word for 2026

Every year I pick a word for the upcoming year… and this year I have struggled with my choice. My health has been so bad of late that it has been dragging my mind down with it. I feel like I am a burden to those who I care about. much like the song from Encanto said “Who am I if I can’t carry it all?”…

So I have decided the word for 2026 should be Grace. As in the grace I have to give myself for my health and my own failure to be perfect. I will be trying to do the blog again after the first of the year.

In the meantime I will wish you and all of yours a blessed holidays.

it really is the little things

Meme - Feeling Invisible

Today I am alive.

Everything hurts, my health is uncertain, and my mental health is in the toilet. This is the first time in the last decade I have failed to do the pad challenge.

For me it means I am being unreliable for the people who are depending on me, and I hate it. I have never been the one that needed expensive things…but today I needed a pick me up.

I needed to get out of the house.

I needed a dirty Chai tea. (this is a Chai tea with a shot of espresso)

I needed five minutes when no one was depending on me while I was wanting to fall apart.

That feels so selfish.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have responsibilities…expectations…obligations. And I have always been able to do it. I gave of myself until everyone else had. Now I have to put my self first. and it’s so strange.

Yesterday I couldn’t find the energy to do the work I needed to do. Now after I enjoyed the Chai I will be able to do some of it.

I am still struggling, and I won’t be able to even get answers about my health issues until February.

Illness has me

Meme-emotional description

This is the first time in a while I have struggled with the pad challenge. I am going to try to get it caught up…but I don’t know if I will be able to. I’m sick. Not the normal this time of year thing, though I wish it was. I just got over a nasty sinus infection, but I am still working on dealing with other issues that are making me feel like sleeping all the time.

I will get over it, I think…but I am not sure how long it will take. Until I get back to 100 % I am probably gonna be behind on everything. I am going to try to keep up…but I can’t promise anything right now.

Pad challenge Day 8 Patricia

Poetry
Monday Poetry

Expectations 

Ever expanding 

Ever exceeding 

 

Equating Ego Erroneously 

Extra expected... 

Everything Establishing 

Extra!

Pad challenge Day 8 Serena

Serena Mossgraves
Serena Mossgraves

The Graveyard

by Serena Mossgraves 

When does the earth 
 in the graveyard 
return to the living? 

When do the souls  
that guard such places 
finally find rest? 

When does the graveyard 
stop being the place for the dead, 
and return to life again?

Pad challenge Day 7 Patricia

Poetry
Monday Poetry
Wake me 

wake me,

for I must be

stuck in a dream...



wake me,

as I have all

I ever wanted.



wake me,

before I decide 

to ne'er leave.

Pad challenge Day 7 Serena

Serena Mossgraves
Serena Mossgraves

The Grim Reaper’s Dream

by Serena Mossgraves

As though life was unreachable
the reaper dreams of what is
naught for them, someone to lead them
towards a paradise to rest in.

Kindness misbegotten,
the reaper realizes…
Dreams were ne’er meant
to be had.

Pad challenge Day 6 Patricia

Poetry
Monday Poetry
Bohemian 

I've been a thousand places
I don't know where I'm going
It's hard to find a place to call home
Every demon, every ghost from your pastAnd every memory you've held backFollows you home

Oh, home, let me come home
Home is wherever I'm with you
I'll go wherever you will go

And it don't look like
I'll ever stop my wandering
I've been down every road
Felt the sun, I've felt the cold
 

This is a cut poem for the volume Lyrical Recycling,
a cut poetry volume.

Bohemian Songs :
battle born by five finger death punch, nobody drinks alone by Keith Urban, Home by Edward Sharpe and the magnetic zeros, wandering by James Taylor, Home is You by Rozes, wherever you will go by the calling

Pad challenge Day 6 Serena

Serena Mossgraves
Serena Mossgraves

Grief is Alive

by Serena Mossgraves

it slithers through your soul
eating, biting, devouring,
as it goes…

Grief is a creature
buried deep within,
alive and borrowing.

Pad challenge Day 5 Patricia

Poetry
when the world closed in on me
I needed you so desperately,
I kept looking at the phone 
wondering if you would be
there if I were to call,
if I asked would you be 
there for me at all ?

Perhaps that's my mistake
I counted on you ever
to be the one I could count on.

I needed you,
and hope was gone.