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To everyone celebrating another trip around the sun this month, I hope you never outgrow the little things that make you who you are. Keep your wildflowers, your wistful heart, your collection of lucky numbers and little superstitions. Keep the songs that take you somewhere else, the books that feel like old friends, the places you return to because they remind you of yourself, and the peculiar way of finding beauty in things other people walk past. Keep making wishes, even the ones you are almost too embarrassed to admit. Keep looking forward to things, however small. Keep a little room in your heart for unexpected adventures, unfamiliar places, new friendships and all the beautiful things you haven't encountered yet. I hope growing older never makes you feel that you have to become less curious, less sentimental, less hopeful or less yourself. May you always have something to look forward to, something to be grateful for, something to laugh about and someone with whom you can share the ordinary little joys of being alive. And when life gets a little too serious, I hope you remember that there is still so much beauty to be found in this world, and so much of it is waiting for you to notice. Here's to another year of being wonderfully, unapologetically yourself. Happy birthday to us. May the years ahead be kind, surprising and full of reasons to feel glad we were born. p/s: Mine was two days ago, on 7 November. I spent the day feeling particularly grateful for the people and little moments that make life worth looking forward to. Perhaps that's one of the nicest things about birthdays - being reminded, every now and then, that being here is something worth celebrating. M. | November 2026

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We often underestimate what united people can do. We convince ourselves that change belongs to those with influence, money, authority or a seat at the table. Yet the world we live in is also shaped by countless people whose voices, choices and everyday actions ripple further than they may ever realise. Of course, changing or fixing the world is rarely as simple as wanting it to be different. There are institutions to rebuild, difficult decisions to make, old mistakes to confront and consequences that do not disappear overnight. There will always be reasons to worry, and days when hope feels far away. Still, there is so much worth hoping for. A world where children can grow up feeling safe, where schools are places of learning rather than fear, where teachers have the support and resources, they need to nurture young minds, where people can live with dignity, and where protecting our future matters more than winning the present. Perhaps we will not see all of it in our lifetime. Perhaps we will never know the full extent of what our small contributions have made possible. But we can choose what we stand for. We can choose what we tolerate, what we challenge, what we teach the next generation, and what kind of world we are willing to leave behind. Maybe that is where our strength has always been. Not necessarily in holding power, but in understanding that people, when they care enough to act together, are capable of extraordinary things. And perhaps we should hold on to both things at once: the fear that the world still has so much to get wrong, and the hope that it still has so much left to get right. Because change needs people who believe it is possible, even when they cannot be certain how long it takes to happen. And the future, after all, belongs to all of us. M. | November 2026

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November always seems to arrive with a certain kind of sadness. I suppose this is what happens when a year begins to draw its curtains and we find ourselves once again approaching the end of something. We start counting the things that happened, the things that didn't, and all the little moments in between. The plans we made, the places we imagined ourselves going, the people we thought would still be around. And those little promises we made to ourselves at the beginning of the year, when twelve months seemed like such a generous amount of time. Some things happened exactly as we hoped. Others took a different turn. Some never happened at all. Along the way, we changed our minds, changed our plans, lost a few things, found a few others, and learned to live with the circumstances that came with them. I wonder if everyone feels this way towards the end of a year. A little nostalgic for what has passed, a little disappointed about what could have been, and perhaps a little surprised by the person they have become. I don't think we always give ourselves enough time to feel these things. We are so accustomed to moving on to the next thing that we rarely stop to consider everything we have left behind. So perhaps November is a good time to do just that. To remember without rushing ourselves. To miss a few things without feeling the need to get them back. To accept that some stories ended differently from how we had imagined. And perhaps to leave a little room for the things that have yet to find their way to us. P/S: To the November babies, happy birthday. I hope this new year of your lives finds you a little kinder to yourselves, and brings you things you didn't even know you were waiting for. Mila B. 1st November 2026

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I love you in a way that could only ever be yours. I used to love so intensely before you. So intense that it felt as though every rib inside me was being torn apart. I used to think that was what loving someone deeply meant - to give so much of yourself that there would hardly be anything left when it was over. But I understand now that you can never love two people in exactly the same way. You love each person in a way that belongs only to them. A love that could never be repeated, because it was always meant for that one person. So I'll say it again. I love you in a way that could only ever be yours. I don't love you intensely. I don't think I have that kind of love left in me. I've given it to someone before. I loved them so intensely that I was willing to be ruined for them, to destroy the world for them, even to perish for them. But with you, I love in a way that makes me want to rebuild the world. For you, and with you. I want to love, to live, to heal, and to become better. I want to make a life in which there is room for both of us to grow, to make mistakes, to find our way, and to keep choosing each other. And I can tell you, this is a thousand times harder than dying for love. Because this time, I have to live. I have to try. I have to fight every day. I have to find the strength to be here, to be better, to stay just another day. And perhaps this is how I love you. Not by giving you what remains of a life I was willing to throw away, but by trying, every day, to build a life I want to stay for. M. | October 2026

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There were days when I thought I was doing better, and days when I wondered if I had made any progress at all. Days when I could go about my life as usual, and days when even the smallest things felt heavier than they should. October showed me that I can be struggling and still have things to be grateful for. I can be carrying sadness and still find reasons to smile. I can love someone deeply, look forward to little things, make plans, write about beautiful moments, and still have days when I don't quite know what to do with myself. Perhaps these things do not cancel one another out. For sometimes, life holds more than one truth at a time. I tried on the days when I had the energy to believe things could get better. I tried on the days when that belief felt impossibly far away. I tried even when I had no faith in the future, only the faint hope to see what tomorrow might bring. October is leaving again. And I cannot say that I am any better, happier, or stronger than I was when it arrived. But I am leaving it having tried. M. | October 2026

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Today wasn't a very kind day to me. I had more feelings than I knew what to do with, and by the end of the day, I don't even know how to be close to myself again. I wish I knew how to make room for all the things I feel without letting them take up so much space inside of my head. I wish I knew how to feel everything without feeling as though I'm slowly losing my grip on myself. And I'm back to the same question. When does it become bearable? M. | October 2026

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I met my eight-year-old self today, and she asked me, “Why do you talk to yourself like that?” “Like what?” “Like you don't like yourself very much.” It struck me how easily we forgive others for being human. We make room for their mistakes, their bad days, their moments of weakness. We remind them that nobody gets everything right, that they are allowed to be tired, that one bad decision doesn't make them a bad person. Yet somehow, when it comes to ourselves, the rules change. We turn our mistakes into evidence against our character. We call ourselves foolish for not knowing better, weak for struggling, and lazy for needing rest. We hold on to old embarrassments and past mistakes long after we'd have forgiven someone else for theirs. We become both the person on trial and the one who refuses to grant a pardon. My eight-year-old self was still waiting for an answer. I wondered what I would say if she were the one making all those mistakes. Would I call her stupid? Would I tell her she should have known better? Would I make her feel she had to become someone else before she deserved a little kindness? Of course not. Perhaps being kinder to ourselves begins with learning to offer ourselves the same understanding we give so freely to others. After all, we're the ones who have to live with ourselves through it all. M. | October 2026

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