<aside> 🪄 Week 29 Date: 13 July 2026
</aside>
Today I am a year older, and I want to tell you what I have learned in the language of the body.
I spent this year discovering that I am a sensitive person. Then, more slowly, more importantly, discovering that this is not a wound to dress. I do not need to fix it away. I am building a life around it. Sensitivity is not a crack in me. It is the instrument I was given to play the world with.
So today, I share in gratitude. Sense by sense.
I am grateful for seeing, and for seeing clearly.
For the eyes in my face and the eyes in my inside. This year I saw myself. Not just the self I perform, the self that is. I saw others too, saw them truly, and the seeing softened me. Even more grateful for the many books and articles I had the privilege to read. Seeing clearly did not make my life easier. It made it honest. I will take honest.
I am grateful for this body that holds me together, and for learning to hold myself.
For opening again after a long closing. For hugs, kisses, cuddles. For reaching out and being reached for. For giving warmth and letting warmth be given to me. I used to think softness was the risk. It was the closing that cost me.
I am grateful for taste, in the kitchen and beyond it.
For rebuilding my recipes, one remembered flavour at a time. For cooking with people and for people, and for the tenderness of being cooked for. For finding new places to eat, intentionally, joyfully. And for taste in the wider sense. A taste for growth. A taste for freedom. A taste for prosperity and enjoyment. I know what I want now. Better still, I let myself want it.
I am grateful for scent, my most honest sense.
For the beautiful things I reach for: my infused organics, their perfumes. For the smells of my city that remind me of the work still before us, the neighbourhoods waiting to be made green again. And for the smells that irritate me, that turn my stomach, that make my body expel what does not belong in it. My nose does not flatter me. What I love and what I refuse: it knew first, both times.
I am grateful for everything this year let me hear.