Landing Softly Into A New Year

Forget the sprint. The first days of 2026 don’t demand a reinvention; they invite a softer landing. We open the year by easing the pressure of “new year, new me” and leaning into winter’s honest rhythm—quiet, composting, and the courage to let what’s done be done. Instead of chasing goals at full tilt, we practice resilience as repair and resourcing: small rituals, steady breath, and the simple act of choosing one feeling to guide the year.

We talk about the long corridor from Thanksgiving to New Year’s and how joy, grief, and old patterns can collide. That mix doesn’t mean you failed; it means you’re human. You’ll hear a humble story of a neighborly New Year’s—karaoke, an early bedtime, shared intentions—and why keeping it intimate can be more potent than grand ceremony. We explore the nervous system’s timeline (spoiler: it doesn’t reset on January 1), why winter is the void in many traditions, and how shedding precedes clarity. If you’ve felt behind, scattered, or tender, this is your permission slip to arrive slowly.

We also offer a grounding practice—three breaths, a quick inventory of what you’re carrying, and a one-word intention that pivots from achievement to feeling. Then, a set of gentle reflection prompts helps you identify what sustained you, what drained you, where resilience appeared imperfectly, what grief still asks for care, and what support would make the year more spacious. From practitioner vulnerability to practical resourcing, we center companionship over fixes and sustainability over hype.

Journaling / Reflection Prompts 

• What actually sustained me these past few months?
• What drained me more than I expected?
• Where did I practice resilience—even imperfectly?
• What am I still grieving, even if life looks “good”?
• What kind of support would make this year feel more spacious?
• What can be simple this year?

If this conversation helps you breathe easier, share it with someone who needs a softer start. Subscribe, leave a quick review, and tell us your one-word intention for 2026—we’d love to hear it.

Book your one-on-one Session at www.elenabox.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcoming The New Year Gently
• 1:26 Resilience Beyond Force And Hype
• 2:53 A Simple New Year’s Eve Story
• 4:33 Pressure, Grief, And The Long Corridor
• 7:26 Winter As Void And Shedding
• 9:18 Guided Breathing And A One-Word Intention
• 11:33 Reflection Prompts For Real Resourcing
• 14:18 Practitioner Vulnerability And Support
• 16:24 Offerings, Access, And Companionship
• 18:07 Season Focus And Gentle Reassurance

