One Question to Take You Into the New Year 🤔

Happy Holidays, friends!
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​Welcome to the December 23rd edition of Menopaussible—bringing you the news you can use and the ⚡ energy ⚡ you need to support your menopause journey.

I’m Maria Caracci Ciccolella—health + life coach and menopause advocate. (Connect with me on ​IG​ or LinkedIn​!)

We are officially in the thick of the holidays—Hanukkah behind us, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and the New Year quickly approaching—and if I had to guess, you’re feeling tired and the #1 thing on your wish list is a break (understatement, I know). Yet the turn of the year beckons for change (talk about an ingrained habit!), and this inner desire for action may be creating a stir—a kind of unsettling—that’s robbing you of the true stillness you desire. So what’s one to do?

In this issue, we serve both needs—offering a one-question path forward and a way to invite stillness with minimal effort.
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Your time is precious—so let’s jump in!

The Question Worth Holding

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What Do I Want More Room for Next Year?

There it is. The one question you can sit with, jot thoughts down about, or simply put a pin in to revisit in January.

Simple question…so many possibilities. And here’s the thing—you don’t need to answer it right now. You don’t need a plan, a resolution, or a neatly wrapped insight before December 31st.

Sometimes the most generous thing we can do with a question like this is to give it a quiet place to sit.
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For me, that place has often been reading.

Inviting Stillness So You Can Hear Your Thoughts

My love of reading began as a child, but my true appreciation for it has come later in life. Books do more than offer worlds of escape—they give our thoughts room to roam freely, interact with new ideas, inspire new roads forward.

If stillness is what you seek, a good book can offer it just by cracking the spine.

In that vein, I offer you a short list of the books that did that for me this year. A mix of grief, empowerment, history, womanhood, and craft, each provides an off-ramp from the day-to-day realities and a space where the question above can move freely in your mind—until you are ready to answer it. With that, I hope you enjoy!

Where I Found Stillness This Year

​I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Angelou’s life, self-reflected onto the page, is all at once beautiful, joyous, tender, and painful. For Angelou, the written word is both the refuge and the impetus for her life—and can be for the reader as well. ♥️

​Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks
A tender, beautifully written experience of grief and longing, written by the author three years following the death of her spouse. A journey into what it is to live and love.

​Eleanor by David Michaelis
A sweeping portrait of a woman who shaped post–WWII America more than we have given her credit for. Read if only for the story of Eleanor’s remarkable transformation and her ability to harness her own power to create change on an immense scale.

​North Woods by Daniel Mason
The phrase “nature takes its course” has never felt so apt as in this novel, in which the woods are as much a “character”—playing witness to all the lives that pass through—as they are a backdrop. The writing is beautiful and deep without being complex, and each story, while distinctly individual and profoundly human, connects back to a shared root. One to remain on the bookshelf.

​Dear Writer by Maggie Smith
A book for anyone who has ever thought about writing—as a serious pursuit or purely as a means of creative expression. Smith breaks creativity down into ten essential elements—attention, wonder, vision, play, surprise, vulnerability, restlessness, tenacity, connection, and hope—offering a lens through which to look at writing and experiment. Keep a journal handy—generative writing exercises throughout allow you to jump right in!

Before We Turn the Page

If, somewhere along the way, the question What do I want more room for next year? stayed with you, I’d love to hear what it stirred. Simply hit reply 📩 and share what came up.

Remember: December doesn’t ask us to conclude—only to pause. If clarity hasn’t arrived, trust that it doesn’t need to. Sometimes the most useful thing we can do is make a little room and let ourselves be moved, distracted, or quietly changed by a story. The rest will follow.

With that in mind, allow me to wish you a restful holiday season and a New Year that meets you with curiosity, spaciousness, and possibility.

See you again on the other side!