Dear Sweet Human in Progress,
If you ever forget how you got here,
let me remind you:
it was a year of tiny, brave choices.
A year of learning to stay.
To the version of us with softer shoulders
the one who doesn’t flinch at silence
remember 2025:
the year I acknowledged I’d been performing for others
and began the slow, ruthless practice of living for me.
No shiny announcement.
No “look at me go.”
Just me, on purpose,
learning how to be human
without needing momentum to feel worthy,
without chasing the next thing
just to feel alive.
2025: the year I didn’t run.
I listened so closely
I could hear the wind change its mind.
The year my body spoke
in aches and heat
and I finally answered
without solutions,
with presence.
With a hand on my own heart:
I’m here. I’m not leaving you again.
I questioned my purpose
like it was a locked door,
trying key after key
achievement, productivity, proving, pleasing
until I realized the truth:
the door isn’t locked.
I was just afraid of what was on the other side
if I wasn’t useful all the time.
I carried shame in my mouth like a secret.
I carried guilt in my chest like a weight
the privilege of choice,
the freedom,
the voice that said:
who do you think you are to need rest?
But I needed it.
Quiet.
I needed to feel my body
the pain, the tenderness,
the places that tightened
when I lied to myself.
I am learning who I am without the armor,
shedding the old version of me
always surrounded, always busy, always sparkling,
always unavailable for my own healing.
I listened to the ocean.
I moved with the wind.
I let the natural world keep me company,
and little by little,
I practiced giving that softness back to myself.
I fell in love with nature
so I could mirror it outward,
and found the courage
to begin to love myself the same way.
And yes, I slipped.
Old patterns crept in like vines,
reaching for what they know.
I grabbed for driftwood
when the current got strong.
But I kept coming back
to sacred trust,
to intuition,
to that patient inner voice
waiting to be trusted.
So future me,
when you’re tempted to rush,
remember:
2025 was the year you proved
you can be still
and still become.
Stillness isn’t stagnation.
It’s gestation.
The best is yet to come
not because you finally got it right,
but because you stopped abandoning yourself
every time it got uncomfortable.
Oh, the places we’ll go
yes!
But please,
don’t forget the place we learned to stay:
Home.
In our own body.
This time, I won’t leave.
