Ending with laughter

I didn’t think I would ever laugh again. But I did.

2025 was the darkest year of my life. And the darkest part unfolded in the last six months, mostly in the last four. It’s amazing how you can live life unsuspecting and get blindsided over and over again until you can’t catch your breath. 

You can be a person who cares, who helps, who supports, but that doesn’t guarantee you’ll receive any of that in return. You can be someone who shows up consistently, unconditionally, and loudly, but it doesn’t mean there's automatically reciprocity.

And when you don’t receive what you give, it breaks you. It breaks you in ways you could never imagine. It debilitates your mind and your body. It changes the shape of your heart. You feel your bones shifting, trying to brace themselves for an emotional toll they weren’t built to carry.

When you have lived life with joy, excitement, happiness, you can't understand the sadness. When you have noticed the small gifts in the world that make a huge impact, you can't understand the darkness. And when you have laughed harder than you have cried, you don't understand the tears. When you have fought every day of your life to have purpose, you can't understand the loss.

And just as I didn’t expect the deep pain, grief, and sorrow, nor for my life to continue, I didn’t expect the clouds to part, the light to peek through, and my soul to wake.

There is no explanation for the interruption. It happened.

Likely my body recognized a combination of presence of love, compassion for the struggle, comfort for the confusion, support of my perseverance, gratitude for self-forgiveness, and hope that my future is bright.

I was surrounded by deepened warmth, remembered connection, harmless gaffes, my own incessant talking, childish games, sunshine on my face, movement in my heart, and the realization that my life will, in fact, go on. 

In those moments I felt, not an old version of me because she no longer exists, but a new version of me that can only be seen by those who spread love and care.

And now, at the end of this long, devastating, extraordinary year, I find myself holding a small, unexpected truth: light returns. Even to me. Even now. I’m ending 2025 with a laugh I thought I had lost forever, and with it, a glimmer of the person I’m becoming.