Sheesh, what a year. If there was any year to have someone narrate my life, I feel like this would be it, and that narrator would have a lot of commentary to add about this year. In 2025, I felt like I grew, slowly, as a friend, colleague and individual through complex cycles of acceptance and grief. Most notably, I’m coming out of my Saturn return with a different set of internal morals than I had when I was 27, or 22. When I look at where my life is now, I’m stunned by my reality. Most of this year I’ve grieved the ideas I had of myself, or grieved the death of the daydream of several lives I’ve lived in my head in different places with different people. I think that’s the point of a Saturn return moving through your 9th house, to feel grieve all of the lives you thought you’d live one by one, until you’re left with a reality that never crossed your mind. Anyways, I spent this last year grieving lives I’ve lived in my head and getting real about how I really want to live my life.

When I turned 30, my mom wrote me a list of 30 things she was proud of me for accomplishing, or 30 things I did before 30. As I reflect on 2025, I feel called to write about a few things I’m proud of from this year. 2025 started off in a sad place. Looking back on the year, I can’t believe so much…. life… happened. The years are short and the days are long. Someone said that, right? Right? Anyways, here’s my 2025 list of things I’m proud of.

1. I turned 30, my best friends and I celebrated with a camping trip where all of our favorite people got together in the woods to laugh, talk about films, hopes and dreams, life.. and to hear me complain about sleeping outside. I’m grateful for the time spent with my loved ones, s’mores and everyone who made Thirty in the Pines possible.
2. Laughed so hard I cried.
3. Navigated a career pivot and fell flat on my face in the process. This was the year where my burnout caught up with me after coming to the realization that the career I loved and thought I would have forever had a fast approaching expiration date. I ended 2025 accepting the burnout and doing something about it.
4. I spent one year, in November, in my home in Seattle. I love my cute condo with it’s massive windows, wood burning fireplace (retiled in a gorgeous sage green + terracotta color scheme) and space for all of my books and plants. I am going to have to love somebody so big to share my space with them.
5. I went without a romantic partner this year. I continued to love on my friends and invest in myself the way I would with a partner. This feels significant, as I really enjoy my own company.
6. Danced with my mom and brother at Austin City Limits, in the 90 degree heat, with dust and bandanas over our faces. Don’t worry, we were smiling under there.
7. I took my cowboy boots line dancing and made a fool of myself in public. I laughed with friends while we stumbled over each others feet in dive bars south of the airport.
8. Made many new friends. I learn more about relationships even when I don’t try.
9. Discovered my new favorite candle, in a store with my mom on one of her frequent visits when the weather turns in Seattle and I find it hard to clean my baseboards. When I get really sad, I light it and my home smells like a really cozy hotel lobby for a few hours.
10. I saw so many movies. So many GOOD movies. And TV. I consumed media the way that No Face in Spirited Away consumes people.
11. My plants received new pots, giving them more space to grow. Many of my plants have been with me for almost 5 years, it’s only fair that they get new homes too.
12. In July I picked out a new couch and re-homed the one I got in the Great Lesbian Divorce of 2021-2022 (the last partner I cohabitated with).
13. I sent so much snail mail to my loved ones.
14. I spent a lot of time looking at the sky in between turned pages of books, walking loops around Greenlake, and endless Seattle summer sunsets, often a cloudless sky.
15. My paddle board got comfortable with SLU. I got comfortable paddle boarding in SLU.
16. I have so much green in my closet. I feel that that one wise woman that went viral on social media years ago for only wearing one color. Anyways, it makes me really happy.
17. All of my tattoos. I love them all. Some mean something, others don’t. I love the dragonfly on my right hand, or the pair of cranes on my left arm. I love the “(gently) it’ll pass” tattoo on my wrist. I feel so outwardly creative in spaces where creativity isn’t always welcome.
18. When Nicole and I text each other random angel numbers we see, like when it’s 5:55 in a different timezone, and I get the text at 2:55. I love the whimsy and magic of believing in something in anything. That was special about this year.

Bye 2025! I will only miss parts of you. I hope I still remember this year, or the parts that I loved, when I’m 75.