Because there are people who feel your absence through your silence.
Because strangers sometimes pass by and hold on to what is familiar in your experience.
Because life offers countless ways to keep us from settling into nothingness.

We do not always return because we are ready.
We return because someone, somewhere, once told us that even unready, even imperfect, it was still better that way.
So I return. In the imperfect tense. I return to say hello. I return to say that I am well. I return for the love I receive, and for the love I try, modestly, to give back.

Happy New Year to those who wrote to me, sometimes without reason, sometimes without expectation. Those unexpected “How are you?” bring more comfort than we imagine. It is to this generosity that I respond today.

Thus ends the month of resolutions. Thus closes a first chapter of 2026. We find ourselves already a little older with our dreams, sometimes disappointed by our pursuit of perfection, yet brought back to a simpler truth: our habits, our renunciations, and our quiet persistence. For the most fatalistic, it is time to return to the familiar. For those who still hope, the road remains open. In eleven months, there is still time to reformulate, adjust, readjust.

As I write these lines, I am on a plane. In a few minutes, I will land in Lyon. The journey will have been short, shorter than expected: barely forty-five minutes from Bordeaux. I do not know exactly why I feel the need to say this. Perhaps because movement matters just as much as arrival. Perhaps because every new city offers a silent chance to reconnect with oneself, with a part of the soul we hope will be a little more open to first experiences.

After landing, I made my way to a museum that had come back to me: the Musée des Confluences. The exterior struck me. The name as well. The meeting of two rivers. Their convergence. The image reminded me of my Garonne in Bordeaux, less color, perhaps, but no less meaning.

I began with the temporary exhibitions. There were four of them. I moved through them as one moves through very different worlds, without trying to retain everything. Then I went upstairs to the permanent exhibition. There, time seemed to slow down. I walked quietly, attentive to what sometimes settles within us without making a sound. Some stories pass by. Others leave a trace. Certain sentences, above all, find a place to rest.

Museums have this discreet power: they do not always teach us something new, but they awaken what we already knew, without ever having put it into words. One rarely leaves untouched, but often slightly shifted by just a step, almost imperceptible.

I do not know whether I have written something useful. I only know that I have written to call myself back to you. And to call myself back to myself. I am here, as long as life allows it. From now on, monthly. Until then, take care of yourselves.

Written by Aliane UMUTONIWASE