Lacuna: The Secret Place Between Years

Where the next begins, quietly, before it’s named.

Lacuna
/ləˈkjuːnə/
noun

1. an unfilled space; fields

For me, January has never been the month for deciding…

January; a meeting place, a vortex in-between, where I meet the year softly, without the armour of expectation.

January is for sitting in the wide, yawning silence and feeling out the edges of the year to be. What does she hum? What unspoken shape does she take in the early hours before we begin naming and measuring?

The turn of a year has always felt strange to me—how it insists on the pretence of a clean break. One night’s sleep and simply waking with the hope of a world remade in the silhouette of a new year…

Instead, I’ve found myself drawn to beginning each year with a lacuna—a deliberate step into the quiet, unmarked fields of January.

I see January as it’s own place, existing outside of the calendar year—a space in between.

It’s here, in this gap, that the contours of the year start to emerge—not in resolutions or declarations, but in quiet inclinations. A sense of which fields hold something worth exploring. A flicker of doors, ajar, that hadn’t been of notice before.

This isn’t about productivity or purpose, but something stranger, looser—a way of noticing the texture of what’s stirring, and of holding it without rushing to make it anything just yet.

This quiet, unhurried approach to January is, in its own way, a discipline. The instinctive urge to rush in, to impose form and purpose, is strong. But there is a deeper wisdom in resisting that impulse—choosing instead to dwell in the stillness before the work begins, allowing the shape of the year to slowly emerge on its own terms.

In this month of lacuna, I will be writing my way through it. Writing, while my livelihood, is also how I navigate the unknown—each word, a measured step into the uncertainty that surrounds the year’s beginning. It is through this steady practice, that I ground myself in what is to come, allowing time for reflection and curiosity.

As the year turns, may you too find your own lacuna—a space where the future is not yet fully known, but lingers in the distance, waiting for its moment to reveal itself.

And may this space hold you as you prepare to meet what will unfold.

So here’s my prayer for you, as the year begins: a quiet lacuna. A space not to grasp, but to receive what is yet to be. A time to sit, to be, and to discern before you hurry on in, and ask—

what of it is yours, and what is not?

All my love and caught flowers,

Tess

xo

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Reader, sower, patron—thank you for being part of Catching Shower Flowers. Whether your support is through words, attention, or belief, you are woven into this quiet, tender place where thoughts shift and art spills out. Your presence is more than just a gesture; it is an act of recognition. It says, This matters. And so, I continue—because you are here, because you trust in the slow unfolding of ideas into language, language into stories, stories into something that lingers. I am truly grateful for you.

As a little end of year “I LOVE YOU” I am offering 50% off annual subscriptions (valid until Jan 01).