Happy New Year!

We're all rooting for you 2025....

Happy New Year!

I don't know what it is but ever since 2020, I now usher in New Years more gently and cautiously because as we all know the last five, hell even ten years have been.... well a lot for everyone. In fact the last big New Years party I went to in Barcelona was in 2020 with my husband and we counted down 2020 on a rooftop bar with fireworks, so maybe I am just a bit superstitious.

I lovingly refer New Years Eve as “amateur hour” because let’s face it, it is a night that gives way for a lot of socially accepted bad behavior and an excuse for a lot of people to overdo it. While I may have had some more raucous New Years in my youth, I assure you those days are long gone and all I ever want is to be with Ben, the girls and a small group of people at home. I am lucky that Ben is a fantastic cook and always creates something beautiful and delicious even though we are just celebrating in our living room. Tonight we are hosting a few friends, Bens parents, sister and niece with a shrimp platter, my favorite meatballs, charcuterie board, a caviar spread and champagne while watching the annual SyFy channel's "Twilight Zone" marathon which goes from today until January second. The SyFy channel can never end this tradition, it is my favorite and for whatever reason just the perfect show to binge to end a year.

One of the other fun things we have planned tonight is apple juice "cheering" New Years with the girls and doing a pre countdown earlier in the night so we can include them in the celebration. The holidays really are a special time when you have young children.

Our family just returned from spending Christmas in Arizona with my mother, family and close friends. It was wonderful to spend quality time with everyone at our homestead in Arizona. My mother's job is based in Rome and I don’t see her as much as I would like so spending Christmas with everyone is definitely something burned into my core memory. Ben and I have also officially morphed into Clark and Ellen Griswold complete with a road trip to Bearizona to see bears and wolves for the girls. We also checked way too many bags on our flight and I’m sure attempting to maneuver in and out of the airports with a copious amount of bags and two children under four was quite a sight. It’s really a crazy experience when you morph into the parents you used to laugh at as a teenager…

On a more serious note, as I shared yesterday, I had to have a mass in my left breast biopsied right before Christmas to check for breast cancer. Even typing the words breast cancer makes me feel queasy. I found out yesterday right before we came home that the mass is in fact benign and to say I am relieved is putting it very mildly. All I can say is I am extremely, extremely grateful this turned out to be benign. I feel so lucky, I feel so blessed and God is so good. Ever since my Dad died of glioblastoma brain cancer, I have a deep and overwhelming fear of cancer that I am honestly still dealing with. I can't imagine the hell women go through who test positive for breast cancer, particularly during the holidays. I hold these women in my heart and in my prayers. Know I am always thinking of you.

Throughout this experience, my OBGYN, the doctors, physicians, nurses, sonogram technicians, schedulers, pathologists - absolutely everyone involved in giving me my mammogram, sonogram and then the actual biopsy procedure have been absolute angels sent from heaven. I am just eternally grateful for everything they have done for me. It takes a very specific type of person to go into the medical field and dedicate their lives to helping sick people and I never, ever, not for one day take it for granted. They deserve our deep gratitude. I also want to say to any woman who follows my work or is reading this, please do not wait on getting a mammogram. This was a true scare for me and I know both I and all of us need to be vigilant about our health in general. So please, ladies, for me schedule your annual pap smears and mammograms going into 2025.

On a completely different note, I joined substack with the intention of slowly but surely moving my social media followers off of my other platforms on X and instagram. While I am so grateful that is happening and so many of you have chosen to come here, I have to admit that substack feels like my responsible boyfriend that I can take home to meet mom and X still feels like the ex who rides a motorcycle and blows you off on valentines day. I appreciate all these spaces for different reasons but it is easier to impulsively shoot off thoughts on X than it seems to be here. Maybe substack is just a little more formal? I feel a little guilty I have not been sharing as much on here the past few weeks, but I have been caught up in the chaos of the holidays and the year winding down. If any of you have any advice or recommendations to make substack feel a little more casual, please let me know. This is all still new and I want to give you all what you are looking for as we head into 2025.

