What is a Soft Start?
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For most of my adult life, New Year’s resolutions were a way I quietly set myself up to fail.
I’d write a long list of things I wanted to achieve for the year ahead. Inevitably, I’d fall at the first or second hurdle, decide I was a loser, and give up entirely. Which, of course, only reinforced the belief that I couldn’t be trusted to follow through.
It was an unhealthy, unhelpful cycle.
When Grief Changed How I Began a Year
At the beginning of this year, something shifted. For the first time, I didn’t set any goals at all.
I was too immersed in grief, shock, and loss. My friend had gone into hospital after a glorious night out — dinner, laughter, Christmas lights — and she died twelve days later, just before Christmas. It hadn’t been on my bingo card, and I knew my life was about to change in ways I couldn’t yet grasp.
I would need to move out of her granny flat.
I would need more work.
I would need somewhere else to live in the middle of a housing crisis.
I would need to learn to live without her daily support.
But I had no energy to turn any of this into official “goals.” The only thing I could do was put one foot in front of the other.
A Year of Loss — and Unexpected Love
And the year brought more loss than I could have imagined. My beloved dog died. I badly injured my knee. A friend was killed in a hit-and-run accident. It’s almost comical, the amount of shit that went down.
And yet — it also brought moments of extraordinary love.
My family gathering to say goodbye to my dog.
Friends showing up in ways I’ll never forget.
Kindness from students and colleagues.
And, slowly, the support I began to offer myself.
I realised I needed tenderness more than ever. I let the unconditional love my friend and my dog had shown me guide the way I treated myself.
What Actually Helped Me Survive
I took to my bed on afternoons when my body needed it.
I cried more than I had in decades.
I wrote pages and pages in my journal.
I pressed play on my meditation app every night.
I practised gentle yoga in the spare room at my mum’s place.
I massaged my wounded body before sleep.
What got me through wasn’t hustle or discipline.
It was stopping.
Allowing.
Accepting what was.
Rethinking How We Begin a New Year
And that’s when the question arrived.
What if this softness — this care I stumbled into through grief — could be offered deliberately at the beginning of a year? What if, instead of piling on resolutions and self-improvement plans, we began with gentleness? What if we let care shape the year, rather than pressure?
So… What Is a Soft Start?
Soft Start is five gentle days at the beginning of January — a quiet antidote to New Year, New You culture.
Each day, you’ll receive:
a short reflection
a small, doable practice
All designed to help you ease into the year feeling calmer, kinder, and more at home in yourself.
No fixing.
No hustling.
No pressure to become someone else.
Just a softer way to begin.
Join Soft Start (Free)
We begin on January 9. If this resonates, I’d love for you to join me.