The new year can be a time for reflection and for sadness. Photo: G Jacobs.
Happy new year, readers.
As 2026 begins, we’re supposed to be looking forward to an upbeat new start, a year when we’re going to get fit/save money/get a promotion/find a life partner, or whatever our dreams may be.
I find the new year’s mood is often the opposite. That’s partly to do with the farming cycle – we’re still harvesting the winter crops and everyone’s busy, hot, dusty and somewhat irritable.
But for me the quiet time between the Christmas rush and the return to work is often melancholy. It’s a time for memories of those who aren’t with us any longer, of chances lost, times changed and things ended.
Don’t get me wrong on this – I’m generally a believer in good energy and getting things done. Our festive season went pretty well this year. The kids were all home, there were no disasters either familial or culinary and everyone seemed pleased with their haul from Santa.
But before we hurtle into 2026, full of the desire to make change, it’s also good to make space for reflection and quiet, for sitting with other feelings.
In the 21st century western world, we sometimes tend to pathologise sadness. We turn it into a problem that needs to be solved on a timeline rather than an ordinary human condition.
Certainly, there are those who can’t shake their suffering and who need professional help to get through immense pain. But for most of us, it’s a journey you have to walk, a passage that’s different in every instance.
My mother died at the ripe old age of 94 last March. She went gently after a long, rich life and truth be told, I’m not beset by deep, tearing grief for her.
Mum was a big believer in letting life take its course. She’d lived to see her children happy, her seven grandchildren thriving and her beloved family farm safely in the hands of the next generation.
Her memory had faded, her body was failing and we’d had a long time to say goodbye.
On our first Christmas without her we raised a toast and imagined how happy she’d be to see everyone sitting around the table in our paper hats, tucking into the pavlova.
Rather than the sharpness of unexpected parting, I find myself thinking about Mum’s gentleness, the values she lived by, her grace in tragic family situations of the past and her resilience. It’s a quiet sadness, a way of offering her gratitude and love.
A little over a quarter century ago, I had a very late miscarriage just after new year. That pain, by contrast, remains almost as sharp today. With time, it’s been woven into the tapestry of our family story but the thought of that brief small life, unlived and unknown, brings me to tears every time.
Each year on the anniversary, I take flowers from the garden at dusk, walk up the rise and look down over our valley. I sit on the sun-warmed granite rock we placed there and wonder who my baby would have been.
There’s an old family grave nearby dedicated to James Matheson McKenzie, Uncle Jim, who managed this place for 45 years.
The headstone says, simply, “erected by those who loved him”. I like to think my little one is somehow in Uncle Jim’s care too, and Mum’s, and my father who died young and everyone else who went before us.
Thinking about the past, wondering about what might have been and giving the memories and feelings space feels right just now, before the relentless momentum of everyday life begins again.
As the new year begins, let’s allow space in it for all the memories of the old.
Genevieve Jacobs is the CEO of Hands Across Canberra, the ACT’s community foundation.
