Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
This is true for your car mirrors and also life in general, it turns out. Hindsight inevitably provides us a clearer sightline, a better vantage point, than when we’re in the thick of living it.
Now, normally, I’d be here, preaching about New Year’s and resolutions and how we’re all weird about them (yes, we are). In many past years, I’d be saying that goals and resolutions don’t make you miserable; YOU make you miserable, in the stories and beliefs that you hold about yourself and your goals, and the ways you go about achieving them (or don’t, as the case may be).
In more recent years, I’ve had some sneaking suspicions that have had me land resolutely in the belief that we’ve got New Year’s all wrong. I’m now quite certain that the literal Dead of Winter is not the time to start anything with a lot of gusto, unless what you’re starting is a solid, but not heroic, well-being regime.
Winter is a time to be wintering. Snuggling up, getting cosy and nourishing your body, mind and spirit. Winter is for resting, recovering and readying. It’s a time for dreaming and visioning, not for taking grandiose action and setting ambitious goals. You shouldn’t run without warming up, and same goes for going after goals.
Oh look, I managed to still speak to all of that, even though that’s not my point today. Well done, me. How very sneaky of me.
However, what I want to talk about is how I was wrong about this past year. I didn’t realize it until I was recording a podcast with Laura, in which we were discussing what 2025’s lessons were for us, respectively. And while I felt like Eeyore when I started to share my take on the past 12 months, the fog lifted and clarity landed like a lightning bolt. You can literally listen to me realize what I’m about to share, on the podcast.
You may recall that I don’t believe in calling a year “a bad year”, but if ever there was an opportunity for me to go back on my word, let me tell you, 2025 would have been it.
This past year has felt like an absolute grind, personally and professionally. And try as I might, I just could not get a leg up. Based on all the end of year astrology posts I’m seeing, it seems that maybe, just maybe, the heavens weren’t only messing with me, personally. I don’t know what you believe about astrology (heck, I don’t even know what I fully believe about astrology), but I will say I found the reviews of 2025 from an astrological perspective to be reassuring.
As I shared with Laura thoughts I hadn’t really fully formed until they fell out of my mouth and into the microphone, I realized that I’d spent the year in the space of unrealized expectations.
I didn’t realize that I’d fallen into a quiet belief that since 2024 was So. Frigging. Hard. for me, I’d been holding out a secret hope that I would be in the blessed-and-highly-favoured category for 2025.
I felt I’d done my time and had my hard year. After all, I lost my mom just after we finally found each other, I grieved, I got sick and diagnosed with two autoimmune diseases, and we had some challenging circumstances in professionally, in the leadership program Adam and I run. My god, we briefly even thought we would lose our beloved Grimby (he’s still here).
I can now see that I felt I was owed some sunshine. I didn’t even realize that I felt I had earned some respite, some ease and some abundance. I’d come out of the valley of the shadow of death, and I was ready for life and living again.
Instead, 2025 was really hard. We’ve been facing intense challenges, personally and professionally. We dealt with an incredibly difficult and unpleasant professional situation, business slowed down (not just for us, we know, but that doesn’t really make it any easier), and Grimby is actually really declining now, from dementia and other unknown causes. To top it all off, we feel like we’re at the portcullis of finding out if our dream of becoming parents will become reality, or if we need to mourn that version of life, too.
I’m not sharing any of this garner sympathy, though I’m definitely a yes to any kindness. I’m sharing because sometimes, it’s easy to believe that people who lead work like we do aren’t subject to the same pressures, heartbreaks, challenges and impossibilities with which Life batters the rest of the world. I see it all the time in my colleagues’ lives, or at least the public parts that we get to see online. It’s an unhealthy, envious sort of “we-have-it-all-figured-out-and-we-only-manifest-positivity” highlights reel, and it isn’t actually REAL.
Adam and I are not picture perfect, and our lives aren’t picture perfect, either. Though, thankfully, we have a strong and loving relationship, a comfortable home in a safe place, and have access to everything we need. I know that this means we are in an incredibly privileged position, relative to many people who do not have what they need, let alone what they want.
What I got wrong about 2025, though, is that last year was not my victory lap. It wasn’t the redemption story after the harrowing heartbreaks and losses of 2024. The first year after loss wasn’t the hardest, actually. As much as I wish I could snap my fingers and bring my mother back (and oh, how I would), I am intensely grateful for the clarifying love, magic, beauty and grace that losing her gave me.
2024 wasn’t the contraction year, and 2025 wasn’t the glorious expansion that follows it, because I had it all wrong. 2024, as bewildering and brutal as it was for me, was the expansion. It was the level up, the breakthrough. Mom got her miracle, even if it wasn’t the one she thought she wanted. And I got mine, too, even though it didn’t look the way I expected.
And if 2024 was the expansion, then 2025 was definitely the contraction that followed it. Suddenly, in live time, the dissonance I’d been feeling made sense, and things landed in place. The suffering and confusion, and the doubts about myself, God, the Universe, Life that they created, suddenly resolved into clarity and understanding.
None of this was about me, at least not the way I’d been thinking. It wasn’t personal. I wasn’t being punished. I was simply expecting trees to bear summer fruit in a personal season of winter.
No wonder I was so confused and disheartened.
Getting this wrong meant that I kept thinking that I was really messing up 2025. Why couldn’t I make anything work? Why did it feel like everything I touched fell apart (this isn’t really true, but it felt true)? It felt like I was squandering a gift, but I couldn’t figure out how.
Now I know that this past year wasn’t a year to reap, but a year to lie fallow. Not a year to advance, but a year to recover. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I just didn’t see the actual work I was doing while I did it, because I expected it—wanted it—to look and feel different.
How often do we miss what we have because we are busy looking for something that looks different? How easy it is to miss that we’re getting what we need, when we’re looking for what we want to have instead?
Now I see that 2024 wasn’t the year of healing; 2025 was. And healing is a bumpy and uncomfortable, if not outright painful, experience. But I made it through, and I even realized that’s what I was doing, before the year officially ended, which is pretty amazing to me. High five, me!
So while 2025 was a hard year, for sure, it wasn’t a bad year. It just wasn’t the year I thought it was, or maybe that I’d hoped it would be.
And while I’m wary of getting my hopes up again, I feel my heart and soul, while still deeply in their wintering rest, begin to shimmer with some dreams of beauty ahead.
So, Happy New Year. I hope this year, we all get what we need, and I pray that we have the wisdom and grace to let what we need and what we want be close enough to each other that we recognize it.
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