K — Kindness

Words for 2026: An A–Z | Week 11 of 26

Kindness isn’t indulgence. It’s not lowering the bar. It’s the way we stay in relationship without turning everything into a trial.

I forget this easily with Mem. I can be tender with other people and strangely harsh with my own pages—impatient, demanding, quick to interpret silence as failure.

Kindness, this week, is a different tone. Less whip. More hand on shoulder. It’s letting the work be human.

Sometimes I pause before I start and ask, How would I speak to someone I love, right here? Then I try to speak to myself that way too. My morning coffee is one of my kindness rituals