By Dana Nicole Roberto, Your Midlife Madame of Clarity & Calm There’s something about December that puts life into high-definition. The calendars fill, the lists get longer, the pace quickens — and suddenly everyone is sprinting toward the finish line of a year they haven’t even had time to process. The holidays carry this unspoken expectation that we should be joyful, energized, social, and organized… all at once. Meanwhile, most people are quietly navigating something else:

We all carry stories—some loud, some quiet, and some that don’t get shared until much later. My own story includes seasons of uncertainty, emotional exhaustion, and rebuilding from places that felt impossible at the time. These weren’t pretty chapters, but they were transformative ones. Those seasons didn’t break me; they built me. They shaped the way I show up. They taught me how to meet people in the messy middle without judgment or pressure. And from that journey came the

If your thyroid had a catchphrase, what would it be? For many people with hypothyroidism, including me right now, it’s something like: “I’ll get to it… eventually.” Hypothyroidism happens when the thyroid — a small butterfly-shaped gland in your neck — slows down on producing the hormones that regulate your metabolism, energy, digestion, and mood. It’s tiny, but it runs the show like a power plant for your entire body. When the thyroid underperforms, everything starts lagging