Choosing an Essence Instead of a Resolution

How ease led me to discovery, and why I’m letting curiosity lead this year

I don’t subscribe to resolutions. I mentioned that last week.

I know they work for some people. I get why people love the clean slate feeling, the motivation, the sense of “okay, now I’m going to become my best self.” I’m not judging that. It just doesn’t land in me that way. My nervous system doesn’t understand January as a fresh start. My body understands seasons—a slower kind of change.

What I do instead is choose an essence for each year.

A word. A feeling. Something I want to live inside.

In 2024, my word was desire.

That year taught me something that still makes me laugh a little, because it feels obvious in hindsight. I learned that what I desired above all was ease.

So, ease became my word for 2025, and I really did step into it.

I refused to take on work in my business that didn’t bring me a sense of ease. I don’t mean the work had to be easy. I don’t mean I only work on comfortable projects that don't challenge me. I mean, I stopped saying yes to the kind of work that made my body tighten. You know, the type of work that left me resentful, drained, weirdly buzzy, and then mad at myself for being resentful, drained, and weirdly buzzy.

Ease was a way of asking my body first, before my brain started negotiating.

One of the most practical ways I lived ease in 2025 was putting my phone on Do Not Disturb outside my set business hours. That sounds small. It wasn’t small in my life. The world is loud. People have access to you now in a way that wasn’t normal for most of human history, and we pretend it’s normal because we’re all doing it. For me, DND was the line in the sand. It was me saying, I get to have a life that doesn’t revolve around being reachable.

2025 was a rough year for me in physical and mental health, so I also took necessary naps in the middle of the day without apologizing for them. That one is still a practice, because even when I know my body needs rest, there’s this old voice that wants to explain it. Justify it. Earn it. Prove I’m not lazy. Prove I’m still a “good” person. Prove I’m still valuable. I’ve spent most of my life trying to prove something.

Following the rhythms of my body without apology was part of it too. Sometimes it looked like stopping earlier than I wanted to or slowing down when my brain wanted to speed up. Sometimes it meant letting my energy be what it actually was, instead of what I thought it should be.

2025 still had hard things. It still had grief, stress, overstimulation, uncertainty, fear. I didn’t float through the year on a cloud. Yet even inside all of that, I got to experience ease as a felt sense. A real sensation. A way of moving through a day and thinking, “Oh. This is what it feels like when I’m not at war with my own life.”

I’m carrying that into 2026. I’m not leaving it behind just because a calendar flipped.

Before Yule, I wrote down 13 intentions for 2026.

This practice is based on Rauhnächte, sometimes called the Smoke Nights, with roots in German-speaking regions of Europe. Traditionally, it falls in the liminal stretch between the winter solstice and early January, a span that has long carried folklore about rest, protection, purification, and divination. In some regions, people burned herbs or incense to cleanse the home and ward off what they didn’t want following them into the new year. Some traditions associate each of the twelve nights with one month of the coming year, paying attention to dreams, moods, weather, and little “omens” as symbolic hints.

I don’t do this practice because I need any proof that magic is real. I do it because it’s a ritual that makes me feel like I’m participating in my own life. It gives the turning of the year a shape. It slows me down. It brings me into relationship with my own intentions instead of letting them stay vague and theoretical.

Also, I like fire.

These are not resolutions. They’re more like things I want to feel. Things I want to be true in my body and in my days. I wrote each intention in the present tense, “I am” and “I have” language, then folded them up and put them in a bowl.

Beginning on Yule, you burn one piece of paper per night. No peeking.

I start on Mother’s Night, the night before the solstice. That timing means something to me. It makes it feel even more like a threshold. Like I’m stepping into the dark with my hands open. Deep down, I know my Mom and all the other women who came before me are walking next to me.

Each night, I pull one folded slip at random and burn it.

The point is that you don’t get to curate which ones get surrendered. You don’t get to micromanage the mystery. You burn one. You let it go. You trust that what you’ve written is heard by whatever you believe in. Universe, ancestors, your own unconscious, the deep intelligence of your life.

You burn 12 intentions. Then you open the one that’s left. That last one is the one you focus on for the year. The rest have been burned “into the universe” to be taken care of.

When I first learned this practice, something in me relaxed. It felt like permission to want things without clutching them. It felt like a way to participate in intention without turning it into a pressure cooker.

