Dearest Unravelers and Unravelers-to-Be —
First Substack of 2026 — first things first, how are we? No, really, how are we? More specifically… how is your nervous system?
I just had the most perfect evening this week with one of my wisest girlfriends, Jaycee — take-out dinner, sweats, sprawled-out-on-the-comfy-carpet-floor kinda night. We were commiserating over our nervous systems (read: f*cked nervous systems), and I loved how Jaycee put it: “Brooke, my nervous system is in the auto body shop.” I knew exactly what she meant.
I’ll get to the state of the world in a second, but first — may we briefly post-game the holidays? Brava if your Christmas was pitch perfect and peaceful. But tell me if this rings true: the second Thanksgiving is in the rearview, it’s a mad dash to the holidays… and a bit of (as my Hoffman teacher would say) “magical thinking.” If you’re not familiar, magical thinking is the pattern of believing that if we hope hard enough, wish sincerely enough, or act “right” enough, we can control outcomes, prevent pain, or keep things from changing — even when our reality is telling us otherwise. Um, guiltyyyyyy.
No need to get into my details — but I definitely had on my magical rose-colored Christmas glasses this holiday. And I got not one but TWO cream pies to the face. Ouch. Ouchhhhh. Bottom line, if your holidays were beautiful but also sorta sucked… You’re not alone. The key is how we metabolize (Peter’s favorite word) what happened without hardening — how to let it teach us without letting it shut us down completely.
And — that starts with our nervous system. In our house, that meant Peter and I made a bee-line to nature, more specifically, the exquisite Joshua Tree National Park. (Can I just do a brief PSA: our National Parks are so spectacular, so reasonable to enter and it’s just beauty in every direction. Go!)
Speaking of our nervous systems — may we all be entering 2026 with a clean bill of health. The day after Christmas I had one of those mammograms where you get the call that begins with, “Ms. Baldwin… there’s a mass on your right breast...” Mass.
I went back in this week and — bottom line — I’m okay. Thank God. Truly.
But sitting in that waiting room, I couldn’t help but look around and know that some of the other women there would not be receiving the same news. That awareness stayed with me. It humbled me. It quieted me. It’s why I made Peter dart across the street with me after my appointment when I spotted this single word, beautifully painted on a wall: GRATITUDE.
Zooming out — talking about our collective nervous systems — we, as a nation, rolled straight into 2026 like…
Wait. What???
What did we just do?
Can we just… do that?!
And who’s next?
I found myself scanning the paper, the footage, the statements, the reactions — about foreign policy moves, about protests, about deaths, about federal power, about people in the streets, about families grieving — and feeling this familiar wave rise up within me: confusion, grief, anger, fear, heartbreak, and a deeeeeeep sense of unease.
Not just about the events themselves — but about how normalized (it’s not normal — it’s not normal!) it all feels.
I just heard Iyanla Vanzant with Oprah talking about dishonesty: “The truth is so contaminated today, and that’s poor spiritual hygiene.”
Spiritual hygiene. I’d never heard that phrase before — and loved it. She’s right. When truth is bent, spun or shouted, it doesn’t just confuse us intellectually, it dysregulates us somatically. Meaning: our bodies don’t know what or who to trust. Our nervous systems can’t find solid ground. So we stay clinched, vigilant, exhausted. (I don’t know about you — but staying clinched too long can get me physically sick.)
I don’t need to go through the details of these events here. You know them. What I want to name is the felt sense of entering this year.
The sense that the world is (still) so loud.
That everything is urgent.
That nothing is integrated.
That our bodies are trying to keep up with a nervous system environment they were never designed for. (Read that line again.)
Which is why Jaycee’s line landed so hard for me: “My nervous system is in the auto body shop.”
Yeah. That.
Instagram told me we’ve just shed the Year of the Snake and have entered the powerful Year of the Horse. But real talk, as my friend Julie put it to me this week, “It’s like the horse just bucked us in the teeth!” That’s what this first stretch of 2026 feels like — collision after collision, with barely any time to stop and breeeeeathe.
That’s why this question is so important. (How many of you are the ones who ask this of others but are rarely asked it yourself? Here, dear ones, I’m asking you.)
How are you, really?
How is your body?
How is your breath?
How is your sleep?
How is your heart?
How is your capacity?
Because I have this growing sense that our work this year — maybe the work of our lives — isn’t just to stay informed, or outraged, or active, or awake…
(YES, to all of that. We must feel those things to be alive and awake.)
AND.
We must also stay regulated enough to be human inside of it all.
To stay soft without collapsing.
To stay clear without hardening.
To stay open without burning out.
To put down our phones. (Read that again too.)
To look our people in the eye.
To be kind.
That’s the edge I’m trying to walk right now.
And — consider your source here.
Me… a longtime cable news anchor. For years I lived inside 24/7/365 urgency, inside outrage, inside the constant pressure to be fast, sharp, first. And then… I left… I took a long beat… as I told Oprah, I came home to myself. I unraveled.
And not that I think our Unraveling is ever done… but I find myself in the midst of a massive realization: I’m also now Reclaiming and Claiming anew…
Keep reading or subscribe below, and I will tell you about this life-altering ah-hah on Christmas Eve Eve… and a bonus video from me in Joshua Tree.❤️
