✨ December & January & February ✨

🎀 Mollie’s Monthly Memories🎀

Susana Comes to Visit

Mi mejor amiga came to London. She says it was for her “graduation”, but we all know it was to see meeeee! I wish she could have stayed for a billion years longer, but the trip was short and sweet. She brought be fuet (a cured Spanish meat that I would inject into my veins if I could), which was a true declaration of friendship. We went to a pub quiz where our team name was the ever classy “Fa la la la sluts” – it was the festive season after all.  We did not win. I love her to bits and pieces and think of her every day like she’s my husband who left for war, but not actually because I would never yearn for a man. Yuck!

Happy Hanukkah!

Made a really big purchase this year: a menorah. Cheapest one I could find and not the cutest ever, but my first menorah that I PERSONALLY own, nonetheless. Best Jew in the world, dare I say?  Jas and Rithi, my neighbours, came down and lit the candles with me on the first night. And then, oh my gosh, lucky me that Susí was in London during Hanukkah. And even LUCKIER me that Harriet (my flatmate by chance, friend by choice ❤️ ) cooked a full Hanukkah feast for lil ol’ me. When I came home from work that Monday, I found her squeezing out the onions and potatoes to make latkes. We had a true Jewish feast that my ancestors would be proud of, consisting of chicken, veggies, wine, latkes, and challah French toast for dessert.

Back in NYC

By the end of December, I was truly losing my little marbles! I was capital D depressed. Okay remember how last edition I was like I am not depressed! I lied. I was not doing well! Home was needed. Back stateside, my cup was refilled. Highlights included:

Consuming Food

Oh baby, did I EAT 💅 . The holidays are always a big food fest, and this was no exception. Devon demanded to make TWO new cookie recipes on top of our tradition of sugar cookies. I shoved my face with all my favorites include pizza, handrolls, Thai food, matcha and Chinese food. The Chinese food was obviously done on Christmas Eve, like the good jews we are!

Speaking of good jews we had a Hanukkah Brunch fit with bagels, salmon and gelt. Bonus was hanging out with my cousin’s baby, little Chloe Lynn, who wasn’t the biggest fan of the doll I wanted her to play with, which, in fairness, was my broken old American Girl doll, who looks like she is missing an eye and looks, for lack of a better term, haunted.

For New Year’s, which was perfectly uneventful, the way I like it, I hung out with Devon and his friends like the clingy little sister I am. I would say the most eventful parts of that evening included hearing a twisted little sex story from a moustache-toting fiction novelist and having artisanal jello shots. Keep your vodka and Fanta jello shots, babe, we are having a whiskey sour.

Consuming The Arts

What’s a trip to New York without taking in the culture? Ever heard of it, diva? Culture

I saw Liberation, a Broadway play dissecting womanhood, women’s liberation, and motherhood through the story of a group of women in a “consciousness raising group”  in 1970s Ohio, which included a scene where all the women get fully naked, so a perfect play to see with my brother and father, of course! Truly, though, it was amazing; we all sobbed for the last 30 minutes. I had to call my mom afterwards to make sure she knows I love her (she does) and make sure she didn’t regret having me (she doesn’t…right mom? )

Speaking of my Mother!!! So proud of my mummy for braving the movie theatre for the first time in too long. We saw the housemaid with an incredible, generational talent… and then Sydney Sweeney was there for some reason? Anyway, I would pluck my hair out for Brandon Sklenar. Those ARMS. I mean.

We also went to see the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and for my uncultured friends, this is NOT an actual spelling bee, but rather a musical about one duh. It was so much fun! They had “guest spellers” from the audience, which included the guy who plays Aaron Samuels in Mean Girls, and he was as annoying as you would guess he would be.

Dev and I also saw Weer. Which was a one-woman show about a couple where Natalie Palamides dressed one half of her body as the girlfriend, and the other half as the boyfriend, penis included. It was so incredible that I forgot there were not actually two people on stage. It was also deeply interactive, so much so that the first two rows had splash ponchos on. I was also an audience participant at one point. The stage, it calls to me.

Side note: Speaking of audience participation! Right before New York, Rory and I saw The Fit Prince, an off-off-broadway-esc show making jest of those cheesy christmas rom coms. There was LOTS of audience participation there. I am a little ham, so audience participation is my bread and butter. Lots of food idioms. I was chosen to play the priest ✝️ and had to go up on stage and read lines, including marrying the two leads (married in real life, btw)! And just saying, I pull this look off.

On Christmas Eve, I went to CHURCH (in the literal sense, not the Hozier sense) and surprisingly didn’t burst into flames (?), but I would go anywhere to see my darling girl Nivi, sing a song. Here’s something I didn't realise: people don’t dress as fancy as I thought they would for church. I was out here dressing like I was going to shul. Anyway, I sat with the Ravi family and watched our daughter soprano the hell out of that house of Christ. 

