Hi ,

2016 is doing the rounds again on Instagram.

Soft focus photos. Beach sunsets. Engagement rings catching golden hour light.

The kind of year that looks like it smelled of sunscreen and champagne.

Mine would’ve been… the loungeroom floor.

No couch. No coffee table. Just carpet fibres flattened by our crossed legs and takeaway containers sweating oil through paper bags.

In reality, 2016 wasn’t glamorous at all.

We’d found each other after two relationships that had burned down to ash. He was renting, completely cleaned out by his ex. I’d moved back home with my parents, most of my “adult life” still boxed up at someone else’s house.

The first night I went to his place, we didn’t sit on furniture because there wasn’t any. Just floor. Bare walls. The hum of a fridge that sounded louder than it should. My back pressed against the wall, his knee touching mine, both of us pretending this was temporary.

There was no honeymoon.

Not because we didn’t want one, but because we couldn’t afford it.

What we did have was grit. Commitment. And a quiet, almost embarrassing belief that if we kept choosing each other, something better would eventually grow from the rubble.

So we worked.

Slowly.

Relentlessly.

Sometimes resentfully.

Often tired.

Every plate, every chair, every holiday, every small luxury we have now was paid for with patience and staying when leaving would’ve been easier.

That’s the part the carousel never shows.

Here’s the thing I want you to hear, especially if your “2016” looks more like survival than sparkle.

The unphotogenic years are not wasted years.

They’re the years where identity forms. Where values harden. Where you learn what you’re capable of when no one’s clapping and there’s no highlight reel waiting.

If you’re in a season right now that feels like sitting on the floor of your own life, no comfort, no certainty, just a quiet decision to keep going… you’re not behind.

You’re building.

2016 was the year we started really living. Not because it looked good, but because we decided to begin anyway.

I’d love to know.

What were you doing, or building, in 2016?

And what are you quietly laying the foundations for now?

Lisa