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to the Ode to Joy Podcast, a show where we talk about joy. How do we cultivate it? How do we maintain it? And what are the things that get in the way? I am your host, shamanic practitioner and death duela, Elena Box, coming to you with another very special episode from our season, all about resilience. I hope you enjoy. I'm your host. It's Elena Box. I'm back. Guess what? New year, same old me. It's January 1st of 2026, and here I am, back again with you. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm really happy you're here. I just want to name it. We're gonna land here, right here in this moment. So whether you're listening to this on January 1st, or maybe it's a couple of days or a couple of weeks, and you're still kind of just landing, I want to give you full permission to just arrive slowly, okay? Maybe you're making yourself a little cup of tea. Maybe you're just landing here in this moment together. You and I are here to we're we're in this together, my friend. So we're going to start this episode right away by just acknowledging January 1st and this first month of the year, honestly. Okay. So there's so much pressure to arrive in this new year, fully formed, you know, intentional, clear. New year, new me. Like, what do you mean? 2025, don't know her, right? And the truth is for spiritual people, especially, there's so much pressure, especially on the Instagrams, on the social medias, to be like, this is the most auspicious day of the year. You must be writing your intentions and burying them in the earth and, you know, being the oracle with the hood on in the darkness. And the truth is, yes, listen, if that feels really juicy for you and you're like locked and loaded, love it, here I am, oracling in the in the darkness, in the midnight, um, in the depths, go for it. So happy for you. Really love that for you. And maybe for others of us, myself included, raising my hand. We are tired. We're tired, we're tender, we might be grieving, we might be overstimulated, okay? And we might also be still digesting the holidays. Okay. So we want to frame resilience in this way, um, which means which is that resilience isn't about force or optimization, okay? It's about how we land. We're gonna say it again. Resilience isn't about force or optimization, it's about how we land, okay? Ritual doesn't have to be big to be real. Ritual doesn't have to be big to be real. So let's talk about New Year's Eve. What did I do for my New Year's Eve? We kept it simple, we kept it really close, we kept it intimate. It was me, my husband, my little baby, who is one year old. We went to a neighbor's um New Year's Eve party. We did karaoke. I sang uh the elephant love medley with my husband from Moulin Rouge, which he did not know, and yet somehow he nailed it. He did really well. And uh, he also did some Backstreet Boys with the other husbands, which was extremely impressive. And I gotta say, it was the best New Year's I've had in a while. We left before midnight. We were in bed, we watched like the last five minutes of the ball drop in New York City, and then we just watched the fireworks from our little rooftop, and we can see them beyond in New York City. And we were also just taking time to slow down and we shared our intentions with each other. It wasn't this huge, grandiose ritual. Uh, we kept it really simple, which felt really right for us. We shared our intentions for the year. We shared what we felt super proud of about the year and and the family that we've cultivated and the family that we're looking to continue to build and the ways in which we can show up better for each other. And we were also acknowledging, or we were acknowledging sacredly that my husband bought us a sauna. He not only bought us a sauna, okay, ladies and gentlemen, he built it literally in one day. I mean, he built like the base over the couple last couple of days, and then on New Year's Eve, he built basically the whole damn thing. Okay. It looks out over um the hills, and so you can see the the lights of New York City beyond. And gosh, we were now listening we weren't sitting in the sauna admiring all of the fireworks, but we could see that the vision is close. And honestly, it felt great because it's like, how can we acknowledge these wonderful ways in which we have progressed in our lives and really just getting excited for the future in a way that feels manageable. And that's what I really want to offer to you. So I don't know, I don't know where you're landing right now. And so that's what this whole episode is about is really inviting you into this new year in a way that feels manageable. And so if your new year's whatever it was, you know, just acknowledging for yourself, just saying that was enough, that counted.