Of course, the arts mean actual art as well! It wouldnt be a true festive season without vision boards!! Year after year, our vision boards are getting more hardcore and intricate. It is an incredibly serious event, and my mother, brother and I treat it as such. It has officially been over a decade of me making these boards. It’s so special seeing the transformation over the years, from putting “fierce” and “shopping” on my 2016 board, to “immunity” and “love” on my 2021 board and to now putting “best sex ever” and “voices of a generation” on the current 2026 one. My priorities have evidently remained upstanding.

Consuming Love & Friendship

Gosh, did I miss my people. This was the longest I haven’t been home in a while, eight whole months! It was clearly taking a toll on me. I got to see all my amazing friends, go on long walks with a hot drink in hand, and dissect all the reasons we are happy and sad, respectively. Devon and I did mini golf, my mom and I got massages, my dad and I explored Dumbo (Brooklyn) and Nana was being Nana.

NOTE: Not all friends I saw are pictured!!!

15-Year-Old Mollie Has Never Been Happier

In January, Katie, my punk princess, and I went to see The Wonder Years in concert. For those of you who don’t know, The Wonder Years was the soundtrack to every depressive episode I had in high school. I don’t think high school Mollie could have imagined that she would be seeing them live… in London… where she lives.

It was a holy experience. There was a freakin MOSH PITT (!!!), proper hardcore, with people pushing into each other, and lifting eachother on top of the crowd. I did not partake because I was frightened, of course. Maybe one day I will work up the courage to mosh 🤞 . We were, in fact.  The hottest people there, which wasn’t hard when everyone else was bald men over 35.

Parliament

Body & Soul held a parliamentary reception in February! It was both very cool and very stressful. It was held in the Jubilee room in the Houses of Parliament, which sounds much fancier than it is. I had to shmooze my little face off, which was complicated, given that the room capacity was 40 and there were 60 people in it. It was a tight and sweaty squeeze. I hit most people on my shmooze list, but getting to everyone was tough; it is hard to small-talk when in the corner of my eye I see someone else I’m meant to be speaking to looking awkward and lonely. It was definitely a professional challenge. A challenge I met with grace, beauty and deodorant.

Celebrating Love

Really love is.. all around:) On Valentines day, the day itself, Harriet, Jasmine and I walked into Camden, grabbed brunch and went shopping. What an idyllic Saturday (except for the shirt I bought from the charity shop ending up being Shein, which probably ruined my mood more than it should have).

Then Harriet and I hit the town because truly nothing is more entertaining to us than eachother so we had a right ol’ time. We drank rosé and ate carrot bruschetta, which was actually soooo yummy, which I of course tipsily informed our waiter of. Who doesn’t love a drunk girl giving compliments? Speaking of drunk girls giving compliments. A few glasses of wine, a tequila shot and one pub later, we were sitting in a mostly empty pub amongst the in love and lonely while listening to a woman sing. For that hour, I was that woman’s biggest fan, wooing and dancing.

Harriet and I then made pleas of desperation… or romance gestures, depending on how you look at it, on our Instagram pages to see if people would finally admit they have crushes on us hehehe. BTW, if I could ask a psychic anything, it would be a complete list of anyone who has ever had a crush on me.

Then the day after, hangover and all, I hosted my Fourth (!) annual Palentines (Valentines but for my pals :p). It was brunch, so there was frittata, French toast, bacon, veggie sausage, matcha and more! When I got home drunk the night prior, I drew cartoons of everyone and wrote them all notes. The fact that they came out well and coherent is a blessing.

We decorated plant pots! It was wholesome fun, and I feel deeply lucky for the amazing people I am surrounded. I had a crash-out trying to make stripes, but we move on. Then Kat was telling us about her upcoming date, when we asked for a picture of the guy, you guessed it, it was someone I already went out with!!! Who was a bit… not someone I wanted to see again. Since Kat did not want to be spit sisters:( she cancelled the date, but the story remains hilarious.

Judge Me !

Wowza, I’ve been doing stand-up comedy regularly now for seven whole months! And for some reason… I keep signing up to do it again! I genuinely do struggle with it. Continuing to think of new funny insights and new funny ways to tell those new funny insights in a clear and clever way, can get exhausting and acid reflux-inducing. I have become deeply self-conscious this year due to blah blah Sad Mollie blah blah, but here I am getting my ass on stage multiple times a month and making myself vulnerable to other people's judgments? I kind of love it, and I kind of wonder if I am cut out for it. I have made the top 2 a few times in one of the shows I do, which does, in fact, validate me...I am going to blame sexism for the fact that I’ve never won🤪. I also am very appreciative of my friends who trek to pub basements regularly to watch men be unfunny for 85 minutes, and me be funny for 5.

