My Personal Pondering: an honest reflection of this last year.

I find social media puts pressure on our actions and expectations of each other. I am a normal person with faults. I expect you are too. There’s grace and humility in remembering that. Instead of rushing into the New Year making rash resolutions, only to be disappointed later on in the year, I like to spend time in December in introspection. I consider what did and didn’t work. I also think about how I plan to make incremental changes in the future; small changes that will help me get closer to my values, goals and vision for my life.  

I am Grateful for the Wins

First I am going to briefly share the wins that I am grateful for. They are changes and habits which I focused on for a number of years. As with everything, I am sure most of you have experienced that building good habits and maintaining them takes constant work. our lives are a work in progress for the rest of our lives.

• Body – fitness is something I have valued since a little girl when I watched my father get out of bed in the mornings and regularly do his exercises. He also was conscious of the food he ate and purposely didn’t eat sugar. These are two things that have informed my way of looking after my body well. I am not going to give you a history of all the different ways that I kept myself fit from when I was young or how my habit broke down in my forties but suffice to say that I have needed to reel myself in and focus on building some healthy habits. As many of you know I suffer from asthma and in 2024 I had a very bad year with regards to my lungs. My asthma nurse put me on the list to get pulmonary rehabilitation.  I had no idea what to expect but it turned out to be a real nugget of gold. I worked in a group with 3 physios and they gave us an hour of physical exercises and an hour of teaching on how to look after our lung conditions. This happened twice a week for twelve weeks. By the end of it I was enthusiastically exercising at home five days a week and I had carefully built up a healthy habit of walking, weight training and aerobic exercise. I enjoyed building up my fitness and confidence. This is so important at any age but I was very grateful to get back to looking after myself physically as I get older. I hope to continue till I die. I shifted back to being far more mindful about what food I put into my body as I believe that food is our nourishment and medicine.
• Social life — Next, having moved countries, it definitely disrupted my social life and I made a decision at the end of 2024 that it was time to move in the direction of my values and reach out in making friends. I joined a couple of groups and I have found a delightful group of people with whom I feel very at home and enjoy their company. One member encouraged me to enter a competition in the Annual Show. Her attitude was gentle and welcoming and to my delight I came first in two categories:1)something new out of something old: a denim skirt out of two pairs of jeans and 2) a woman’s knitted garment: a petrol blue jumper. I also joined a very welcoming church as I think it is important to be part of a community and partake in giving back to others around me. I feel like I have come home in my soul.
• Other small wins: Moving from chaos to harmony by establishing order which creates stability and peace in the home; growing vegetables and with Derek’s help creating some raised planter beds.

There’s much more but I will leave it at that.

The Struggles: finding new ways of being

I like to think of the struggles as challenges, not failures to give up on; like a cul-de-sac might feel disappointing or frustrating yet they are messages that the road taken was the wrong direction. Temporarily it feels like a disaster but there is more than one option in life and the challenge is to view things differently and to ask different questions, for example when I discovered that my lungs don’t like the cold it could have been easy to feel like an Eeyore, all downcast, but I re-thought it, re-framed it and I embraced it as a time of hibernation with crafting, reading and learning. It meant finding new ways of exercising, both challenging and fun. I had time to develop new practices that support my emotional and spiritual life. We finalized and simplified our home design which might not have happened if I had been busy. What I like about the social group I hang out with now is that they accept me as I am through all the seasons.

I don’t think I did enough art or drank enough water this last year. By next year we will have the sunroom insulated and winter will be more comfortable and I will have more space for my easel and for arty friends. The water intake is a work in progress. I had a string of irritating ailments niggling at the edges of my well-being but I have learnt about how good posture alleviates headaches; mindful-relaxation lowers my blood pressure; and respecting my needs by taking time to rest or recuperate alleviates fatigue.  

I hope you all have a happy new year’s eve however you spend it and may 2026 be a meaningful year.

Keep Well and stay safe.

Morag Noffke