unknown: 5:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 5:13

Even if it wasn't a huge ceremony, or even if it was, you're like, yep, yep, we did, we did the thing. All right. So let's bring it back to where we are, okay? If you are still digesting the holidays, again, I'm raising my hand, okay. Maybe grief came up for you, right? Maybe you're still integrating it. And what I want to offer you through this is compassion. Okay. So remembering that from Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year's, it's a long emotional corridor, okay? Like we we see Thanksgiving coming. And for those of us who are, you know, have have lost a loved one. And the truth is with with grief is that it always lives with you. It changes, you grow around it, you you learn different tools of getting through it, and yet still it hits you. And sometimes it hits you in different ways, and you can't always anticipate how it's going to hit you. So that's where we come into resilience and resourcefulness. But listen, it's a long haul, okay? We have a good two months of this long emotional corridor. And, you know, even joyful holidays can stir grief. It can stir exhaustion, right? Old family patterns coming up. Anybody is at ringing a bell with you, right? Those old family patterns, you're like, I thought I nipped this one in the bud, you know? Um, and they come up, right? And it can be a little bit awkward, a little bit like, ooh, I thought I did this, right? But then it comes back up and there's more work to do. And so here we are in 2026. And it's okay if you're still kind of going through all those things and thinking, wait, I'm not like, I'm not new year, new me. I'm still really processing everything that just happened. So also just acknowledging perhaps even there may have been some identity shifts for sure about who you are and how you're showing up in this moment. So for me, you know, as a mom, I'm in this, she's now one year old, but so I had her first Christmas technically, but this felt like actually the first Christmas. And so I'm also landing here in this space, too, as this mom in this time. Um, and so just to offer a little bit of perspective, many of us, if this is you, are still metabolizing everything that just happened. Okay. So the nervous system doesn't reset on January 1st. Okay, we're gonna say it again. The nervous system doesn't reset on January 1st. Wouldn't it be nice if it did, right? I don't know if you've ever read the book, The Body Keeps the Score, and there's a there's like memes going around out there that's like the body keeps the score, and you're like, but I wish you wouldn't, right? But it does, it does, right? So the nervous system is still metabolizing, recalibrating. So we're going to invite a little bit of self-reflection, and we're gonna ask a couple of questions, all right? So land yourself in your body and in this space. And we're just going to ask ourselves, how did the practices you tried this season actually land for you? Did they support you? Or did it feel like another thing to do right? Oh, okay. Something to think about. We're gonna have a couple journal journaling prompts coming up. Um, and again, I just want to normalize compassion. So if things didn't go how you hoped, it doesn't mean that you failed, right? So even for myself, right? I was doing all of these preparations and talking about resilience and also really cultivating this for myself. And still I got tripped up. And still knowing all of the patterns that would most likely come up, I still got tripped up. And guess what? It doesn't mean I failed. It just means I'm human. And here's another really important thing I want to offer to you. Resilience includes repair, not just effort. Okay. Yeah. I know, I know, I know. Bear with me. All right, we're in this together. You and I are in this together. Okay, so listen, another thing to keep in mind. We are in winter right now, which is really the void. So, for all of those who are like, you know, death workers, really into the whole death and zying thing, we're in that death before rebirth phase. Okay. It's a juicy time, but it's also like it's it's stillness, it's patience. It's we're in deep winter. We're in the northern hemisphere here. Things are cold. Um, you know, so in many traditions, including Celtic cosmology, right? This is the void. It's the dark, it's the compost, it's the like the soil beneath the earth that might even be frozen. Okay. So we're we're not necessarily like springing forward. Here we are, new year. I'm refreshed. It's, you know, this is not peak manifestation season. So if you were like setting your manifestations and blasting them out to the universe with the fireworks, I'm so happy for you. That's great. And also, it's okay if you were cozy in bed. You know, so this isn't peak manifestation, manifestation season. This is not clarity season. This is a shedding season. This is a a time to really acknowledge what is ready to die within us. Oh, it's awkward, it's real, it's happening right now. So, all of the ways in which we got caught up, all of the things that are really illuminating themselves for us this year, we can't expect to wake up on January 1st and be like, yep, processed it, got it ready, like locked in, got new tools, ready to go. Okay, no, this is a time to let go. So just remembering that not everything is meant to be born yet. Some things are still dying, and that's okay. So we're gonna name resilience here. We're calling it and we are letting go without rushing the replacement. We're staying present in the not knowing. We're staying present in the not knowing. It can be so tough. I know it, I know it. So here we go. We're gonna do a little gentle grounding practice. Okay, here we are. You and I. Are we breathing? Hopefully, right? If it's possible, land your feet on the floor. Maybe you just find yourself sitting wherever you are. Wherever you are, land yourself. Okay. So maybe you take one hand to the chest, one hand to the belly, and we're gonna take three deep breaths together. We love three deep breaths. So let's do it together. Deep breath in and deep breath out. Two more. Inhale and exhale. Last one, here we go. Deep breath in, filling up, filling up, filling up, and exhaling. And we're gonna ask ourselves: what am I carrying from the holidays? What am I carrying from the holidays? What am I ready to set down? Not forever, just for now. What am I ready to set down? Not forever, just for now. Good. Keep