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Hi everybody. Happy New Year.

I can tell 2026 is going to be the best year ever because nothing objectively horrible and unimaginably awful has happened yet. It’s all been sunshine and rainbows everywhere.

I, for one, am bringing a squeaky clean slate into the new year. New year, new me. 2025 Alexa? Never heard of her. I want to be unrecognizable.

The sky is also green. And I’ve decided I don’t like Wicked anymore. And I actually don’t think Jonathan Bailey is that attractive, and I’ve never really liked guacamole. And I’m definitely not craving a Kale Caesar right now. (A lot of green was mentioned unintentionally in there.)

Okay, so onto the truth. Sorry for the jumpscare. Jonathan Bailey, if you’re reading this, you are the sexiest man of every year.

I woke up on New Year’s Eve with congestion and a sore throat that would later grow into the worst head cold I’ve had in recent years.

I hit my head so badly the other day that I thought I had a concussion.

Before that, I read ‘A Battle With My Blood,’ a New Yorker essay written by Tatiana Schlossberg, the recently deceased granddaughter of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy, daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg, wife of George Moran, mother of Edwin and Josephine, and sister to Rose and Jack. They’ve all been in my thoughts and heart lately, along with the rest of Tatiana’s friends and family.

Tatiana was my classmate at The Brearley School. She was a few years older than me, but we shared a piano teacher. (Ironically, the same piano teacher whose daughter I would one day teach in fourth grade at my alma mater.) I didn’t recall our shared history until I saw a group photo featuring the two of us among others, at The Brearley School.

Two years ago, I faced an absurd number of deaths in my personal life while also watching friends and acquaintances mourn loved ones whom I’ve never met. I learned a lot about grief during that season. I learned that it is entirely possible to mourn the losses of those we didn’t know well, or didn’t know at all. I learned how grief can sneak up on us.

I’ve learned that one death can often remind us of another, expanding and often complicating our grief. For example, my Aunt Eileen passed away over a decade ago, yet I’ve missed her more these past few years than ever.

I’ve learned that life is fragile, unpredictable, and urgent.

My capacity for grief and compassion as we collectively walk eachother home knows no bounds. My empathy is infinite.

Our time on earth is not.

It’s tricky, being someone who has had suicidal ideations and now fears death — the very thing I used to imagine as an escape.

I’ve learned that life will never be done breaking my heart, and that I have to continue to let it break over and over again.

Brandi Carlile was 100% right when she sang It’s no fun to have a heart when we are living through these days.

I’ve learned that I have to surround myself with people who feel it all, so that my sensitive soul has room to breathe.

Cynthia Erivo described writing her first memoir as “an excursion of truth-telling,” and I have never loved a phrase more. It’s what I’m trying to do here, inside The Nuance Diaries every time I write to y