Tag: #new year

2025—Holding the Line: A Year of Hope ©Dawn Minott |a Haibun

On By Dawn MinottIn Poetry, Prose17 Comments

As appeared on LinkedIn:

The word I chose as my ‘north star’ for 2025 was HOPE. Little did I know that the shifts in the global health architecture would test what I thought hope meant.

Hope showed up as restraint, as holding ground when the ground was shifting.

Budgets shrank, systems cracked, and innovation was rebranded as survival. Gender equality was not celebrated; it was defended. Holding the line became the work. And climate shocks made this uneven—hitting small islands hardest: livelihoods washed away, unpaid care multiplied, choices narrowed. Still, the line held.

We learned that keeping the door for a clinic from closing can be as hard as opening one. Partners asked what was new, and the truest answer felt almost defiant: we stayed. We protected what women and girls already fought for. We held the line—not because it was easy or visible, but because retreat would cost too much. That’s where hope lived—in the dogged refusal to undo progress, in the daily choice to guard sexual reproductive health and rights when attention moved elsewhere.

This was not loud hope. It was working hope. Throughout 2025 hope carried on as a quiet expectation that progress, though slowed, was still possible.

And, as we stand on the cusp of 2026—for gender equality, for sexual and reproductive health and rights, for bodily autonomy and dignity; from conflict-affected and climate-exposed communities to the frontlines where women’s bodies remain contested terrain:

Let hope stand its ground
Without banners or applause
Possibility

2026 All Rights Reserved
Photo by Absalom Robinson on Pexels.com

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In creative solidarity, Dee

2025 In Review—Hope Asks for Attention ©Dawn Minott

On By Dawn MinottIn Poetry7 Comments

My word for 2025 was HOPE.

At the beginning of this new year, I reflected on how that word shaped this blog over the past year—because what I write here is always shaped by the world around me and the one within me. From this reflection I came to see how hope was threaded through the themes of the blog—life, relationships, nature, inner growth, and resilience:

1. Personal voice as witness

This blog exists as a platform to speak my truth—to give voice to what I observe and experience. That choice in 2025 was a metaphor for hope: not loud, but intentional and present. 

2. Creative expression as survival

Over the year I saw that creativity was less about expression and more about survival—a way to stay present when the days felt heavy and the world unsteady. And, hope appeared throughout the posts almost as writing itself—as a way to endure, to make sense of the disruptions and shifts of 2025.

3. Nature as mirror

In several posts I reflected on what nature kept teaching me—that hope is not urgency, but patience. Rain arrived without apology. Gardens grew on their own timelines. Slow seasons lingered. Quiet days endured. And I captured these shifts in poetry and prose.

4. Resilience in real life

Through poems like “Jamaica Strong” and “A Prayer for Jamaica,” I shared about the devastation of Hurricane Melissa on Jamaica in ways that moved beyond documenting an event. My poems spoke to the emotional toll carried by a nation and its diaspora. They embodied endurance, rebuilding, but more so hope rooted in community and persistence after loss.

5. Inner work as outer change

Reflections captured in poems like “Your Future Is Starving For You” and “Echoes of A Silent City” I was able to show how internal transformation and curiosity are acts of hope—belief in growth even when circumstances stagnate. 

6. Memory and renewal

Posts about memory (i.e. “The Taste of Memory” and rest (i.e. “Travelogue: La Quinta, A Retreat for the Soul”) spoke to hope as reconnection to self, to God, to what lasts beyond chaos. 

7. Relationship themes

In posts after posts I realize that I repeatedly go to love, timing, silence, and intimacy to inform my work. In 2025 these became markers of hope lived between humans—not in abstraction, but as intentional interpersonal choices. 

8. Prayer and spiritual grounding

Prayer has always been my mainstay. So undoubtedly there’d be prayer-centered posts. These posts placed hope in the spiritual—trust, surrender, praise—not as fantasy but as anchor when the world felt unstable.  

In looking back on the posts of 2025, one thing became clear: hope was not written to promise ease. It was written to ask for attention. That may not have been my intention, but I showed up again and again—pen in hand, heart open—trusting that small acts of meaning still mattered.

Now we are in a new year. My word for 2026 is FORGET. It comes from the first verse I read in the Bible (using the App YouVersion) on the first day of the year; and, it also happens to be one of my favorite verses:

Happy New Year, WordPress fam!

Here’s praying for a year that brings newness to the places of your life where you need to forget the former things that stole your joy.

2026 All Rights Reserved

Like what you see? To never miss a post click HERE👈 to subscribe & follow the blog. There’s more HERE👈 and on Spillwords, the Writers Club, Facebook & Bluesky.

💡 Only WordPress.com members can hit the “Like” button, but everyone’s welcome to share their thoughts in the comments. Thanks!

In creative solidarity, Dee

This Old House, This Old Year ©Dawn Minott

On By Dawn MinottIn Poetry10 Comments

Beforeword: Like an old house, the past year holds cracks, scars, and beauty—reminding us to embrace resilience, cherish love, and build hope in the year ahead. My word for 2025 is HOPE!