breathing. And now I'm going to invite you to name one word for how you want to feel this year, not what you want to achieve, okay? How do you want to feel? And it's just one word, finding that for yourself, breathing it into your body. Okay, remember, this is enough. If this is all you do to really land yourself in this year, this is enough. And remember, you can return to this anytime in January. Okay. January is here for an entire month. So you can come back and remind yourself one word. This is how I want to feel this year, not what I want to achieve, just how I want to feel. So now we're going to offer just a couple of reflection prompts. Remember, these are gonna be in the show notes. So I'm just gonna read them out loud for you. No pressure, and you don't have to scramble. Fine. Do I have a pen and paper, right? No, don't worry, you can come back and maybe you open up the notes app on your phone. However way you find this, these are for you. Okay, I'm gonna read them slowly for you. These and remember, this is an invitation, not an obligation, as my friend T Funk says. It's not homework, it's just something to consider. Okay, so here we go. Ready? What actually sustained me these past few months? What drained me more than I expected? Where did I practice resilience even imperfectly? What am I still grieving, even if life looks good? What kind of support would make this year feel more spacious? What can be simple this year? Okay, but so I just want to emphasize you do not need to answer all of them. Maybe one is enough. We're all about keeping it, we're all about keeping it simple this year, right? So, really to come to wrap this sort of all together is to remind you that resilience is really about resourcing. So I'll just share vulnerably from my own heart is, you know, I hold a lot of space for other people and I love what I do. I really, really do. I spend so much time with other people's ancestors and allies and guiding spirits. And I have noticed for myself, you know, I'm a mom, I'm a mom preneur and I don't always have time to do my own spiritual practices. So what I'm really locking into right now is getting getting back in my own spiritual, you know, Zendo, you could say, and reconnecting with my mentors and my teachers and diving back into spiritual tests, texts and really honoring and coming back into my own um tending of my ancestors and my guiding spirits and my allies. Because sometimes, like, I don't always want to go into the spirit world and chat with them and be like, all right, we got work to do. Like sometimes I just have to go and hang out for a bit. You know, they're kind of like, sometimes I'll show up and they'll be like, oh, so so what do you need now? Right. And they're like, what, you don't talk to us? You know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna come and hang out with us at all. You know, and I have to be like, all right, let's hang, let's, let's do the thing. So that's where I am right now. Um, as a practitioner, it's so important, you know, for anybody who does any, any kind of work in this area of whatever you want to call it, it's wellness, it's spiritual development, it's self-development, it's it's self-care. We also have to take care of ourselves and do our own work and receive support from other practitioners. I feel that it's so important to acknowledge that even if you do this work, you haven't subtly arrived and been like, yep, figured it all out. You know, there's some ways in which we have learned to tend ourselves that we share with other people. And yet it's still so crucial and important to take care of ourselves. So that's where I am right now is resourcing myself and just remembering that resilience isn't solitary, it's relational, it's resourced. Resilience is resourced. So I just want to tie this in, remembering that yes, I'm still open for I'm still open for business, ladies and gentlemen. You can come visit me at my ritual studio here on Long Island in New York. We're easily accessible by train. We're a 10-minute walk from the Port Washington train station. And if that's not available to you, you can always book a session online. I offer shorter um containers. You can meet with me weekly. Uh, there's many options and many ways to do this. And so if you're even just curious about the work that I do, you know, book a call. I love a phone call. I literally want to make my next business card have just a little line on it where it says, you know, prefers phone calls. Please call me. Don't text, don't email, call me. And remembering that this work that we do together, it's not a fix, it's companionship, which so many of us need on this journey of life. It's walking uh with one another and showing, uh, showing how we can do this together for a bit. I always say it's kind of like we walk with each other for a bit. Um, and so the last thing I really want to invite you to remember here is that I'm on this journey too. It's the whole reason why this is the podcast that I do. It's the Ode to Joy podcast. It's talking to people about how we cultivate joy. How do we move through really difficult things? How, you know, what are the things that get in the way? And I'm really just curious about it too. And I'm a human, and that's what I'm excited to be here doing is doing the humaning thing and becoming who I am. It's more and more of becoming who it does becoming all the time. Idiomio, idiom. So what we're doing here is having more conversations about the death and rebirth cycles. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's the name of the game. And we're gonna be offering more tools for resilience. It's the whole name of this season. And we're offering tools that don't require burnout. It's a huge thing, okay? So I just want to close out this whole episode with some reassurance for you. You're not late, you're not behind. Okay, you're arriving exactly as you are. Here you are in 2026. I'm so happy to be here along for this journey with you, and it's an absolute pleasure. So I hope to talk to you again soon, and you'll be hearing from me soon. So yeah, I hope you've enjoyed. This has been another episode of the Ode to Joy podcast. It is my sincere joy to bring you these episodes every week. And listen, if you feel called, it would mean so much. If you could go ahead and, you know, drop us a review, maybe throw us a couple of stars. If there are five of them, even better. And just sending you so much love. I'll talk to you again very soon.