Your Soul Food as We Turn the Corner from 2025 to 2026: May you feel that you belong—to your own life, to this world, to this imperfect and beautiful human family

Happy Soul Food as We Turn the Corner from 2025 to 2026!

This week:

Seasonal Illuminations from Jack Kornfield:

Dear ones,

This season arrives with lights in windows, familiar songs in the air, and the pull of gathering with family and old friends. For some, it is warm and full. For others, it is complicated, quiet, or heavy with memory and loss.

If your heart is tender this year, you are not broken. You are human.

The holidays have a way of stirring everything—the love we long for, the grief we still carry, the disappointments, the sweet moments we wish we could relive. Sometimes we sit at a table that includes both joy and sorrow.

Sometimes we aren’t at a table at all.

And yet, even here, something luminous can be born.

You do not need to fix your family. You do not need to forgive perfectly. You do not need to feel any special way at all. It is enough to be honest with your own heart.

If you pause tonight, place a hand on your chest and quietly offer:

May I be kind to what I feel.

May I be held in love, just as I am.

May the light find me, even here.

Then gently widen your heart to include those you love, those who are gone, and even those who are hard to be with:

May we all be carried through this season with compassion.

May love be stronger than our fear.

The light does not erase what is difficult.

It simply keeps us company within it.

From my heart to yours, may you feel that you belong—to your own life, to this world, to this imperfect and beautiful human family.

With deep Metta,

Jack

This might make you happier than gifts: It could ‘trigger a release of dopamine’
Acts of kindness have consistently proven to release the feel-good chemicals in people’s brains. Try volunteering this holiday season.

This might make you happier than getting and giving gifts, experts say

The Best of 2025-

Seven Good News Stories You Missed This Year
It wasn’t all doom and gloom in 2025. There were positive developments globally science and climate, in particular.

Seven Good News Stories You Missed This Year | TIME

Try not to smile at these 5 feel-good science stories from 2025
When 2025 got a bit much, science stepped in with the good news we needed to hear. The news can sometimes make it feel like the world is about to end tomorrow. Fortunately, science has been on hand to deliver some much-needed good news. Throughout 2025, researchers have been hard at work protecting us from existential threats, researching ways to improve the health of both us and our planet, and revealing the beauty of the cosmos around us.

Try not to smile at these 5 feel-good science stories from 2025 | BBC Science Focus Magazine

2025’s best photos of the natural world, from volcanoes to icebergs
A village buried by a landslide, the world’s largest tidal bore and the aftermath of ferocious storms and wildfires appear in our pick of images from environment stories this year.

2025’s best photos of the natural world, from volcanoes to icebergs | New Scientist

The 25 best sports photos of 2025 – and the stories behind them
From the bottom of the swimming pool to the top of the pole vault bar, photographers reveal the stories behind these amazing shots. And a bonus point if you can spot the photographer in their own image.

Best sports photos of 2025: The stories behind the images – BBC Sport

Thanks, this week goes to Ken B for the Jack Kornfield share, and please pay it forward in a Happy New Year!!

Love,

Neville