Why making a fuss of anniversaries is good for your body and brain
Rituals, glimmers and the fresh start effect
It was my 14th wedding anniversary this week. We celebrated with a dreamy dinner and a child-free night away — the sort of escape that feels impossibly glamorous when normal evenings involve watching Traitors and repeatedly asking “have you brushed your teeth?” (Side note: we still watched Traitors 😂)
Coincidentally, this week was also the five-year anniversary of the day I was told I had breast cancer. That milestone I completely ignored. Why acknowledge something so bleak? I didn’t post about it, I didn’t light a candle, I didn’t even really think about it - at least, not in any deliberate, ceremonial way.
But then I started to realise: the fact that I am cancer-free, five years on, is something to celebrate. It’s not the diagnosis I’m honouring, but the distance I’ve travelled from it.
We tend to save celebrations for glossy milestones: weddings or birthdays ending in a zero. But the quieter anniversaries - survival dates, sobriety dates, the da…
