What I Learned in 2025
As we wave goodbye to 2025 – some of us possibly with a middle-finger extended – I am considering the gifts it has given me.
A Pollyanna by default, I try to focus on the good bits. And honestly, this year has not been an annus horribilis for me.
Not all of the people I love can say that so, rather than bathe in survivor guilt, I’ll exercise gratitude. I’m sure I’ll get my turn again.
Grateful, then, for things I did not know until this year taught me – some big, some small. Here’s one: plant food actually works. I thought it was a consumer con, but it turns out a teaspoon in the watering can now and then makes a visible difference. My cyclamen won’t stop flowering and the Peace Lily is going off.
More household tips I can’t believe I didn’t know until I was this many years old include removing scuff marks off patent leather shoes with a rubber. This is how a pair of pink Doc Martins that looked pretty rough in an op shop can now be mistaken for brand new on my feet.
Also, a splash of bleach in half a bucket of cold water gets the rust marks out of your late-mother’s handkerchiefs kept in storage, and they are a delight to iron neatly and carry in your pocket. You don’t have to spit on a corner and scrub at your face with them, but you can if you really want to conjure her memory.
2025 was the year I discovered the air fryer. I still marvel at its ability to cook salmon better than my oven - worth knowing now salmon is almost affordable in comparison to mince.
Another discovery? I like the bubble skirt again. Words I thought I’d never say after fully embracing the 1980s mid-thigh version and feeling compelled to destroy all photographic evidence once the eighties wore off.
This midi-length gently-poofed version we’re enjoying now is adorable – much less mad-mushroom.
I have also re-embraced the coloured tight for winter, a choice I was shamed out of some years ago by a teenage daughter and a hyper-opinionated stylist. 2025 has generally reacquainted me with the thrill of wearing things that annoy people like hot pink tights and political badges.
Biggest gift for me this year has been feeling how much whakapapa matters. I had resisted, irritated as I was by random DMs from strangers over the years insisting we were cousins and could they have free tickets to a show.
Though really it was based on a belief you create your own life and future, and no one should be rewarded or penalised for coming from a particular family line.
But my studies this year into what it means to be Pākehā have made me view whakapapa differently. Not as something prescriptive - that your ancestors were this kind of people who did these things, that you are inevitably the sum of their intermingled parts.
Instead, knowing their stories has helped explain things about me and my family. It invites you to make choices about the kind of person you want to be – the ancestor you eventually want to become - and to place yourself in a bigger story.
“Connection” was the word I wrote in the front of my diary this year as my aspirational theme. This year has absolutely been about strengthening ties and finding new people – both relatives and friends.
Ngā mihi o te tou hou – Happy New Year, whānau!