The Year of the Home

Soul Guide 2025

Dear Friends,

Happy Saturday. Next week a new year begins, and so it is time for my annual Soul Guide. I don’t remember when I started this (or why I named it Soul Guide— it sounds much more esoteric than it really is!), but the general idea was to create a guide for putting to bed the past year, and for dreaming and planning for the new one. I have put one of these guides together for over half a decade now. They tend to have a theme— 2024’s was The Year of the Tree. This is the The Year of the Home.

This years theme has been inspired by my recent move to London. When my husband and I moved into our flat, we immediately began to take stock of three things: what we wanted to maintain, what we needed to repair, what we hoped to begin. The recently exposed wood floors and bright windows, we wanted to maintain— to clean and care for so that they would last and continue to give our new home its distinctive character. The draughtiness of the windows and large rooms, however, we wanted to repair, to find solutions for: with curtains to keep in the heat, rugs to keep the cold air from slipping under the door. And in our little terrace, I saw potential: I want to start a small urban garden.

Lives, I propose, are a little like caring for a house: there are those things which bring us life that we should think about how to maintain, those aspects of our souls or bodies or relationships that have fallen into disrepair and need attention and care to restore, and those dreams which we desire to make room to begin.

Each home, like each life, has its limitations and its unique gifts. And each life, like each home, has places long neglected. This year, I want to be a good steward of the home that is my life. I don’t mean my literal new flat (though there is much to care for there!), but the sense of my life being a place in which I live, and for which I care. And a place into which I invite others to share in my life.

So I hope you will enjoy this year’s Soul Guide, thinking through what to maintain, how to repair, and dreaming of new beginnings. Happy reading— and happy almost new year!

Warmly,
Joy