a birthday wish - have fun
Kia ora koutou and hello dear friends,
Welcome back. After a delicious break, I'm back to work and family life, back to sweeping up crumbs, scrubbing toilets, and navigating lots of email. (Much like most of us, I bet!)
I celebrated my birthday this month. As I realize I now probably have less future than past, this year I want to work on welcoming the marks of age and survivorship.
When I look in the mirror, I hope to see the carved lines framing my mouth, my eyes, and my forehead and think of these wrinkle -faced heroes: Mary Oliver, Gisèle Pelicot, and Harriet Tubman.
This year I'm also trying to not take myself too seriously and make more space for FUN. During the day time hours, I'll still work to fight burnout and ignorance and abuse and cruelty and imbalance.
And yes, I'm also going to have so much fun. I hope to practice what Edward Abbey encourages:
“One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast…a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive."
- As Emily wrote this month, we WILL have a good 2026. I'm going to bake mochi waffles and lift heavy weights and do cold swims and watch the most delicious movies.
Then I'll breathe a deep sigh, savor the rest, and get back to work.
In March, I'll be speaking at Page & Blackmore Booksellers in Nelson if you're interested. And tickets for my "ACT For Burnout" training are now on sale. More info on both below.
Finally, finally, here's the latest installment in our Good Enough Year 2026 journaling exercise, "Part 4 Late January: A Regular Plan for Weekly or Monthly Goals."
Love, Kerry
Events & News
Free Things
- I'm loving Nadine Hura's summer journaling club.
- It's time for Sharon Salzburg's annual Real Happiness Meditation Challenge (sliding scale).
- Christiane Wolf, my favourite chronic pain thinker, is offering a free AVAIYA University online event: Somatic Solutions For Chronic Pain & Discomfort.
- The Good Enough Year journaling Google Doc
- NELSON folks, I'm speaking at the Page & Blackmore on 13 March at 5:15 PM.
- If you want a signed copy of START HERE, please pre-order it through the bookstore by 15 February. Tel - (03) 548 9992 or info@pageandblackmore.co.nz
- All START HERE purchases receive a free copy of The Ballad of Burnout (my first book, while supplies last).
Paid Events with Kerry
“Start Here and Keep Going: Developing regenerative work and life practices after burnout”
Date: Saturday 14th March 2026
Where: Nelson and Online (Zoom), registration not open yet
For members of the New Zealand College of Clinical Psychologists (NZCCP), I'll be offering an all day training at the annual general meeting (AGM) on science-based skills for coming back from burnout.
I'm so psyched for this training, which will be a science-based over-serve of what I've learned so far about moral distress and moral injury, multi-system influences on burnout, and the places we have power to do meaningful, regenerative work within imbalanced and underfunded systems. PLUS I'm telling it all through two case studies. woohoooo.
If you're not a member of NZCCP, no worries! I'll offer an adapted online training (for a fee) later in 2026.
ACT For Burnout presents by ACT Wellington (online training)
