As we close 2025, I am left holding a shapeless life, like slime slipping through my fingers. It’s all there, but so difficult to form into a solid. Maybe life is meant to be this way, maybe it’s meant to be slippery so that we don’t get too attached, too rigid. I’d definitely rather be in a state of moratorium and exploration than settled and hardened, so I’m grateful that it’s hard to hold onto.
This whole year has been difficult, and I’ve ping-ponged between utter defeat and intense gratitude. You can have a hard year and be grateful. You can have a hard year and feel shattered. Both can be true. And this year I feel both very deeply. I am waking up after being in survival mode, where I was trying to keep my head down to just get through it. And as I re-enter the world, I find myself groggy and agitated, hungry for what’s next but moving very slowly. Maybe like a sweet bear coming out of hibernation.
The last week or so, I’ve been trying to find my footing, trying to reset myself and find the space to move forward rather than fixating on what I’ve lived through. I’ve meditated, I’ve done my annual solstice burning, I’ve spent time alone, spent time with loved ones. But this existential feeling of being disconnected from the reality that is happening around me, like I’m watching it through someone else’s eyes, is distracting me from being present. I feel wrong and misaligned, like the pieces haven’t quite come back together yet.
So, what to do? I choose to focus on moving forward, one step at a time, one foot in front of the other. I don’t know where this path is leading, but I trust myself and I trust my higher self.
And I have to operate from a new set of foundational perspectives that were the gift I received this year. For me, those include:
- Truth does not require carrying ongoing suffering to remain true
- Healing can mean relocation from the altar to the archive
- My father’s actions have been named, seen, witnessed and integrated
- Joy is not absolution. It is sovereignty
- I don’t need to make sense of everything. Sense has been made. Meaning does not require rehearsal
- I no longer choose to live in relationship to what harmed me
- I no longer choose to live for the satisfaction or safety of others
- Boundaries and “No” are an act of self-love
- Rest and self-care are not selfish
By shifting my internal dialogue to align with these truths, my pieces will slowly shift back together – in a new way, a way that they have never been organized before. I guess it all makes sense. When we are in a time of transformation, the system has to be structurally re-built. No wonder I feel shapeless. I’m still re-forming.
And I guess the best part is that I am the author.