December always arrives with a particular weight. It asks us to look back honestly, to sit with what was beautiful, what was bruising, and what quietly reshaped us. This issue, our final one of the year, carries even more meaning. It marks one full year of Chaud Magazine. One year of believing that thoughtful storytelling, cultural depth, and intelligent joy still matter.

This year was not simple. It held moments of pride, softness, laughter, and profound gratitude. It also held challenges that tested our pace, our resilience, and our patience. Those challenges played a part in the delay of this year-end issue. And yet, here we are. Finished. Present. Still standing. That alone feels like a small victory worth honouring.

As we close the year, we continue one of our most important traditions: celebrating our Influential Women of the Year. This year’s honourees are three remarkable women who have built businesses, excelled in their careers, nurtured their personal lives, and faced real challenges head-on. They share their year in their own words, unpolished and honest, reminding us that success is rarely linear and strength often looks like perseverance on quiet days.

In this issue, we are also proud to feature a skincare reset from Abi, herself a 2024 Influential Woman of the Year honouree. Her contribution is thoughtful, practical, and rooted in care, a reminder that tending to ourselves is not vanity, but maintenance.

Our health editor invites us to reclaim our freedom through movement, so that our joints do not have to hurt in 2026. It is an invitation to choose longevity, mobility, and joy in our bodies, not as punishment, but as an act of love for the future versions of ourselves.

This issue also takes a clear stance. We are encouraging our readers to read more, to denounce the numbing trap of constant doomscrolling, and to remember that having a platform, however large or small, comes with responsibility. There is something deeply uncomfortable about living through global injustice while choosing silence in favour of frivolity. We all have a social duty of care. To be informed. To speak up. To stand for something.

To our readers, thank you. Thank you for staying with us through a year that required patience and belief. Through 2025, we thrived despite the challenges. As we move toward 2026, let us stay encouraged and choose to focus on the beauty that still exists, even alongside difficulty.

As you write your goals, your Dear Future Me letters on the first of January, do so with grace, hope, and intention. But most importantly, do so with gratitude. Make a concerted effort to notice the beauty of life as it unfolds. Commit to being a better partner, mother, friend, sister, and leader. Growth does not always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it is simply choosing kindness again and again.

May 2026 be kind to you all.

With gratitude, always,

Reenie xx