After all, all of us need the usual Christmas needs: peace, pleasure, happiness, good well being, and perhaps rather less chaos on this planet. That goes with out saying.
However when the Defender workers and I began speaking about what we’d actually need on our Christmas lists—past the surface-level needs—it obtained deeper. Extra sincere. Extra human.
So outdoors of peace, pleasure, and happiness, right here’s what I’m actually asking Santa (and the universe) for this 12 months.
1. It Was All a Dream
I need to get up on December 26 and notice that 2025 was some elaborate social experiment. A fever dream. A bunch venture gone incorrect.
And the large reveal? Kamala Harris was truly elected president.
That by some means, competence, class, intelligence, training, illustration, and regular management mattered greater than snake oil salesmen techniques, racism, sexism and misogynism. Let me open my eyes, examine the information, and notice we course-corrected in time.
That’s the dream.
2. An 820 Credit score Rating
Let me be sincere: I didn’t develop up studying about credit score. No one sat me down and defined the way it works, why it issues, or the way it can quietly form your whole future.
All the pieces I do know, I taught myself—by means of trial, error, late charges, exhausting classes, and a number of Googling. And whereas I’ve come a great distance, my Christmas want isn’t nearly my credit score rating.
I want our group understood the facility of credit score from the second we earned our first greenback. As a result of credit score isn’t nearly shopping for issues—it’s about entry, choices, and freedom.
3. Everybody to Preorder With Love From Harlem
Sure, I’m asking. Boldly. As a Black creator navigating a world full of people that’d spend extra time scrolling than studying, you haven’t any thought how a lot that is wanted.
Preorders matter greater than folks notice. They inform publishers there’s curiosity. They affect advertising budgets, bookstore placement, media consideration, and long-term visibility—particularly for Black authors.
With Love From Harlem is a labor of affection, legacy, and historical past. Preordering isn’t simply supporting a ebook; it’s supporting the tales we preserve preventing to have seen, valued, and preserved.
So sure. That’s on my checklist.
4. A life pause button
I want somebody in Silicon Valley to get on this instantly.
As a workaholic, I want there have been a button I might press that may pause life—emails, deadlines, expectations, every thing—so I might relaxation, catch up, breathe, and simply be.
Proper now, my husband is the closest factor to that button. He’s the one who jogs my memory to decelerate, sit nonetheless, and keep in mind that relaxation isn’t a reward—it’s a requirement.
However a literal pause button? That will be a Christmas miracle.
5. To catch my father’s killer
This one just isn’t meant to invoke sorrow.
My father could be the primary to say, “Don’t weep for me—I lived life.” And he did. He beloved to snicker, inform tales, make folks smile, and make his household proud.
However grief is sophisticated. And there’s a selected form of heaviness that comes with not figuring out the who, what, or why—particularly when somebody’s life is taken senselessly.
I perceive that all of us have a time to reside and a time to depart. I’ve made peace with that. What’s more durable to make peace with is the unanswered questions. There’s a therapeutic that continues to be stalled when closure by no means comes.
So sure, I would like justice—however greater than that, I would like therapeutic. For myself, and for each household nonetheless ready for solutions.
This 12 months, my Christmas checklist isn’t wrapped in bows. It’s wrapped in hope, honesty, and the assumption that naming what we really need is a strong first step towards getting it. (Although, I don’t actually assume we’ll ever discover out 2025 was all a dream….however hopefully, prayerfully we are going to get up from this nightmare in 2028).
