A year in the rear-view mirror

At the end of each year, I complete a Year-End Review. I spend time looking back at the year in granular form. I go and look at one month and one week at a time. What am I looking for? I look at what was happening both personally and professionally. I look at my calendar and my business tracking to see who I was serving, where I was travelling to, and what felt important during each moment in time. I reflect on how I felt, and how I was relating to all that was occurring. Why do I do this?

I complete this detailed Year-End Review every year, because it gives me the opportunity to reflect on my life from a zoomed-out perspective with new knowledge that I didn’t have at the time that the events were occurring. It often has me change my perspective on the story I tell myself about the year I just had. And it ensures that I tell myself the truth instead of just holding on to a story.

This year was particularly painful to look back on. Usually when I review my year, I discover that the story I was telling myself was actually more positive than I thought. Usually, I discover the deeper learning and/or growth that was available to me during the course of the year. I see how much I learnt and grew.

This year, what I saw was that what I have been feeling for months now accurately describes my experience. My body isn’t lying about how hard – and at times isolating – this year has been. My body isn’t lying about how tired I’m feeling. For the first time my review did not change my perspective, it confirmed it. I’ve walked through hell this year.

And even in the moments of hell, there were so many gifts. So many growth opportunities. So many opportunities to feel truly alive. My perspective on what it means to be alive has completely shifted. I think that I have had this distorted perspective that had me convinced that feeling alive meant feeling good, strong, confident, on top of the world. And yes, sometimes that is what feeling alive feels like – that is exactly how I felt at the end of 2024 – good, strong, at peace, confident, loving, joyful, and in many ways, on top of the world.

What I have learnt in 2025, is that sometimes, feeling alive feels like your heart is being ripped out of your chest. It feels like you are being stretched in ways you have never stretched before. Being alive can bring you to the depths of sorrow, and help you discover the love and wonder that can only be found in the deepest, darkest corners of your soul. It helps you see life for the miracle it is; for the precious, fleeting gift it is. It helps you realize that pain amplifies the joy, the wonder, the magic of life. Pain puts it in perspective. Without the pain there is no true appreciation and gratitude for this gift. Without the deep love of the fleeting, and the realization of our own mortality, there is no appreciation of what a gift being alive in this moment truly is.

What a Year-End Review always gives me, is perspective and wisdom. Two months. Two months have new significance and meaning for me now. From the middle of December 2024 to the middle of January 2025, I went from feeling in flow, present, grounded, and joyful, to not being able to sleep, concentrate, focus, or even function when I learnt that my dad was sick. From the moment of diagnosis to the moment of death – two months. That’s all the time I had… It felt like eons and seconds at the same time.

Two weeks. From the date of diagnosis to the day of getting on a plane. Two weeks. From my father still being lucid enough to share his thoughts and his wishes, to only being able to communicate with soft whispers and grunts, and only able to take small sips of water. Two weeks from there to him releasing his final breath. Two weeks from sobbing next to his bedside, to trying to settle back into my life, and simply not being able to do so.

This time of intense shock, grief, love, connection, and sacred presence was followed by two months of a hazy fog that wouldn’t lift. I felt like I was moving through mud. It felt like the tears would never stop and the pain was so intense that it would not let me rest.

I thank Geneen Roth for sharing her wisdom in her beautiful book, This Messy Magnificent Life, about what to do when grief or anxiety wakes you up in the middle of the night. I have witnessed some magnificent night skies over the past few months. Every time I wake up in the middle of the night or early hours of the morning, I go outside and look at the starts. I remember to breathe, and I feel immense gratitude for being alive. The most magnificent of these nights was a Summer night at Vallea Lumina. The magic on that mountain under the night sky will stay with me for many years to come…

When the fog of Spring lifted, it was followed by two months of deep joy, adventure, connection, and love. During the Summer I felt held, loved, supported, and I guess my days were so full that it provided some distraction from the intensity of the grief.

Two beautiful months of Summer was followed by two months of despair and darkness – both literally and figuratively – as the grief intensified, and I had to start admitting to myself that I have simply been carrying too much. And that I could no longer pretend that I was fine when I wasn’t.

2025 was the year I was rearranged by loss, stretched by love, and asked to carry more than one nervous system should ever be asked to hold. For the past two months, I have been operating in a type of freeze state, with my nervous system being pushed from both ends – urgency on one side, collapse on the other.

This freeze state was an invitation to slow down and take care of myself at the very basic level first. And it started with gently naming that I was in a freeze state, and meeting myself exactly where I was without trying to force anything, or take urgent action. Just raw honesty. I feel like I’m finally starting to come up for air. And it’s been a minute. I don’t imagine that I’m completely out of freeze. And I’m grateful for all that this year has taught me.