Also, I know so many of you have been asking about the podcast. I PROMISE I will have an update for all of you very, very soon. Like within the next week or so. Thank you all for being so patient and understanding. I am very grateful and I know it has been annoying going radio silent without an update. There were extenuating circumstances that made us go on pause but again, I promise to have updates soon.

With that, I wanted to leave you with a list of what I think is "in" for 2025. My resolutions are more personal and quite frankly wouldn't be very interesting for all (for example I am going pescatarian after having a semi traumatizing experience with a chicken dish at a farm to table restaurant) - so I have been inspired to do this instead.

1. Eating Clean:

This is the "MAHA" part of me but this past year and upcoming one is all about getting rid of as much packaged food, preservatives and overall junk as possible for both me and my family. I know it is not realistic to completely eliminate everything, I don’t live on a farm but I have been as freaked out as everyone else reading about red food dyes and skittles being banned in other countries but for some reason legal here and am going to take a real initiative this year to weed out as much as I can.

2. Taking Social Media Breaks:

I have historically been very bad at this but slowly have been making real strides in disconnecting and being much more present in my daily life. It's as simple as not bringing a phone out at the dinner table and leaving my cell phone in my bedroom at five o clock and leaving it there without checking until I go to sleep. America at large has an anxiety crisis and I believe the extreme online nature of our culture is adding to that.

3. Giving Each Other Grace:

If the 2024 election cycle has taught us nothing, it is that we are living in a very divided country where massive amounts of people feel unseen, unheard and underrepresented. Because of all of that, there is a deep anger, resentment and even hate at our fellow Americans. As my friend Mark Halperin always says, we need to give each other "the presumption of grace" and I think we can all do our part, even in the smallest of ways to start healing some of the wounds in our nation. Take a breath, take a beat, and try and see where the other person is coming from before reacting negatively. I am not Gandhi but we can all just try a little to improve our current social environment.

4. Support Independent Media and Journalists:

Corporate and legacy media is dead, finito, finished. There is an extreme crisis of conscience within network newsrooms that quite frankly we all have warned about for years. Most of the best news stories that were broken this past year were done by journalists not associated with these places. Let's support the people who warned us about Joe Biden's cognitive decline, the race being a shoe in for Trump, and so much more that was supremely missed by the mainstream media by subscribing, following, and consuming the real journalists work who deserve it. These are the people who are truly unbiased, have no agenda and just looking for the truth (I will be sharing some of my favorite journalists and people I follow in a later post).

5. Moving Away From Fast Fashion:

As I have spoken about before, after watching the "Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy" documentary on Netflix. I have been much more acutely aware of the true cost to our environment and society as a result of fast fashion. For me in 2025, I am going to be focusing a lot on investing in more quality pieces of clothing or fashion and abstaining as much as possible from the more disposable and less quality items. I am also going to be attempting to just shop less in general and continue to Marie Kondo my life. I understand given the variety of budgets everyone has this may not be totally feasible, but like I always say - just do what you can.

6. Getting Outside As Much As Possible:

So many things in my life are solved or at least get me to a place of balance by simply going outside for a walk or getting out of a city into nature. I think 2025 is going to continue the era of appreciating our land, homesteading and just generally reconnecting with our environment. When in doubt, take a deep breath and get outside your house.

7. Saying I Love You And Thank You As Much As Possible:

This speaks for itself, but I always want the people I love to know I love them and to thank the people who make my life easier every way I can. If that is a simple as leaving a nice tip, thanking the Target checkout cashier, or something larger. Let’s all express as much gratitude and love in the ways we can this year.

That is all I have for now. I hope you all have a safe, happy, healthy New Year and a prosperous 2025! I am really rooting for this year to be a good one…. Plan on a lot more political content coming soon in this space with the upcoming confirmation hearings and inauguration. What are your New Years plans? Do you feel the same way I do about the holiday? Feel free to share in the comment section.

Much love,

Meghan