Tag: lessons

  • 2025 Ramblings (aka: The Year I Shed My Skin Like a Dramatic Lizard)

    If 2025 had a résumé, it would list intense transformation under “core competencies.” This was the year many of us finally looked at our patterns straight in the face, gained enough emotional XP to level up, unlocked new stages we didn’t ask for, and shed so much metaphorical skin we could’ve built an entirely new person out of it. Honestly, a craft project.

    The fire didn’t just warm us, it burned through illusions, fog, and denial. It cracked shells. It forced rebirth. In my case, it burned down the masks so thoroughly that the version of me I’d locked away years ago finally walked out, blinking in the light, asking for snacks and freedom. I let her out. I chose her. I fell in love with who I am. Best jailbreak I’ve ever staged.

    Which brings me to the million-dollar question we all ask at the end of a year like this: How do we not repeat the same patterns like it’s a cursed Netflix rewatch? How do we know what to leave behind in 2025, and what’s just showing up wearing a fake mustache pretending to be new?

    When something familiar appears again, is it because we haven’t learned the lesson… or because this time we’re being offered the option to simply not engage? Or is it that we are attracting similar situations because we are stuck in the same frequency? How do we know what’s aligned, and what’s not?

    Because, of course, toward the end of the year, few patterns I know all too well resurfaced. Same vibes. Slightly different fonts. More complicated than last time, because they always are. Personal growth apparently comes with upgraded difficulty levels.

    Cue indecisive me, collecting data like a scientist in a lab coat, trying to make a “fully informed decision.” Which is hilarious, because if I’m being honest, I already made the choice a long time ago. Maybe this isn’t a crossroads. Maybe it’s just background noise. Maybe nothing is that deep. Maybe the core lesson has always been the same: choose yourself unapologetically, stop abandoning yourself to fit into situations not meant for you, and trust (annoyingly, patiently) that things are working for you, even when it feels like the universe is freelancing.

    Time will tell. Time. That funny little illusion we all pretend is real while it calmly laughs in non-linear.

    We spend our lives surfing waves of illusion and call it reality. Maybe in 2026, more layers of reality become accessible. Maybe more people stop being afraid of the unknown. Which would make sense, we are living in the age of information, curiosity, and the “wait, that actually makes sense.”

    So here’s to the lessons of 2025. This transformative “9” year. May we leave behind the patterns that truly need to go, and stop labeling everything as “DO NOT REPEAT.” Not all repetition is bad. History itself is repetitive. Humanity is repetitive. Of course our small lives contain echoes. In a world where everything is frequency, we’ll keep attracting similar situations if we keep broadcasting the same signal.

    The trick isn’t forcing new outcomes. It’s shifting the frequency.

    To attract what we want, we first have to know how it feels. Learn it. Tune into it. Practice holding it without panic.

    To attract what’s aligned? That’s the scenic route. Balance. Self-trust. Letting go of control. Responding instead of forcing. Being present. Listening inward instead of outsourcing direction.

    I’m choosing alignment. I’m choosing balance.

    Happy 2026. Let’s try a gentler level this time.

  • Ice Walls

    My relationship with the cold began after I was mentally, emotionally, and spiritually destroyed. I couldn’t even stand the heat, my chest would tighten, my breath would catch, and the sun felt like an interrogation lamp I never agreed to sit under. I hated the sun because it was warm and bright and cheerful, three things I was not. I even avoided the sea, the same sea I grew up with, because water was too emotional. Too much flow. I needed the mountains instead. The heights, the rigidity, the stillness, the cold air, the quiet blanket of snow. 

    I became cold-resistant out of sheer survival. I learned to control my muscles, to reverse the involuntary flexing that comes with feeling cold. When you relax your muscles in the cold, you stop feeling it. Wild, I know. That little trick trained me to control my emotions too, especially the negative ones. I built walls. My heart became an ice fortress. Elsa would’ve been impressed. 

    Then he came along. (There’s always a he, isn’t there?) I remember the exact night my walls melted in front of him. With him, I started enjoying the sun again. I found peace near water again, like I used to. I remember floating, laughing, breathing. I was healing. I even lost my cold resistance, which at the time I blamed on his overheated apartment; meanwhile, mine was hanging out somewhere between 13 to 16 degrees like a polite fridge. Now I know it wasn’t his radiator. It was my nervous system feeling safe. Warm. Nurtured. 

    It didn’t last, of course. I’m cold-resistant again. But this time, I don’t hate the warmth. I can enjoy both the sun and the snow, the flow and the stillness. My apartment’s still cold, but I’ve got blankets. Layers. Tea. Balance. Orange and blue. The Moon and the Sun. The Feminine and the Masculine. Shadow and Light. Harmony.

    My walls are still down, but don’t get me wrong, the boundaries are very much installed. I learned them the hard way. I broke every rule I had for a person, stretched my limits into a yoga pose that didn’t exist. And that taught me everything I needed to know about myself. 

    So even if my ego still throws shade at him and says, “no forgiveness, not today,” my soul knows better. It sees the whole thing as growth. As healing. As my love finding its way back to me, even if it took the scenic route through chaos. 

    Someone once told me I needed to get hurt to learn. At the time, I thought, “that’s a terrible teaching method.” But they were right. Pain really is the ultimate life coach. And the sooner we accept that, the sooner we get to ride the waves of life instead of fighting them.

    Some waves crash you down, some you ride like a pro, but either way, the ocean always teaches you something. That’s probably why I want to surf so badly. My emotional body has been riding waves its whole life; it’s only fair my physical body gets to join the party, so I can master the act of Surrender in real time. 

    So maybe, just maybe, the point isn’t to stay warm or cold. Maybe it’s to live in that perfect middle ground; balance, harmony, integration. Learning to dance between shadow and light, and realizing you’re both the wave and the one riding it.