2025 Broke Me Open
The Heartbreaking Practice of Allowing
Listen to this essay:
What a year it’s been.
I don’t say that lightly. I say it with the full weight of every moment that stretched me and broke me open. This has been the most challenging year of my life—one that asked me to meet myself in places I had long avoided, and to rise in ways I didn’t know I was ready for.
If I’m being honest, while yes, my joy practice kept me afloat and semi-present, it did not soften me. Joy while grieving and hurting and feeling emotionally dragged through the mud made me realize every single razor-sharp edge that I had been rubbing against for years. 2025 has proven that the wounds I thought I had healed were not on the mend after all. They are still sore and tender. They still need tending and daily care, as if they were freshly made.
My word for 2025 was EMBRACE. I chose it because I wanted to open myself to more joy, more grace, more connection. I thought I understood what embracing would require. I didn’t. I had no clue what that word would show me this year. Not until life placed me in the exact situations where embracing wasn’t simply a choice—it was the only path forward.
This year asked me to embrace growth I thought would come gently. It didn’t. It came like the police were banging down my door in the middle of the night—and I was not dressed or prepared to answer. It came through loss I didn’t want to acknowledge, clarity I didn’t want to receive, and versions of myself I didn’t want to meet but desperately needed to.
I was asked to embrace shedding. So many things fell away—identities I had outgrown, roles I no longer needed (or wanted) to play, and connections that reached their natural ending. Shedding is never graceful. I hate it here. And sometimes, I wish I could keep it all and still keep me, but I can’t. I can’t keep wanting the best for everyone else and avoiding what is best for me. This year has been a shit show. It’s not been peaceful or poetic. It’s been raw. It’s been honest.
Choosing yourself has a way of exposing things. Some people will unchoose you quickly—calling it “boundaries” or “protecting their peace,” when what they’re really avoiding is the discomfort of watching you choose differently, watching you finally untether from the dysfunction they’ve been taught to call love. Choosing yourself doesn’t just change you—it reveals others. It shows who can grow with you—and who only tolerated you as long as you stayed in the boxes they put you in.
2025 taught me that continuing to carry what no longer fits is a heavier burden than the grief of letting go.
And then there was all the surrendering I had to do—the kind that knocks the wind out of you. The kind that pries your fingers from expectation and teaches you how to stand in reality. The kind that says, “This isn’t the love story you want for your life.”
The kind that says, “Tell the truth about what you want.”
The kind that aches for the type of alignment that leaves goosebumps on your skin and tears in your eyes.
The kind that whispers, “You’re going to have to let people down to feel anchored.”
The kind that salivates at the thought of passion in work, love, play, and life as a whole. The kind that begs to be fed something different after being starved. The kind that whispers, “You deserve to be satiated, too.” The kind that begs you to realize that the bare minimum is not the bounty—no matter how it’s packaged.
The kind that dares you to stop holding it all.
The kind that shows what can happen when you finally feel held.
Surrendering broke me open this year. It unraveled me and clarified what was real. And I’ve struggled with every second of the clarity I’ve uncovered. As I sit in the last week of this year, I keep returning to one hope, not just for myself, but for all of us:
Lean deeper into allowing.
Allowing is a skill. A practice. A form of liberation that doesn’t always feel like freedom at first. Allowing means choosing not to force what isn’t flowing. It means refusing to shrink yourself to make the uncomfortable feel familiar. It means letting go of the exhausting urge to convince people, situations, or seasons to become what they simply cannot be—to become who they simply who they are not able to be. It means sometimes, you have to let yourself stray to truly find your way.
We spend so much of our lives resisting. Resisting change. Resisting grief. Resisting healing, clarity, and endings.
Resisting the inner voice that carries the truth like the final hymn on a Sunday afternoon—when you’re a child slipping down the pew, legs dangling, Granny’s purse resting heavy in your lap because you’re sure it’s time to go, but she knows better. The service has gone long, again. The pastor lifts his hand. The choir starts over. The room thickens with reverent energy. Your body aches with boredom. You fidget and sigh. But your Granny doesn’t move. She pins you with that look that says sit still, we ain’t leaving yet, as if she can feel something still working its way through the room.
The truth keeps singing.
You don’t feel ready to hear it. You feel ready to leave.
That’s been the entirety of my 2025—ready to leave—and yet, I’m currently still in the pew.
I’d like to think that this final week of the year is inviting us to stay a little longer. To listen instead of rushing. To sit with the antsy’ness and impatience. To practice something gentler. Softer. More open. What if we allow the things that shook us up this year be exactly what they are?
Allowing doesn’t mean settling, mind you. It doesn’t mean lowering your standards or abandoning your needs. Allowing is active. It’s intentional. It says: I trust what is unfolding, even when I don’t fully understand it yet. Because here’s the lesson I had to learn the hard way, over and over again:
Alignment only happens when we allow. We cannot force alignment into existence.
We cannot negotiate ourselves into alignment. We cannot contort, bend, or shrink our way into it. We just simply cannot. It reveals itself when we stop wrestling with reality. When we stop trying to make things fit that were never meant to. When we accept that clarity is not cruelty—it’s our compass.
Allowing gives us space to see what is out of alignment with who we want to become. It gives us permission to choose differently. It gives us the courage to honor what wants to take root in us, even if the soil feels unfamiliar. It gives us the wisdom to stop resisting the discomfort that growth always brings.
As this year comes to a close, I’m letting life show me where I’ve been gripping too tightly. I’m paying attention to the areas where I’ve been pushing, forcing, over-functioning, or trying to hold together. When what really needed to happen was falling apart for my own good. I’m letting myself trust the timing, the redirection, the delays, the small nudges that I once overlooked. And I hope you do the same.
In the New Year, may you meet yourself with clarity and care. May you give yourself permission to stop fighting battles that don’t belong to you. May you allow softness where you once relied solely on strength. May you choose paths that honor your becoming, that ignite your passion, that feed your strengths, not your fears. Let this time be a mirror—showing you what’s working, what’s weighing you down. Show what’s nurturing you and what’s asking to be released.
You deserve an aligned life. One built on honesty, courage, and devotion to yourself. Because when we are devoted to ourselves, we can pour intentionally into those in our orbit.
Self-neglect is a breeding ground for resentment. Self-neglect is a breeding ground for your relationships falling apart. Self-neglect is a breeding ground for an unhappy life.
May openness guide you as we walk into 2026.
May acceptance free you as we walk into 2026.
And may liberation lead you into the new year on purpose, not by accident.
Thank you for being here with me this year. Below is a little gift for y’all. I hope you enjoy it, use it, and share it far and wide.
“ Self-neglect is a breeding ground for resentment. Self-neglect is a breeding ground for your relationships falling apart. Self-neglect is a breeding ground for an unhappy life.”
This is poignant. Self-neglect is often masked as selfless — taking care of others but it’s really a harmful behavior that destroys and bring negativity. Thank you for making this point so clearly.
Thank you for sharing your experience and truth. It really resonated with me today. Wishing you an amazing 2026!