OTHER EQUALLY IMPORTANT HIGHLIGHTS

🎀 Mollie’s Mind 🎀

“It’s Darkest Before the Dawn” and “Hitting Rock Bottom”, and Trying to Figure Out What These Concepts Mean to Me

At the end of the year, I like to go through my old journals. In one from long, long ago, I wrote, “How many times can I write ‘it's darkest before the dawn’ before I colour in the page completely?” Like, get this girl off the newsletter and onto Tumblr? But “it’s darkest before the dawn” is a saying I have always believed deeply in. It is something I felt like I often have to believe in because otherwise I would spiral into nihilistic pessimism. 

A few months ago, I was walking home from work, overcome with melancholy, and I realised, this was a really hard year, more like a hard 18 months if I want to be completely honest. A lot of things made this year hard, including the year starting off strong with my dog dying, then my physical health getting turned on its head, I stopped going out, both with men and to the club, and my mental health became more contentious. In a lot of ways, I feel like I caved in on myself and I am, unfortuntley still there. I like to think I played it off very cool, and no one suspected a thing?

I started thinking about the concept of “hitting rock bottom”.  What does rock bottom look like? What the fuck is rock bottom? Who defines it? Can people “hit” it multiple times, or do we all get one? Is “rock bottom” just a word invented by people who had the privilege of “getting better”.....And have I already hit mine? Part of me is like, okay, yes, I’ll just say I have because honestly, why tf not?? Maybe I want to have already hit this conceptual idea of a “rock bottom” because why would I want to feel worse? Yet, maybe I just want to say it is so I can return to my “darkest before the dawn” mindset. Meaning, I am continuously looking for this ever-elusive idea of “dawn” to somehow fix everything. If I ask myself how I am even defining “dawn” then things become a bit more murky. What is my metric of good, of success? Is it a boyfriend, a new job, better health, being sad only 40% of the time, not 70%, a little bit of everything? Because if I am honest, 2025 was not all “dark”. I got a job (lol), started performing again, and being creative in ways I had shut myself off to for a long time, I moved back to North London, made new friends and travelled to three new countries. There’s no way I can make a blanket statement and say 2025 was sooo awful because (1) inaccurate and (2) the world does not exist in absolutes.

So I am beginning to reevaluate how I view this whole “darkest before the dawn” and “rock bottom” thing. Firstly, these concepts assume that life is much more linear than it is; Life is sad, and then it is not the end:). Life is long, unpredictable and bad things will always happen, and probably the problems of mopey 26-year-old Mollie, while they can feel like a "rock bottom” now, may, in hindsight, to a future mopey 56-year-old Mollie, may feel far from “rock bottom”. Secondly, at the end of the day, my relationships with these ideas come from a very privileged place. I know that my circumstances will improve. I am not ever at risk of being without my basic needs.

Writing from my personal experience, historically, eventually, time goes on, and with that, things change, even marginally; whether that is for the better, well, that’s always in hindsight, but nothing ever stays fixed. Impermanence is the point. The struggles of the last year plus have sucked hard! But they have also forced me, albeit begrudgingly, to grow and change. Improvement feels harder to achieve than change. Change is inevitable. You can never get to dawn without the dark, and then it’s dawn, but maybe it's cloudy, and then it gets dark again the next day, but the moon is full and bright, and then it’s dawn again and it will always change and be different etc etc ! Are you following this rant.. I am not sure I am…. not even sure what the thesis of this whole thing is, but alas this my newsletter so I’ll just keep writing….

I was and am really nervous about 2026. A mixture of excitement and fear. I, in all likelihood, will be leaving the UK this year. Gosh, no matter how many times I say it or type it, it doesn’t feel real. I’m going to leave my job, people I love and a life I built. I have no fucking clue what’s next!!!! Okay, I won’t get so in my feelings just yet, I still have time, but these thoughts are framing my 2026, so of course, it is a bit of a weight on me.  But can’t and don’t want to view it as a “rock bottom” or dark or bad or any of that!

It was recently the Lunar New Year, the year of the snake is shed and the year of the horse gallops in! And with that, I expect some of the struggles from the last year will also shed, and at the very least, they will change. There is no miracle “dawn” coming to save me, and I am certain more obstacles lie ahead, so do some brighter days. It’s both.

🍵 Mollie’s Matcha 🍵

Went to TOKKIA in Covent Garden and was very impressed yay!

🎀 Mollie’s Music 🎀

In honor of seeing The Wonder Years, here is the song that got me through sad days and every car ride in which I wanted to feel dramatic

Thanks for reading.

I miss you all so much,

XXXX

-M

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