Let's Be Relentless in 2026

According to Larry David, you’re not supposed to say ‘Happy New Year' after January 7th. Thank god we made it just in time. Happy New Year!

We recorded this episode before the holiday break and, per usual, life threw a lot of curve balls. There’s something surreal about listening back to yourself predicting what the season will be like when you truly have no idea what’s coming.

Sometimes, cheer is replaced with fear during what’s supposed to be a magical time. This year, it was a hard-hitting virus. And nothing overwhelms a mother’s mind or breaks her heart quite like a sick child and no clear answers. You can’t see the problem. You can’t take their pain away. You can’t explain why it’s happening. You can only be there—again and again—because to them, you are the safest place in the world.

You show up. Maybe you’re sick too. Maybe your whole house is taken out by the same virus. Maybe you’re sitting in an ER holding a screaming baby with a 104-degree fever, making decisions through exhaustion and fear. You lean into the hurt and the panic, somehow manage to choose, and hold them through painful tests while hoping they don’t look up and see you trying not to cry. As a mother, father, caretaker, grandparent—whatever role you’re in—that’s a kind of strength you didn’t know you could muster. Looking back, you wonder how you got through it. You pray it never happens again and think, I won’t be able to handle it. But you do. You always do.

This week, we talk about January 6: where we were, what it meant, and why it still matters. Because our country is sick, too—and sometimes we don’t know how to help. We’re overwhelmed by the scale of the problem and the extremes people are willing to go to. But we are the most important people in this moment. When something is wrong, you don’t get to check out. You show up. You get relentless. You keep asking questions. You keep pushing for answers.

That’s the energy we’re carrying into 2026. Not perfection. Not performative outrage. Just the steady refusal to look away—because the future our kids inherit depends on it.

I’ll leave you with this moment from the Lord of the Rings. It’s two minutes that are worth it, I promise. In the words of Sam Gamgee—paraphrased—*folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding onto something. That’s there’s some good in this world and it’s worth fighting for.”

xo Momarchy