Happy 2026! Our family wrapped up 2025 with a few small gatherings amongst our friends, followed by intentional just-us-family cocoon days to celebrate the togetherness with lots of yummy homemade food, family movie nights on the couch, board games, and gifts, finished with a short trip to Denver to spend our last few days of the year with my sisters and their loved ones. We got back to Southern California just in time to farewell 2025 and welcome the new year with my mom. It was a full holiday offering, but I enjoyed being present in each moment, fully soaking up the goodness of the time with people I love.
While we were in Denver, I sneaked out of the Airbnb by myself to a nearby coffee shop to sit down with my notebooks from 2025 and the new ones for 2026; to reflect on lessons from the year that just passed, and to integrate those lessons as hopes and dreams for 2026. I had both old and new notebooks opened, slowly flipping through the pages and occasionally stopping - delighted by what I managed to scribble throughout the year with more ebbs & flows than I ever expected at the beginning of 2025. It felt like Hansel and Gretel, following breadcrumbs to find a way back to my home. I neatly transcribed a few of my notes that still felt deeply resonant and relevant into my new JIYU Monthly.
The whole coffee shop experience, sandwiched between intentionally deeper, richer inner-circle days before & after, left me feeling transported to a unique kind of “in-between space.” I was standing at a threshold with a door to the past and the future equally open, allowing me to travel through time and space with ease. It was almost as if the spirits that fill the “in-between space & time” possessed different qualities and textures from those that occupy the rest of our year.
After a few quiet hours at a coffee shop with my notebooks, I felt ready to put away the ones I used in 2025 and fully welcome the new year.
In past years, I sometimes brushed off the magic of the holiday season as quickly as possible, moving on to the new year quickly. In those years, I remember feeling completely burnt out by the first day of the year, from an overwhelming number of BK end-of-year tasks throughout December, topped with too much of my energy draining into holiday social events. Over the years, I’ve learned that it’s simply too difficult to soak up the magic the world freely offers when I am fatigued by superficial busyness. The change to slow down has been gradual (and is still ongoing), but this holiday season, I definitely felt the shift in how we sank into these special days.
One of my hopes and dreams for the new year is to honor those threshold moments - a short pause between activities to look outside and wonder, an intentional deep breath between hopping from one browser to another when I am working, and a winding-down ritual in the evenings to prepare for a journey from the conscious to the subconscious dream world.
I look forward to keeping my notebooks as companions in everyday life, especially during those in-between times to witness the magic that unfolds.
-wakako
always a metamorphosis in progress...
Topanga // January 3rd, 2026
P.S. How has your holiday season been? Any new lessons you are integrating into a new year? I would LOVE to hear if you feel called to share! (wakakotakagi@gmail.com)
**This story is from the BK Love Letter for January 2026. If you would like to read the entire love letter we sent to our community, including links to featured stories and the new and updated BK artifacts, you can browse it via this link.
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