Fifteen Things I Learned in 2025
I don’t know if 2025 taught me anything gently. What I know is that it changed me.
This was not a year of resolution or reinvention. It was a year of unlearning, of sitting in truths I used to outrun, of letting things end without forcing them to mean something else. It was a year that asked me to stay; in my body, in my grief, in my joy; even when leaving felt easier.
I didn’t learn things neatly. I learned them sideways. Through loss. Through pauses. Through moments I didn’t recognise as pivotal until they were already behind me. 2025 didn’t arrive with answers. It arrived with lessons I resisted, misunderstood, and eventually accepted.
Here are fifteen of them. They are not rules. They are not advice. They are simply things I know now, because I lived them.
1. Grief does not move on a schedule; and neither should I
Grief isn’t something you “get through.” It’s something you learn how to carry without dropping everything else and without it hardening you. Some days it is loud. Some days it is background noise. Some days it surprises you with tenderness. None of those days mean you’re doing it wrong.
Healing isn’t linear; it’s relational. It responds to how gently you treat yourself.
2. Softness is not the opposite of strength
For a long time, I believed softness was a liability. This year taught me it’s actually a form of intelligence.
It is what strength feels like when it finally exhales.
Softness is how you listen better and love deeper. I am softer than I thought; and stronger because of it.
3. Being held is a skill
Receiving care is not passive; it requires trust, presence, and the courage to stop performing competence.
4. Being seen is scarier than being alone—and more healing
To know someone deeply is to encounter their unhealed places. Intimacy eventually reveals wounds; not because someone is “broken,” but because closeness acts like a high-definition lens.
You cannot stand near someone for long without your shadow falling on them, and theirs on you. The real test of a connection isn’t how much you enjoy each other’s light, but how you handle each other’s shadows. The right people don’t look away when they see them, they just move closer.
5. Community is not a consolation prize
I used to think independence was the goal. This year reminded me that interdependence is where life actually happens. Community didn’t replace what I lost; it helped me survive it. And survival is not small.
6. Love is not just a feeling, it’s a practice
Love asks for presence, timing, patience, effort, and honesty more than intensity. Chemistry without care is not enough. I learned that misalignment doesn’t mean misintent, and that care can exist without compatibility. Letting something be what it is, instead of what it could become, is its own kind of honesty.
7. Rest is not a detour, it’s the work.
Not everything needs to be productive to be meaningful. I don’t need to earn rest. Exhaustion is not a badge of honour, and slowing down doesn’t mean I’m falling behind; it means I’m listening.
8. Explaining yourself endlessly is a form of self-abandonment
When you have to over-translate your needs just to be met with baseline care, something is off. Being understood should not require exhaustion. Clarity is healthy; chronic justification is not.
If someone needs you to translate your needs endlessly, they are not meeting you; you are chasing them.
9. Grief changed my tolerance—and that’s okay
Losing my dad didn’t make me fragile; it made me honest. Real loss strips away your ability to pretend; not with time, not with love, not with people who meet you halfway only in theory. Loss clarifies what matters; and what doesn’t.
10. Not everything that ends is a rejection
Some things end because they’ve done what they came to do. This year taught me how to let go without rewriting the past as a mistake. Not every ending needs to be villainized to make sense.
11. Belonging starts internally
Safety and security do not come from things. No city, job, or relationship can substitute for feeling at home in yourself. Belonging isn’t always found, sometimes it’s built.
Home is not always a place; sometimes it’s a nervous system state.