Sometimes the only thing you need to resolve at the beginning of a new year is to keep going.

Shooting for the stars is great but so is digging your roots a bit deeper. Here’s how I am keeping 2026 slow and steady (and how you can join me).

Hi, Happy New Year! Thanks for stopping by. I am Rebecca Mack. Writer, former midwife and mental health support worker, mum to two daughters and a wife of decades. I write about my professional experiences in healthcare, my personal healing journey and all the work being mother, a wife and a woman entails.

‘So, what are your new year’s resolutions’, my daughter asks.

‘To find a packet of bloody sprouts’, I reply.

New Year’s Day, 2025. My daughter and I are driving round the rainy, damp streets of London in search of a convenience store that will conveniently sell us a packet of sprouts. Love them or hate them (I personally love them), they are a fundamental part of a British Christmas dinner.

Having been unable to taste my Christmas dinner a week earlier due to an ill- timed case of flu, my New Year’s Day meal was going to be my second chance. I would find those sprouts if I had to drive through this drizzle all day. I have lived a life of second, third, fourth and more chances. I never give up.

‘No, really’, my daughter huffs, exasperated by this sprout-hunt. She has so many more Christmas dinners to look forward to, she is ready to go home. ‘What do you want to achieve in 2025?’

I relent. ‘By the end of the year, I want to have been paid for my writing’. There, I said it out loud. There was no going back.

‘Paid anything’, I continued. ‘Even if it’s only a pound.’

‘I will pay you mum’, my gorgeous ray of sunshine beams.

‘You can be my back up plan’, I wink.

Luckily, she got to save her pennies. By March 2025, I had my first paid subscriber. Just like that. Out of the blue. I had turned on paid subscriptions, with no marketing, no offers, no hullabaloo and my first paid subscriber arrived. Paid for the whole year. I will never forget the feeling. I will never forget her. But she was not alone. Another paid subscriber arrived. I was mentally preparing to pay off my mortgage and retire to the sun.

I even started receiving tips. Which of course I had not expected and therefore not checked my ‘tip jar’. I felt like a millionaire. Not financially. Something more important. I had been seen. I had been recognised. My work as a writer had been acknowledged. I had smashed my new year’s resolution by March 2025….where do you go when you hit that high?

Normally, in my life, downwards. A fast and furious spiral. But not this time. I managed to maintain. To sustain. And by the end of the year, over 20 people had paid for my work (a huge, heartfelt thanks to all of them). 2025’s resolutions were a success and as 2026 came into view, my ever optimistic and hopeful daughter wanted to know my plans for 2026.

‘What is your new year’s resolution for this year?’ She asked again. Having already committed to her own (vision board included).

In many ways she is the best part of me. Both my daughters are. They possess qualities that I admire, even slightly envy. Their optimism, joyfulness, hope and exuberance. Their resilience is second to none and their ambitions to better themselves and the world around them lifts my soul. They are young. They only have themselves to think about. They are carefree (as much as any young woman can be) and they not only hope for better, rich and exciting lives, but they believe in it. They throw themselves in, feet first.

I am more cautious. I must go at a steadier pace. I was once young and threw caution to the wind with my dreams and desires. I am more guarded now. I would love to say that I am confident of achieving grandiose new year’s resolutions of becoming a Substack bestseller, or landing a publisher for my book, or being picked up by The Guardian as regular columnist or helping lead the British resistance against the Fanta Felon or freeing the women of Afghanistan. But something stops me. Me.

And that’s not a bad thing. The deeper the roots, the more fruit the tree can bear. 2026 is a year of securing my roots. As a writer, a mother, a wife and a midlife woman. I am burrowing deep down to make those roots so fixed and firm, so healthy and heartfelt, so intertwined and impenetrable that whatever happens, I may bend but I will not break.

Who knows what 2026 will bring?

My elderly parents are becoming, well more elderly. Whenever I receive a text from my sister, my heart sinks.

‘Dad is going to post the toothbrush that you left’, it reads. We live to fight another day.

A couple of friends of my age have recently been diagnosed with serious illnesses. My husband’s friend lost his wife last summer. Health is not something you take for granted post 50. My own health and that of those I love. Health must be a priority at this time of my life.

My children continue to grow at pace, and the umbilical cord is being stretched further each day. My youngest will be thinking about university soon. The eldest wants to live abroad. I am a professional mum for God’s sake! It’s all I have known for over 20 years. This will take some adjustment.

Everything is changing but some things stay the same. The world is still at the mercy of psychopaths and sycophants. Polluting our planet, manipulating our minds and endangering our endgame. Their evil affects me. I so wish it didn’t.

I need a secure base. A base from which I can write and hope for better. 2025 was the beginning, 2026 is the embedding. Gratitude, slow living, appreciation of how far I have come and acknowledging my desire for more are my resolutions. The foundations which I hope will hold me. Writing for better. Authentically. Vulnerably. Honestly. No great declarations. No protracted and punishing ambition. Just slowly, embedding myself in this writing life. Resolving to stay resolved is a resolution in itself.

We did find the sprouts in the end. I told you I never give up. A Sainsbury’s local store had a stack of them. Reduced to 19p a bag. I bought a couple. More than made up for my lost Christmas dinner. Perseverance pays off. I intend to persevere through 2026, writing for better, nurturing my roots here on Substack, growing my readership and deepening my connections. My people will find me. My paid subscribers will grow. We will grow together. Welcome to This Woman’s Work, 2026.

Happy new year.🎉 To celebrate I am offering a 30% discount on annual paid subscriptions to This Woman’s Work. That’s just £30/$40 for access to all my writing in 2026 (the more vulnerable, in depth posts are shared with my paid my subscribers).

If you have enjoyed this post, please like, restack or comment. With love and gratitude, Rebecca X