December pulls us in opposing directions: slow down and rest but also race to get everything done before the holidays.
As the season unfolds, our team has been searching for a happy medium—a soft middle ground where we can both move gently and take up space to celebrate the year’s cap, denouement, finale.
That’s the theme of 2025’s closing Stretch Break: finale. After weeks of lists, gatherings, and last-minute errands, this is your invitation to look back and honor everything that made this year yours.
Our team’s year sets the tone. We asked each member to send in a photo of one meaningful moment for this edition’s Mood Board. Choosing just one image from 365 days is no small task, but what we received was a beautiful spectrum of what “meaningful” can look like: bucket-list trips finally taken, quiet snapshots at home—a partner becoming a parent, kids growing up together—plus personal payoffs from creative projects and steadfast friendships.
Your task follows suit: Choose one photo from your year that feels meaningful in any sense of the word—a moment of joy, growth, achievement, strength, wisdom, vulnerability. Share it with your circle and ask them to do the same. Together you’ll build a tiny year-end Mood Board of what matters most.
From here, explore activities, prompts, and tips to close out your year with deep reflection, nostalgic play, and a few ideas for throwing yourself a joyful after-party once the holiday rush fades. We’ll see you in the New Year!
Recreate this Mood Board for yourself:
- Make a mini scrapbook of 2025’s most fun memories
- Contemplate necessary endings and celebrate the gray areas in life
- Match the rest of the years’ outfits to your morning coffee mug
- Draw a more/less list to visualize how you want to fill your cup next year
- End the holiday season on a delicious note with Ina Garten’s molten brownie pudding
- Refresh your perspective on joy
- Fall asleep to calming and nostalgic animation
- Ring in 2026 with love and luck
- Paint the textures of winter—soft snow, bare branches, quiet light—and let that simplicity guide you into a short declutter list
Life, unplugged
🎬 Director's cut: Your cinematic 4-step year in review
It’s time to wrap up the final act of 2025 and celebrate everything that had a starring role in your year. Make a potato bed, grab a notebook and pen, light a candle, curl up in the blankets, and let yourself settle into your fortress. Then move through this reflection in any order that feels good.
1. Start by creating the score for your year—the songs that would play as the end credits roll. Picture your life as the movie and choose tracks from the various genres your year moved through. Here are a few ideas to guide you:
- If your year mirrored a Nicholas Sparks romance: “big fall” by Indigo De Souza, “Dive” by Olivia Dean
- If your year felt like a laugh-out-loud comedy: “Look Back” by Betty Who, “The Spins” by Mac Miller
- If your year had Shakespearean flair: “Exit Music (For A Film)” by Radiohead, “The Scientist” by Coldplay
- If your year moved like an action-thriller: “Kiwi” by Harry Styles, “Enter Sandman” by Metallica
- If your year felt like a coming-of-age film: “Don’t Take the Money” by Bleachers, “I Could Say” by Lily Allen
2. While listening to your soundtrack, list out the supporting characters that grounded you this year—the people, spaces, routines, and hobbies that kept you going on tough days.
3. Next, write out your scene stealers: the books you adored, the recipes you repeated, the shows you binged, the tiny rituals that added lightness to your plot.
4. Finally, dive into a few warm reflection prompts as your director’s notes for the year ahead:
- What made you feel most like yourself this year? What energized you the most?
- What challenged you this year, and what did it quietly teach you about yourself?
- What comfort are you carrying into the new year?
- What’s one thing you can protect more fiercely next year?
Familiar comforts
🖍️ A playful interlude down memory lane
Home for the holidays is the perfect time to cast your inner child in your finale’s leading role. Your quest: Revisit all of the simple, Girl Scout–era crafts, activities, and projects that ruled your childhood:
- Break out old Mancala boards, UNO decks, or favorite puzzles, and get lost in the competitive fun
- Make Lunchable-style pizzas, dunk candy canes in hot chocolate, or decorate a gingerbread house while rewatching your favorite throwback films
- Make a mess! Finger-paint on a blank canvas, make homemade scratch-n-sniff stickers, draw hopscotch or four-square quadrants with sidewalk chalk, or assemble festive peanut-butter pinecone bird feeders
- Gather family or friends to create a blanket fort, play sardines, or set up an indoor obstacle course
- Spend a day enjoying childhood comfort foods: dinosaur egg oatmeal, mac n’ cheese, Go-Gurt, pudding cups, fruit snacks
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Help desk
🎉 How to throw yourself an after-party party
After the holiday chaos, send yourself a private, party-for-one invitation to downshift, toast your year’s highs, reflect on lessons learned, and set the tone for a fresh start. Try these ideas to unwind without urgency:
Set the scene to shift into rest and relaxation
- Pick a room for your celebration and dress it with flowers, a new journal and jelly pens, face or hair masks, or any tiny favors and fun props that feel distinctly you
- Light a candle: Santal Rose for peaceful transitions, Baltic Amber for closure and grounding, or Palo Santo Patchouli for new beginnings
- Play music that feels celebratory or comforting (or queue your 2025 soundtrack!)
Treat yourself like the guest of honor
- Pour yourself a glass of Prosecco or shake up a signature cocktail or mocktail
- Set up a build-your-own snack bar or lean into ease and order your favorite takeout
- Use your best dishware that you only break out for special occasions
Write 2-3 few thank-you notes to the people who sustained you this year—either as handwritten letters or thoughtful texts. Draw inspiration from these examples:
- I just wanted to say thank you. I really appreciate you, and I don’t say it enough. Thanks for being in my life.
- Hey—just taking a second to thank you for everything you’ve been for me lately. Your support means more than I can put into words. I’m lucky to know you.
- Thank you for showing up for me the way you do. Whether it’s big things or small moments, it never goes unnoticed. I’m grateful for you.
End with a reset ritual
- Write down three favorite things from this holiday season: gifts, foods, memories, stories
- Do a five-minute gentle stretch, then take a long shower with your favorite products
- Slip into fresh sheets, watch a comfort show, and treat yourself to an early bedtime
Reader insights
🪄 Your 2026 opening scene outlook
We recently asked readers: What’s one thing you’re looking forward to—or worried about—in 2026?
The responses spanned a wide range of emotions. While many of you are entering the new year with hesitation—over half of respondents described their 2026 outlook as pessimistic or very pessimistic—you also reminded us that a finale can act as a bridge between what was and what could be. Endings and beginnings often coexist.
- In a time that feels uncertain, your answers revealed sparks of hope, ambition, and self-trust—small but powerful beginnings already taking shape:
- I can’t change the world, but I can change my own world. One step at a time.
- I'm looking forward to being promoted and/or finding a new job in Q1.
- Looking forward to creative endeavors. Worried about making all the things I want happen.
- I'm most excited about all the new and unexpected changes that inevitably come with a new year!
- Looking forward to figuring out my next move.
- Getting my doctorate degree and marrying the LOML❤️
- I would say most days I opt for optimism and letting go of negative feelings about what 2026 holds. I’m looking forward to continuing my life journey in healing, loving others, and hopeful for a successful fertility story. On the hard days, I will choose to send love out in the world… even if only in small amounts. Sending blessings and love ❤️
