilt when relaxing, that they feel taking time to read or do other quiet solo activities feels “lazy,” and, although this wasn’t said outright, intimated that they really need to be productive to feel valued. I have been thinking about that a lot lately, particularly since reading The Relaxed Woman, which is affirming, transformative, and inspirational, and everyone should read it. I am going to become a Relaxed Woman evangelist, is what I’m saying.
But something really resonated with me, both with these conversations with my friends and also by reading The Relaxed Woman, and that is this feeling that in order to rest, we need to earn it, we do not deserve rest on its own.
I read Bridget Jones’s Diary when it came out in paperback, circa 1997, and at the time I found it hilariously funny and deeply relatable. There is a part where Bridget is talking with her friend Tom about her daily intake of calories.
“A thousand?” said Tom, incredulously. “But I thought you needed two thousand just to survive.”
I looked at him nonplussed. I realized that I have spend so many years being on a diet that the idea that you might actually need calories to survive has been completely wiped out of my consciousness. Have reached point where believe nutritional ideal is to eat nothing at all, and that the only reason people eat is because they are so greedy they cannot stop themselves from breaking out and ruining their diets.
So funny, back in 1997! So relatable! Look at us disgusting people, greedily eating food! I want to travel back in time and hug myself. This is especially relevant at this time of year, when eating regimes and body ideals abound: we don’t need to earn food. We deserve to eat just by existing on this planet, and similarly, we deserve to rest. We have value in who we are, not what we can do, not in how productive we are or how how much we can squeeze into a day, particularly for the benefit of other people.
Instead of asking, “Have I worked hard enough to deserve to rest?,” I’ve started asking, “Have I rested enough to do my most loving and meaningful work?” – The Relaxed Woman
I love January; I love the fresh-start energy of the month. I love having a fresh new planner and notebook, and plans on how to fill them. Today is where your book begins, the rest is still unwritten. But there is a balance between productivity and rest, and resting is not lazy. Giving our bodies, minds, and souls respite is not lazy. Taking time for ourselves in whatever ways we need is not selfish. We wouldn’t drive a car for every moment of the day and then be angry when it ran out of gas. We would just fill it with gas.
I think we have all internalized this ideal of Superwoman, that we can do everything at all times: we can parent perfectly and work hard and keep a spotless house and be thin and fit and gorgeous and whip up three perfect meals a day and it all looks Instagram-worthy at every moment. This Superwoman ideal, says the author of The Relaxed Woman, harms women by perpetuating the myth that women really don’t need to rest or to take time for themselves; they can do everything for everyone and put themselves last, always, and happily. It is anti-feminist, and so damaging to celebrate this idea that we can just work ourselves into the ground and be lauded for it, like modern day martyrs.
This poster, along with one depicting a fish and a bicycle, were on my office wall when I was in grad school, and although both concepts were over two decades old at the time, I still felt they were relevant, and mostly are still relevant to this day.
We have normalized the idea that a woman’s work is never done and I feel that in 2026, we should stop that. This is the month where we are all enthusiastically setting goals, and I do think that’s great. We can aim to improve areas of our lives while still taking time for ourselves without guilt, without shame, without feeling lazy or unworthy. Our work can be done. We can rest, in whatever way “resting” means.
My goals are, as every year, evergreen and unchanging, along with being extremely nebulous and difficult to quantify: ideas like being present and practicing patience, living life with arms wide open and go placidly amidst the noise and haste and remember what peace there may be in silence. Daily I subscribe to my REM Y REM practice, which stands for Reading, Exercise, Meditation, Yoga, and REM sleep; without those restful things I cannot be my best self and I cannot show up in the way that I want to.
In this month of goals and intentions and fresh starts, my wish is that we all know we are deserving of rest without having to “earn” it first, that we can aim for the stars AND take tender care of ourselves, that feelings of guilt and shame over resting and relaxing can dissipate, and that we become the person that our younger selves needed.
Weekly Reading
Radical Acceptance. Speaking of meditation! What a perfect choice for the first book of 2026! To be honest, I have been very slowly reading this book for the past several months, and just happened to finish it today. The lessons in Radical Acceptance are beautiful and loving; basically, for all you yogis and meditators out there, it’s about practicing loving kindness towards ourselves and others, and gives very practical advice on how to do that, using many very relatable examples. The author is not preachy, but instead – as you might expect – loving and kind in her writing. One great takeaway is the RAIN approach toward negative emotions: Recognize, Accept, Investigate, and Nourish. This really spoke to me and has helped me through some emotionally turbulent times.
Moral Disorder. Of course I had to reread Moral Disorder after reading Margaret Atwood’s memoir! This is the most auto-fiction of all her collections, and it is one of my favourites. I love this glimpse of her life through interconnected stories, both from third and first person points of view.
After two solid weeks of intense and intentional rest – extra sleep, extra reading, lots of puzzles – I feel refreshed and ready to get back into my regular routine. Hello January! I hope you all are similarly rejuvenated and have taken – and are taking – adequate rest. xo
Happy New Year, friends! The tree is down and the various decorations are back in their bins for another year, the house is clean, and I’m slowly and gently nudging myself back into my regular routine. I have had, as mentioned, a restful few weeks filled with restorative yoga, long dog walks, reading, and putting together puzzles.
I have also been cooking.
