2025 did not arrive gently.
It did not knock.
It entered the way truth does — slowly at first, then all at once.

I began the year tired in a way sleep could not fix. Carrying things I had learned to live with but never learned how to release. Old grief. Lingering questions. Versions of myself I kept resurrecting only to watch them fail again. I told myself I was fine. I always did. It was easier than admitting that I had been surviving for so long, I forgot what living was supposed to feel like.

There were days when nothing moved inside me. No urgency. No excitement. Just the steady rhythm of breathing and the quiet fear that this was all life would ever be — a loop of endurance masquerading as strength. I went through the motions. I smiled when expected. I fulfilled responsibilities. I existed competently. But something in me remained paused, as if time had left my spirit behind.

And yet — somehow — I stayed.

There were moments this year when staying felt like the hardest thing I had ever done. Moments when the idea of continuing felt heavier than the thought of ending. I stood at that edge more than once, not dramatically, not loudly — but in silence. In exhaustion. In that dangerous calm where giving up feels reasonable. What stopped me was never courage. It was something quieter. Something stubborn. A refusal without a name.

2025 taught me that healing is not a breakthrough.
It is a series of small, almost invisible choices:
to get up,
to answer one message,
to take one breath more than you planned to.

I did not transform this year. I did not “find myself.” I did not suddenly become whole. What I did was far less glamorous — I met myself where I was. Over and over again. In the mess. In the doubt. In the long pauses where nothing made sense.

I learned that grief does not only belong to death. It belongs to lost years. To unrealized versions of yourself. To dreams that quietly dissolved while you were busy surviving. I mourned people I became and then outgrew. I mourned the person I could have been if life had been kinder sooner. And I learned that mourning does not mean weakness — it means you cared deeply enough to feel the loss.

There were also moments of softness this year. Unexpected ones. A quiet morning that felt bearable. A laugh that surprised me. A sense of peace that arrived unannounced and stayed just long enough to remind me it still existed. These moments were small, but they mattered. They became proof. Evidence that not everything inside me was broken beyond repair.

Writing returned to me this year — not as inspiration, but as refuge. Words became the place where I could be honest without interruption. Where I could exist without performing. Where I could lay things down instead of carrying them. This blog, ‘rekwēəm, became a resting place — for thoughts that needed burial, for feelings that deserved acknowledgment, for parts of me that were ready to be released.

2025 taught me that healing is not linear. Some days I felt stronger. Other days I felt like I had gone backwards. I learned that progress can look like rest. That silence can be productive. That choosing not to give up is sometimes the bravest thing you can do.

I end this year not triumphant, but present. Not healed, but healing. Not fearless, but willing to stay. I am still learning how to stand on legs that once forgot how to hold me. Still wobbling. Still unsure. But stronger than before — not because life got easier, but because I did not leave myself behind.

If 2025 was anything, it was a quiet reckoning.
A year of staying.
A year of listening.
A year of choosing to live — not loudly, not perfectly — but honestly.

And for now, that is enough.