Against the Clean Slate
On Moving with Time
It’s halfway through January. A Sunday morning.
I’m sitting at the dining table still in my pajamas, the house is quiet in a way that isn’t necessarily peaceful so much as it is just temporarily paused. My laptop is open in front of me. To its right are two oversized salad bowls I washed and left on the table because there was no room in the dish rack. One still smells faintly like dish soap. Next to that is a painting Lili made three days ago: green stick figure girls with pigtails and a big red blob and another green one with what looks like a heart at the end? She painted it quickly while on facetime with her nina the other night and I still haven’t put it away.
There’s a towel draped over one of the chairs, still stiff with salt from a sunset beach visit on Thursday. I told myself I’d hang it later, and later hasn’t come yet.
I haven’t mopped the floors since last year.
There are three mounds of dirty laundry waiting for me in the hallway just quietly present and waiting for their turn.
Our Christmas tree is still up, too.
And sitting invisibly but loudly in my inbox is a sharp, demanding email that arrived at 6:00 p.m. on Friday night. The kind of message you feel in your body before you even open it. I made a conscious choice to wait before responding because I needed to stay regulated. Even so, it lingered in the background of my weekend, tightening my chest and pulling my attention away at unexpected moments.
This is January.
There’s a subtle kind of violence in the way we talk about the new year and the idea that a number can offer a clean slate. As if exhaustion respects a calendar. As if mental load resets at the stroke of midnight. It’s almost ironic that we place this expectation immediately after the holidays, when most people are already stretched thin and carrying more than they’ve had time to process.
Who exactly is supposed to be ready for a reset?
Especially single mothers, whose mental load does not pause just because the year changes.
I spent a good portion of the start of the new year sleeping on the couch. Again. Surrounded by tasks that needed doing while my body insisted on rest. The dishes could wait. The emails could wait. What couldn’t wait was listening to the signals that told me slowing down was necessary.
I don’t regret that decision. I’m learning that there will always be something to do. The list does not disappear just because the calendar flips. My small sharp thought here is this: New Year’s, at least as it exists on the Gregorian calendar, doesn’t always reflect the reality of lived time.
What I have given myself permission to do is pause and move through this month slowly. To clean, purge, and reflect in ways that feel grounded and to take stock of what the last year taught me instead of rushing to redefine myself before I’ve had space to integrate it.
On Guåhan, time wasn’t always organized the same way we know now. The traditional CHamoru lunar calendar moved through thirteen months shaped by tides, stars, food cycles, and survival instead of quarterly goals or fiscal urgency. Each month reflected what the land and ocean were offering, and how people were meant to move with that offering and not against it.
December, by name, may not be Umayanggan, the month I’ve read described as unsettled or weepy, but that’s exactly how it felt in my body. Even in the middle of celebration, there was grief, exhaustion, and emotional residue that hadn’t been given space to surface. The calendar said holiday. My nervous system said unsettled.
By mid-January, some calendars name this season Umagåhaf: a time associated with gathering shrimp. A reminder that time once corresponded to attention, patience, and readiness. You didn’t harvest because a clock told you to. You harvested because conditions were right.
That feels like a better metaphor than “new year, new me.”
The next lunar new year doesn’t arrive until February 17th, and that timing feels closer to the pace my body actually recognizes. It’s a softer threshold, not a shove signified by a ball dropping.
In 2025, I was barely holding on. Then the holidays arrived and swept everything into motion, and my focus narrowed to what mattered most: showing up, caring for my child, and getting through each day with intention. Being ready for a symbolic “clean slate” a week after Christmas was never realistic.
So if wherever this finds you, you’re still carrying December with you, hey, that’s okay. If the holidays disrupted your rhythm, if your body doesn’t recognize the difference between December 31st and January 1st, you’re not behind.
Whatever is on your plate, I hope you give yourself permission to move through it on your own timeline.
As for me, January’s new year is for the start of tax season, and that is it and that is all I’m subscribing to. Everything else can wait. I’ll mark my own beginning with the next new moon.
Lots of love,
XO G
PS. For all you beautiful subscribers, my e-book, The Griefs Every Mother Knows is now available for immediate purchase below. If you want a sneak peak into the book check out this post.