2025 Reflections & Journaling Prompts
Honestly, this year nearly broke me.
Entering into this year with debilitating pain, a recent diagnosis of fibromyalgia, grief that carried over from 2024 with the loss of my dad, the expected yet still challenging energy from the Trump administration, continued devastation from the ongoing genocide in Gaza and low energy or motivation to do a whole lot didn’t bode well for the rest of the year. The onslaught seemed to come from all directions and impacted the macro, the mezzo and the micro aspects of life.
At best, I taught 4 to 5 gentle yoga classes a week, maintained my Certified Music Practitioner work with hospice, worked out with free weights and resistance bands several times a week, did my best to modify how I could cook and clean in the house and kept up with my newsletter and work life.
At my worst, which was most days, I no longer could walk the dog, grocery shop or do any activity that required walking more than a few steps. I struggled to remain connected socially with family and friends. By the end of the day, I wept and sobbed from pain and fatigue. It felt desirable to want to just fade away. I felt like my pain and fatigue drained the life out of my family, and I felt like a huge inconvenience to everyone around me.
When we are in pain, the story our mind tells us about our lives, and our worth, particularly in our capitalist, achievement driven culture can leave us feeling diminished and less than worthy of care and concern from others.
In my worst days, this was the loudest voice. This story of being an inconvenience, of fading away and not bothering anyone took up a lot of space in my head.
However, this story didn’t take center stage all the time. It is often in my experience when I am at my most vulnerable that I also experience even in the challenges, the enormity of gratitude.
I had my total hip replacement, posterior approach, on my right hip the second week of August 2025. While this has become a routine procedure for many people, it also is major surgery that involves dislocating and sawing joint and bone, moving and cutting muscle and tendon, replacing the head of the femur with a ball and socket ceramic plate and a titanium rod attached to the femur and lots and lots of loss of blood.
I imagine this is a challenge for just about anyone. I didn’t expect it to be such a challenge for me. I have always been very physical and active and never saw any possibility of me not being active. Even in my experience of parenting an adult child with spina bifida, who uses a wheelchair to navigate, I had a lot of internalized ableism to unpack. Losing ability can happen to anyone and happens to most of us as we age. We can do our best to keep us active and even that is no guarantee. So learning is always available to us no matter what.
I’m going to share a reflection with you that you might feel compelled to journal with these prompts on your own experience of the past year.
This reflection is a modification from a practice of open sentences from The Work That Reconnects. This was a helpful exercise for me to discern even in a very challenging year, the nuggets of wisdom that landed and formed and shaped my experience of 2025.
Where in this past year did you experience gratitude?
I remain humbled beyond measure at the people that showed up to support me in so many ways through this journey of surgery and recovery. From the folks that helped organize fundraising to offset costs as well as living as a self-employed person without an income for three months, to my faith community that contributed above and beyond financially and otherwise to the cards and flowers, Food, showing up at the house to help me when John couldn’t be available, texts and check ins and so much more! Even at my worst, I felt loved and supported.
The gratitude I feel for my husband cannot be adequately expressed. Without complaint, he tended to me while also tending to our 13-year-old incontinent, deaf and very needy Japanese chin dog. The gratitude I have for him is boundless. The gratitude I have for the folks that showed up to help him manage all of the construction around our house is boundless.
I am also grateful that the two Littles that were being fostered by my son and daughter-in-law are now officially a part of our family! They were part of our family from the moment they entered our lives in May 2023 and now that is Official in that they were adopted on Christmas Eve morning.
It feels healing all over again to contemplate the love and compassion that I felt from so many people and also that I feel for so many!
What wisdom from the Earth revealed itself this year?
The wisdom of impermanence, the stability and fluidity of earth and water, The beauty of flowers, the resilience of trees, the connection of the mycelial network all served as Presence of the aliveness that moves through all things. The song of the first bird of morning after many a sleepless night, often served as a reminder of the blessing of impermanence, of time, of growth.
What broke your heart this year?
Gaza. Gaza. Gaza. ICE cruelty, Sudan, Congo, GAZA. The normalization of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia. People that were silent in the face of these monstrosities.
Who were you in collaboration with this year?
Joyful resisters, restful resisters, my Work That Reconnects Global Cohort merging activism and spirituality, Mennonite Action, Scoil Scairte Irish School decolonizing and liberating language and ancestral practices. ICE Disruptors, the energies of abolition and liberation, relationally centered beings, my Yoga Sanghas, authentic efforts towards collective wellness, women centered efforts/businesses/empowered leadership.
What were you a commitment to-NO MATTER WHAT!
collective wellness, collective liberation, fierce kindness and compassion, Deep rest. Authentic connection, integrity. Centering relationship rather than transaction. Recognizing the other side of fear is courage, the other side of grief is love, the other side of rage is passion, and the other side of despair is hope. Learning not to turn away from the challenging sides of emotions, but trusting the process to lean towards courage, love, passion, and hope.
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I am still in the energies of rest and recovery. I typically in the beginning of the year enjoy making plans for the rest of the year and that doesn’t feel authentic to me right at this time.
I will write more about this later and the practice of Sankalpa, closely related to Dharma from the Yogic tradition
For now, the snow falls outside. It is the last night of this calendar year of 2025. It is quiet in my house. My deaf, incontinent little dog wearing a reindeer sweater and a nappie is sleeping beside me. My husband and daughter are making cookies. All is well for now.
