My Word for 2026 Is Magic: How I’m Designing Life After Matrescence

3 Jan

Written By Jools

✨ Why I’m Choosing a Theme for 2026 (And Why My Word Is Magic)

Happy New Year, lovely.
2026. We’re here.

This feels like a different kind of year for me not because everything is suddenly perfect or clear, but because for the first time in a long time, I’m choosing to pause… and choose intentionally.

Not New Year’s resolutions.
Not rigid goals that quietly shame us by February.

Instead, I’m choosing a theme for the year.
A word. A compass. A feeling I want to return to when life gets noisy.

And this year, my word is Magic.

💗 Why a Theme (Not a To-Do List)

Motherhood has a way of shrinking time and scattering energy.

You’re juggling school runs, work, identity shifts and that quiet question that pops up when you finally stop scrolling at night:

Is this really the life I imagined?

A theme doesn’t demand. It guides.

Psychologists describe a yearly theme as a cognitive anchor something your brain can return to again and again when decision-making feels overwhelming. Instead of asking “What should I do?”, you ask:

Does this align with my word?

For mums especially navigating matrescence, emergence (life after matrescence), and identity rebirth this matters. Because our nervous systems don’t respond well to pressure… but they respond beautifully to meaning.

🌱 2025: Finding My Voice (and My Alter Ego)

If 2026 is about magic, then 2025 was about voice.

Last year, I wasn’t ready to leap fully into my business (this was the plan for 2028!) but I was ready to start speaking.
So I gave myself permission to explore, experiment and be seen.

That exploration became Mama’s Flight Path.

The podcast wasn’t a business plan.
It was a lifeline.

It was me giving myself space to think out loud, to interview experts and thought leaders, to ask the questions I couldn’t stop asking myself about work, motherhood, identity, and purpose.

And somewhere along the way… I created an alter ego.

Dolly x Superwoman.

She was bold where I felt wobbly.
She spoke when I hesitated.
She reminded me who I was before survival mode took over.

Giving myself that playful permission unlocked something.
Not confidence overnight but belief.

Maybe… just maybe… I could create the life I once dreamed about when I had my son.

🦩 Coming Out of Matrescence and Getting My Pink Back

When Hugo started school, something shifted.

I hadn’t realised how much headspace I’d been missing until it came back.
Suddenly, I wasn’t just surviving the early years I was emerging from them.

This is the phase I now call my Pink Era.

Like flamingo mamas, who literally lose their pink while caring for their chicks… and slowly regain it when they have the space to nourish themselves again.

I felt that happening in me.

I started to remember:

What lights me up
What kind of work drains me
What kind of life I don’t want to default back into

And I realised something important:

The dream hadn’t disappeared.
It had just been buried under survival.

The Truth About Work, Motherhood, and the System

Here’s the part we don’t talk about enough.

I loved my corporate career.
I loved coaching senior leaders.
I LOVE coaching and mentoring. With a full body passion.

But the corporate system wasn’t designed for the life I wanted as a mum.

I wanted:

To do the school run
To be there for sports day and Christmas plays
To take summers off, not beg for unpaid leave
To earn more than a “minimum happiness wage” and do this in between the school bells

And the maths just wasn’t adding up.

When hundreds of thousands of women leave the workplace and the fastest-growing group of new business founders are women in their 40s that’s not coincidence. That’s data.

So when redundancy came, painful as it was, it forced a reckoning.

I could either:

Replace one version of the same system
Or choose myself. Fully, consciously, bravely

I chose myself. For me AND my family.

✨ Why My Word for 2026 Is Magic

This is the first year I’m actively leaping into my own business.

Not dabbling.
Not hiding behind “maybe one day.”
But applying everything I know about life design, neuroscience, coaching, and identity to myself.

My word is Magic because:

Abracadabra literally means “I create as I speak.”

And that matters.

Because the language we use about ourselves, our work, our worth is creating our future whether we’re conscious of it or not.

Magic reminds me to:

Speak the life I want into existence
Say yes to aligned opportunities
Build a business that grows with me
Create autonomy, flexibility, and meaning
Be the school-run mum AND the woman building something powerful. So Hugo can grow up seeing a woman who didn’t settle in the comfort.

This year isn’t about hustling.
It’s about intentional creation.

How I’ll Use My Theme and How You Can Use Yours

I won’t leave this word in a notebook.

I’ll:

Put it on my work pinboard (Ill also be doing a chinese ritual to honour my family's chinese heritage but thts another podcast and blog!)
Use it in decision-making
Let it guide my offers, my boundaries, my time
most importantly, return to it when motherhood throws curveballs

And I’ll keep asking:

Does this feel like magic… or autopilot?

💗 If You’re in Your Emergence Era Too…

If you feel like:

You’re coming back to yourself
You’re questioning old career paths
You want autonomy and presence
You know something needs to change, but gently

You’re not behind.
You’re emerging.

And I’d love to walk alongside you.

That’s why I created the Thinking Space Luxury Retreat in Portugal to connect and recalibrate so you can design your next chapter with intention (not panic).

You can:

Follow along on Instagram
Or join my newsletter, The Flock Drop, and I’ll keep you posted on

What’s Your Word for 2026?

If you choose one, tell me.
I’d genuinely love to know.

This is the year I stop dimming the magic and start living it.

With love and Flocking Fabulous energy,
Jools 🦩

Jools