Not “moving on,” but learning to carry it. What that actually looks like day to day.
It's 3 years and it's another year notched up without my twin – it's not easy.
That’s a sentence I’m still learning how to live inside.
There are nights when the anxiety, the loss and the weight of missing her makes me feel slightly panicked.
Losing a twin isn’t something you “move on” from – instead it becomes part of your life and your everyday reality.
She was one half of a whole.
Some days her memory feels steady.
Other days it hits hard and it's heavy.
I have learned a different kind of courage this year.
The quiet kind.
Getting up when it's hard. Putting one foot in front of the other.
The world is unstable. Covid has changed the landscape.
Politics is self-serving and it's loud.
It’s never ending.
It’s uncertain and scary.
It’s polarised, it’s why I continue to write about it:
to try to make sense of a system that affects us all, when it feels like it no longer listens.
And lately I’ve been thinking about dogs, since Covid began.
The ones abandoned – left behind,
in shelters, forgotten, waiting.
Their quiet suffering, the kind we scroll past.
You see their stories on the socials.
How some of the most vulnerable lives are still hoping
for warmth, for safety, for someone to stay.
How we treat dogs says something about us.
About who we are when no one is watching.
They offer loyalty without condition,
and still so many are met with neglect or harm.
We are being asked, in small ways,
to choose care.
Everything feels uncertain, and that makes the loss worse. Relocating, and starting a new life.
Although autism doesn't help – I am slowly learning I don’t have to carry the things that don't belong to me.
I’m allowed to step back, to catch my breath. To go at my own pace, even if it's slow.
Anxiety still visits. So does depression.
Living with grief walks hand-in-hand with both.
As the New Year begins, I’m not chasing.
I'm sitting with honesty. Gentleness.
I'm choosing a life that feels a little lighter.
If you're also grieving, I want you know that I see you.
If you’re exhausted by politics and the world.
If anxiety or depression are part of your days, you’re not on your own.
If this year took more from you than expected – you didn’t fail. Like me you endured.
I hope 2026 is kinder.
I hope there’s quiet in the noise.
And I hope you keep going, even on the days when all you can do is breathe.
You don’t have to become a new person overnight.
In the "New Year" we just need to keep moving – slowly, imperfectly, and honestly.
Thank you for all your support this year. As we leave 2025, I hope you'll continue to tag along as the next one unfolds. I appreciate you.
With love,
Ilana x
