Hey, Amy here.
I'm headed out to ring in the new year with my friends... but I wanted to send you a message to close out the year,
As I sit and reflect on this past year, so many emotions rise to the surface.
2025 was a lot. So much happened.
Even
today, the last day of the year, there is still so much happening, so much change… almost like the Universe is delivering on a few more gifts and lessons before the year comes to a close tonight.
This year has been a roller coaster, and much of it, for me, has been spent on the down slope. In the darkness. In the pain. In the grief. In the sadness. In the question.
And as I navigated my way though the darkest moments, I often just found myself wanting them to end, wanting to get to the other side faster.
And I know that asking for the pain and suffering to stop is exactly why it won’t.
I know that I can’t rush my healing. Trying to control it or bypass it doesn’t bring the transformation that
comes from it. That’s not how it works.
There’s beauty in the darkness, in the shadow. I just have to be brave enough to face it, and to face myself.
I have learned that the hard things are not here to break me.
They are here to teach me something, to refine me, to expand
me.
I’ve learned that the triggers and the pain are actually the gifts.
They are not here to punish me, but to teach me. They are an invitation for me to face what I haven’t been willing to see in myself, and to rise higher than I knew I was capable of.
I have learned that when
I’m willing to stop fighting my feelings and instead ask what the lessons and experiences are here to teach me, everything changes.
Maybe you can relate?
This is something that I learned in the early days of my sobriety.
After numbing my grief and sadness
for all of those years, I was suddenly forced to feel things for the first time.
It was so painful, and honestly caused me to think about relapsing a couple of times.
But I didn’t. I just kept feeling the pain, and moving though it, for the first time in my life.
It changed me. I
wasn’t staying stagnant anymore. I was actually healing and growing and expanding.
And, once I learned that, I never wanted to numb myself out again, even though it’s way easier than feeling the feelings.
I learned that I preferred the rawness and realness of what life offers.
And, although I stopped numbing myself out with drugs and alcohol many years ago, I still have to remind myself on a daily basis that it’s okay to really feel things, and to not be afraid. It’s where the juice of life is found.
I still forget sometimes and want to bypass it all.
That being said, I think I’ve cried
every day in 2025.
And in the new year, I’m giving myself permission to feel even deeper. I will allow myself to ugly cry as often as I need to, to move through whatever I am feeling (this is one of my least favorite things to do, but I know it's the fastest way to get to where I want to go).
I
will stop resisting and allow myself to really feel and to fully experience the gifts life is giving me. There are so many.
This is my promise to myself. Nothing more. Because, to me, this is everything.
I am so grateful for you, and I am wishing you of the joy and peace and ease and abundance in
the new year.
Here's to a new year full of magic.
Welcome 2026. Let’s go.