So I burned my intentions, night by night, and I didn’t peek even though I wanted to. I let the fire take them.

Then I got to the end, opened the one that remained, and it said:

“I have discovered myself, I know what I like and what brings me joy.”

When I first read it, I felt a weight.

This is something that has challenged me my entire life, and my first reaction was immediate: Really? This is the one? My brain tried to spin it into an assignment. A problem to solve. A thing I could “do correctly” if I tried hard enough.

After that initial flare, a quieter question came in underneath it. Have I spent most of my life focused on proving my value? Have I built my identity around being useful, being needed, being the one who shows up and makes things better?

Because I’m good at that, I’m good at being needed. I’m good at making it work and at carrying things. I’m also aware that those skills come with a cost when they become the only way you know how to belong.

Sometimes the cost is losing track of what you like when nobody is watching. Sometimes the cost is realizing that “what do you enjoy?” feels strangely hard to answer.

So yes. I felt the weight.

Then I sat with it. I let it press on me without trying to wiggle out. With time, that heaviness started to change shape. The dread loosened. Curiosity walked in.

When I was younger, and people asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I used to say I wanted someone to pay me to go to school forever. I love learning. I always have. It’s still true.

With this intention, it feels like I’ve permitted myself to do that. Permission to discover. I don’t need permission to learn; I’ve never stopped. I take a minimum of two major courses a year. I went back and got my Bachelor’s degree in my 40s. I’m always reading. Always studying. Always following some thread.

What’s different here is the word discover.

Discover feels less like accomplishment and more like wandering with purpose. It feels like being allowed to try something without forcing it to become a “thing.” It feels like being allowed to change my mind. It feels like letting my curiosity lead without having to justify why I’m curious.

It also permits me to let go of things that don’t spark an interest. That part matters more than I expected, because I tend to grip. If I try something and it doesn’t fit, my brain wants to label it as failure. Or a waste. Or proof that I’m inconsistent. Or proof that I can’t commit.

I want to try something and realize it’s not for me, and then simply… stop. No self-lecture, no shame spiral. Just information. Just… discovery.

Maybe I try different styles with my clothes and stop dressing for my body size or what other people think I have the right to dress like.

Maybe I try foods I’ve decided I hate, and find out my taste has changed. Or my body has opinions I didn’t bother listening to before.

Maybe I discover I love traveling. Maybe I discover I don’t. Either way, the result is information, and information is power when you’re building a life that fits.

Maybe I discover the kind of work that feels like ease is work that asks less of my performance and more of my presence.

Maybe I discover a fae door in the woods somewhere. Maybe I even walk through it.

The point is that the possibilities are endless, and if you know me, you know that possibilities are the one thing I have consistently believed in without question my entire life.

That’s part of what makes this feel like a gift. It’s an intention that opens space.

“I have discovered myself” doesn’t demand a final answer. It doesn’t ask me to arrive at a fixed identity. It asks me to pay attention. To try things. To notice what lights up. To notice what drains. To become honest about what I enjoy when nobody is grading me.

So, maybe my word for 2026 is Discovery. (With a capital D)

Perhaps it isn’t only self-discovery. Maybe it’s discovery in the broad sense. Discovery of what kind of life actually fits. Discovery of what my body has been trying to tell me for years. Discovery of delight that doesn’t require a reason.

If you’re reading this in January, you’re not late.

You don’t have to start on a sacred date to choose an essence. You don’t have to “begin correctly.” You can select a word in the middle of a week. You can choose it after a hard month. You can choose it when you’re still tired. You can choose it when you have no idea how you’ll live it yet.

If discovery is calling you, too, here’s a simple way to begin without turning it into a project. Pick one small area of your life and treat it like an experiment for the next thirty days. Food. Clothing. Rest. Your relationship with your phone. The way you spend your mornings. The way you end your nights. Notice what gives you energy. Notice what drains it. Notice what you keep doing out of habit. Notice what you miss when you’re too busy.

Write it down if you want. Don’t if you don’t. The point is attention.

And if you want to borrow my approach, choose an essence for the year. Not a resolution. An essence. A feeling-word that helps you recognize yourself again. Then allow it to guide your small decisions. Let it show you what’s aligned and what isn’t. Let it teach you, slowly.

My remaining intention is the one I “get” to focus on this year.

For once, it feels like a permission slip I actually want to sign.

Love today,

Heather 🌸