Happy New Year WPers!

The old year stands like an aged house,
its frame leaning from the weight of time,
its walls etched with the marks of joy and struggle.
The floorboards groan with the memory of steps—
some hesitant, some bold,
each one carving its place in the story.

The roof, patched, imperfect,
shielded through storms,
even as the rain seeped in through cracks.
Shingles rusted, paint stripped away,
layers of who you were laid bare,
revealing not ruin, but resilience.

Yet, inside, beauty remains.
The faint warmth of a fire long extinguished,
the soft hum of voices carried by the breeze.
Here is where love lingered,
where family gathered,
where arguments burned hot
but always cooled into peace.

The old year reminds you:
every crack tells a story,
every scar a survival.
What wore you down also built you up.

As the new year rises,
like a fresh foundation waiting to be laid,
remember this:
Mend the broken places,
but don’t erase their history.
Invite the light in, even if it exposes your flaws.
Forgive the storms, for they shaped you.
Celebrate the strength in what still stands.

Fill this new year with love so fierce
it becomes the shelter you need.
Open your doors to joy,
your windows to hope.
And when this year, too, becomes weathered,
may it stand proud—like this old house,
a testament to how well you lived it. 

2025 All Rights Reserved
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Image credit: Facebook

Like what you see? To never miss a post click HERE👈 to subscribe & follow the blog. There’s more HERE👈 and on Spillwords, the Writers Club & Facebook.

In creative solidarity, Dee

New Chapter ©Dawn Minott

On By Dawn MinottIn Poetry39 Comments

Beforeword: New Year is a New Chapter of 365 opportunities to make a difference in the spaces where purpose meets the pulsating of fresh start.

In the quiet unveiling of one year’s end
A new one emerges, a cosmic unveiling
Darkness surrenders to the dawn’s soft glow
The dawning of a year, another chance to step into the uncharted

Pages turn, not with the creak of binding
But with the silent rustle of unseen potential
Each day, a leaf in the unfolding narrative of possibilities
365 chapters yet unwritten in the book of life

No rhyme to dictate the rhythm of this journey
No predetermined cadence to constrain my steps
With each sunrise, a new chance to redefine
To shape my story unscripted, line upon line

Time, a steady heartbeat, echoes opportunity
In the quiet hum of moments purpose beckons
A call to craft meaning in the tapestry of existence
365 chances to breathe life into dreams

So, as the sun rises, 365 days stretch like an unwritten book
I’ll bravely embrace the new chapters
For in every sunrise, a promise is whispered—
365 days, 365 opportunities to live with purpose

2024 All Rights Reserved

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In creative solidarity, Dee

Happy New Year 2024 ©Dawn Minott

On By Dawn MinottIn Poetry44 Comments

New year, new opportunities!

2024 All Rights Reserved

Like what you see? To never miss a post click HERE👈 to subscribe & follow the blog. There’s more HERE👈 and on Spillwords & Facebook.

In creative solidarity, Dee

2020: Last Will and Testament ©Dawn Minott

On By Dawn MinottIn Poetry6 Comments

Before-word: 2020! What a year it’s been?! It started out as merry and promising as any other year. Sure, there were some rumblings about a “novel virus” but nothing to disrupt partying, merrymaking, living, working, schooling. Or so we thought. As the year is about to come to an end, as is often the case, I’m in a reflective mood—recalling the lessons/blessings, the ups/downs, the losses/gains. Imagine attributing human characteristics to this tumultuous year, what would you say about it? I’d say: “2020: The Last Will & Testament”.

I, the 20th year of the 3rd millennium, familiarly known to all people as 2020
Having endured a painful long battle with the novel corona virus
And suffered from multiple heart attacks caused by global suffering and dying
Realizing that on the 31st day of December
The end of my life will be signaled with one final exhale
Pressed out by the rhythmic predictable unchanging passing of time
Have therefore, with urgency, commissioned the writing of my last will and testament

I, 2020, was born to parents 2018 and 2019
People of every nation celebrated the eve of my birth
Some with prayers and others with merriment
For none knew what I had in store

In the months of my infancy hope abounded
Resolutions made to stop doing this and start doing that
In the months of my childhood and the unfolding of my adulthood
A virus unleashed sickness, death and fear everywhere
Resolutions soon forgotten, newness soon faded

But, nothing is ever really new

For—what has been— is what will be
And —what is—has been already in the ages before us
And like those before me and those after me, time will cease
For death will always impose his final goodbye

To you I have no things to leave
For property or material things I do not accumulate
To my successor—2021—I hereby appoint 12 months of 365 days

I give, devise and bequeath in equal shares to you TIME

Time for LIFE, live fully in each moment
Time for PEACE, may it not be disrupted
Time for FAITH, may it not falter
Time for HOPE, may it not fade
Time for JOY, may it not cease
Time for LOVE, may it not die
Time for LIFE, lived fully for eternity

In Witness Whereof,

I hereby subscribe my name to this Last Will and Testament as of the date of my death set forth below—

NAME: 2020

DEATH DATE: 31st December

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In creative solidarity, Dee