In my recent Ask Me Anything,Coco (HI COCO) asked what is the division of labour in your household, with your husband, and I will say that since he retired it is quite equitable. Prior to his retirement, the house, and the health and welfare of the inhabitants were strictly My Department, with the exception of Home Repairs, which were in his jurisdiction. In general, I was the Department of Health, Welfare, and Education. These days the kids are grown and my husband has the time to do all sorts of domestic duties, but there is one thing that remains the same: I am the Department of Nutrition. I do all the grocery shopping and I do all the meal planning, without exception I make dinner every day and I ensure that there are ingredients for lunch and breakfasts, which are fend-for-yourself affairs around here, and have been for many, many years. In turn, my husband and whichever son happens to be around clean the kitchen after dinner. It is a system that works well for us, as I truly enjoy cooking and I also like wielding the power of being the Person in Charge of the Meal Plan.
But during the holidays, when there are so many Special Meals, I wish I had a break from this food dictatorship of my own making.
It’s my own fault: my husband can cook and is more than willing to help, but as I am person who cooks with zero recipes and just flings things together, it’s hard to delegate. Sprinkle in some cumin. I don’t know how much. I also think that it’s impossible to get delegate the mental heavy lifting of figuring out what we are going to eat for a week and then procuring all the ingredients for them. I just want someone to magically make me exactly what I want without asking me what that is, and for that person to time travel backward to get the required groceries. Is that too much to ask? And listen, I know. I know that takeout exists and restaurants exist and we certainly COULD utilize those modern innovations, but they still require effort and I want it to be effortless.
Our equitable division of labour does not extend to travel planning. Coco also asked how do you plan your travels, and this is what I do: absolutely nothing. Well, that’s not true. I will say, for example, I’ve always wanted to go to Morocco, and then, magically, I go to Morocco! I don’t know if this is how my family feels when dinner is always ready and delicious at the same time every night, but it’s kind of magical to have a husband who researches, plans, and then executes all our trips. I’m sure he occasionally wearies of the load – heavy is the head who wears the Travel or Meal Planning Crown – but in general he enjoys it and is good at it.
For my money, a good partnership has a nice balance of a Person Who Wants To Be A Dictator Of A Certain Thing, and a Person Who Goes With The Flow. For my husband, it’s oh, it’s stir-fry night, great! and for me, it’s where are we going again? You sent me the itinerary? Did I look at it? Two people cannot be both 100% in charge of dinner, and two people cannot be 100% in charge of travel planning. Alternately, two people cannot be so laissez-faire about either of those things, or neither of them would happen.
Speaking of which, my husband and I watched a movie on Netflix called Lonely Planet, which takes place in a writers’ retreat IN MOROCCO. Not only was the movie visually stunning, but we were in most of the places. We were there! We were right there! we kept saying to each other over and over. It is also a romance between Laura Dern and Liam Hemsworth and believe you me, I was here for it. HOO BOY. Sexytimes! There was a lot about writing processes, and the challenges faced, and I really cannot recommend it enough.
Laura and Liam were exactly here!And here!AND HERE! OMG!!!
Holiday Reading
In 2025, I read 153 books and 91% of those were written by women. The two male authors that I read this last week of December bumped that percentage down, but as is my wont, the male authors are gay and/ or British.
Calypso. In the leadup to Christmas, I had finished all my library books and wanted something light to read, on the heels of Wave, which was the opposite of light. I decided to reread an old favourite; this is my absolute number one Sedaris collection, and I love it so much. I will say that, after reading Happy Go Lucky, I found much of it poignant and sad. If you know, you know.
What Matters in Jane Austen. This deep dive into the work of Jane Austen is RIGHT up my alley! This is NOT meant for the person who read Pride and Prejudice once and liked it. This is for the Super Fan – like me! It really gets into the weeds – what card games the characters play, what characters never talk, what incomes reflect – and I am here for it. It’s extremely detailed and I loved it!
Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts. I have been a Margaret Atwood fan for decades, and I have been nosily curious about her life for almost as long, gleaning what I could from her many wonderful novels and short stories. I particularly pored over Cat’s Eye, The Edible Woman, Bluebeard’s Egg, and Moral Disorder as providing clues about her fascinating life – indeed, she has lived many lives, as the title suggests, and as we all do. I will say that particularly after Moral Disorder, I wondered what drew her to Graeme Gibson, and her memoir provides some insight to that, although he seemed to me to be a man with a lot of baggage and difficulties. Red flags abound in every way! However, the heart wants what it wants, even if Amy March and I both disagree with the sentiment that you can’t choose who you fall in love with. In any case, it was so interesting to read about Atwood and Gibson working with others to really put CanLit in the spotlight; they did so much for Canadian literature and the publishing industry. Atwood’s early life, a source of much fascination for me, is described in detail, as are her various writing processes for her various books. I was so happy to read how she wrote my beloved favourites, and in particular, my number-one favourite of all time, The Blind Assassin. Friends, this work of art was panned by the New York Times, proof that reviewers often get it terribly wrong. In any case, Atwood is a NATIONAL TREASURE and this memoir is everything I could have ever hoped for, and more.
Goodness, I meant for this just to be a brief roundup of the books I read over the holidays, and look what happened. I guess when I take a break, a lot of thoughts pile up for the old blog. I hope you have a wonderful weekend, friends, and I’ll be talking all things rest and relaxation on Monday. xo
