I keep hearing everywhere that 2025 is the Year of the Snake—a year of shedding, releasing, and transforming so that by 2026 we can step into something fuller, freer, more aligned. I can’t pretend I fully subscribe to every superstition or cultural metaphor… but I also can’t deny that as I look back on 2025, something in me did shed. Something in me did break open—and it wasn’t in a painful way this time. It felt like the kind of cracking that brings light in.
This past month has been one of the most meaningful I’ve had in a long time. Not because it was perfect. Not because it was easy. But because for the first time in a while, I could see my own choices clearly. When I thought about this month’s theme, one word kept rising to the surface: choice. I am choosing to respond differently. To handle things better. To look at life through a lens that actually feels kinder to my nervous system.
I joke sometimes that a little delusion might be nice—just enough to silence the anxiety—but the truth is, I don’t want to abandon my consciousness just to feel less. I want to feel more aligned, not less awake.
Recently, I completed the first full year of my “one line a day” journal. As I write year two, I see last year’s entry sitting right above today’s. And if I’m being honest… so many of those entries were miserable. Heavy. Tired. Lost. It hit me: I don’t want that anymore. And “I don’t want to” is a complete sentence. Not a boundary to defend. Not a position to explain. Just a truth that hands my power back to me. I don’t want to feel this way anymore. I don’t want to carry weights that aren’t mine. I don’t want to confuse suffering with loyalty.
“I don’t want to” doesn’t always have to be a refusal that requires justification. Sometimes it is the exact sentence that returns your power—whether to yourself, the universe, or someone who’s taken too much from you. I don’t want to feel that way anymore. I don’t want to let life’s chaos rob me of what makes life worth living. The pain I’ve experienced has cracked me open in ways that felt violent at times. There were moments I felt shattered into a million sharp, unrecognizable pieces. But am I expected to stay jagged forever? Of course not. I choose not to be defined by what wasn’t my doing, by what wasn’t in my control. That choice alone softened me.
Life is far too long—and far too precious—to let circumstances or people drain the colour out of our days. I have experienced pain that has shattered me. I have known grief that makes you forget who you are. I have felt heartbreak that leaves you questioning your worth. But here is the part I’m finally allowed to claim: I don’t have to stay jagged. I don’t have to live inside the pieces I was broken into. I don’t have to let things that weren’t my fault become the story of who I am. And now, I feel lighter. I feel steadier. I am much more aware of who makes me cry, who triggers me, what circumstances bring me peace, and which ones pull me away from myself.
This month, I even started dating again—something I dreaded for so long. It didn’t disappoint me. If anything, it reaffirmed something I had forgotten: it was never my love that broke anything in my life. Not the loss of a parent, not the heartbreaks, not the friendships that faded, not even the distances within family. My love was always the thing that carried me, steadied me, and kept me showing up with softness. The way I love, and the choices I make because of that love, have never been the problem. Why would I ever rob my future of that?
I don’t know where this journey will lead—and for once, I’m not trying to script it. But what has made this chapter unexpectedly beautiful is the way the people in my life have held it with me.
When my friends call and say “How did it go?”
When my nieces and nephews squeal, “Another date?”
When my brother checks in.
When my mom lights up just hearing about it.
It’s in those small moments that I feel it— their pride, their excitement, their love for me. And I realize how lucky I am to be surrounded by people who want good things for my heart.
And maybe that’s the real lesson this year gave me—that healing doesn’t always look triumphant or glamorous. Sometimes it looks like sitting quietly on the edge of your bed, deciding that you will not abandon yourself today. Sometimes it looks like unfollowing someone whose presence wounds you in ways you can’t articulate. Sometimes it looks like eating a meal you actually enjoy, or calling someone back when your instinct is to withdraw, or letting yourself cry without apologizing for it. Healing is made up of thousands of small choices that, on their own, seem insignificant, but together they rebuild a life. And I see now that I am rebuilding. Not in a dramatic, life-changing way, but in the slow, honest way that grows roots instead of illusions.
I think what I’m most grateful for is that I no longer feel like I’m waiting for someone else to save me—from loneliness, from grief, from my own spirals. I’m learning that I can hold myself. I can comfort myself. I can regulate, choose, pause, and begin again. That doesn’t mean I don’t need people—of course I do. We all do. But the foundation feels different now. It feels sturdier, more self-sourced. As I step into the new year, I feel like I’m walking toward myself, not away from anyone else. And maybe that is the quiet, underrated victory of adulthood: realizing that the person you’re becoming is someone you’re finally proud of, someone you wouldn’t trade for any earlier version, someone who is whole because she chose to be.
So as this year comes to a close, I find myself holding something incredibly soft and incredibly liberating: I have no regrets. I am not carrying old pain. I am loved, and I love. And truly, I don’t think there is anything more beautiful than that.
