2025 was a year of two halves. The first one was rough. The second one? Absolute magic.
I started the year stuck – couldn’t leave the house for more than a couple of hours, drowning in loneliness, work drama, family conflict, and a sick dog who was clearly very sick. Then the US visa got declined in Copenhagen. Two years of work. Tens of thousands of dollars. Gone.
So I let go of everything. Quit my job. Returned the dog to the breeder. Stopped fighting.
And then? I attempted to run a marathon on the Great Wall of China. Set a PR in Riga. Fell in love with an Irishman. Traveled through England and France with Johann. Wrote more than I have in years. Found my people. Had the kind of sparkling summer I haven’t had since 1999.
Here’s my 2025 Year in Review – the breakdown, the breakthrough, and everything in between.
February
February broke me.
I couldn’t leave the house for months. The dog needed constant supervision – couldn’t hold anything in, accidents everywhere the moment I left him out of my sight. It was awful. The house reeked of dog sh*t, Johann was crying and wanting it all to stop, I was living on fumes, losing weight, feeling like having a sick dog was proof once again that I was a failure. Work was a mess – constant backstabbing, fighting, chaos. My mom and sister were against me at every turn. And then the US visa – the dream I’d been chasing for two years, tens of thousands of dollars deep – got declined in Copenhagen.
I was a mess. And through that mess, I began therapy again. Deep, painful, healing therapy, which made me realize that I went from a childhood that left me traumatized straight into a marriage at 22 to a man twice my age who turned out to be a con artist and an alcoholic (like my father – I know, I know). When I was finally ready to leave, I found out I was pregnant. So I went straight into single motherhood and worked my behind off to build a career that would take care of Johann and I. Survival mode for 38 years. No breaks. No moments to catch my breath. No time to truly heal and build a solid foundation of self-esteem and trust in myself.
This year, Johann turned 11. He doesn’t need me every second anymore. And for the first time in my life, my nervous system had permission to stop fighting.
So it collapsed. Which, it turns out, was exactly what needed to happen.
My Sparkling Summer
In April, I let go.
- I returned the dog to the breeder (which turned out to be the best decision, even though it was brutal).
- I tried to run a marathon on the Great Wall of China but quit 10k in (my fear of heights making me freeze with anxiety).
- I quit my job.
- I stopped fighting for the visa, for the US dream, for the life I thought I was supposed to build.
- I released my grip on all of it and just… stopped.
I needed to take a breath, reset, and live life without a plan, without a reason to push.
And boy did I live! 🤩
I ran a 3:17:56 marathon in Riga – a new PR. And afterwards, in a crowded pub full of runners, a guy named William smiled at me across the table and turned me into a lovestruck teen. There are so many (Taylor Swift) love songs I could rewrite (Wi$h Li$t, So High School, The Fate of Ophelia, The Only Exception…) about how much this man has changed my life in the last 6 month. He truly is my favorite person and I still can’t get over the fact that he is real. I’m in love and I’m working on trusting that it’ll all turn on for the very best.
That summer was the kind I haven’t had since 1999 (best summer of music, Teletubbies and the last time I wasn’t sick). My sparkling summer of joy, love, freedom and luxuriating in being healthy, happy and in love. Texting constantly. Talking for hours. A solo trip to NYC where I fell head over heels with my favorite city all over again. Flying to Dublin at the end of July. Six more trips to Clonmel. Ten days in Berlin with William. My birthday in August, celebrated in Ireland.
Waking up without the weight of ‘reality’ pressing on me. Being completely free to do whatever the heck I wanted. It was golden. It was amazing. It was nothing I ever took for granted.
I should’ve seen it coming. I mean, I put it in my goals for 2025 – fall in love – written on the last day of 2024. But clearly I didn’t remember that five months into this wild new year.
Johann
Johann’s almost my height now. He’s class president for the second year, though he still feels lonely at school sometimes. But at home there’s Jayme – his best friend, practically his brother, who basically lives at our house.
Eleven is a strange age. One night he asks me to cuddle with him before bed. The next day he walks through the door, his phone pressed to his ear, says “I’m on the phone” and disappears into his room. Kid one minute, teenager the next.
We have real discussions now. About life, about feelings, about things he’s observing in the world. He’s looking for who he is. And what I keep noticing, in the middle of all the growing pains and the angst – he’s kind. Polite. Loving. Funny.
He has his moments of calling me the worst mom for not giving him more iPad time or making him do his homework. And in these moments I smile. Because his worries are big, yes – but they’re not I’m being abused by my brother every day before and after school big. They’re not my parents scream at each other at every lunch and I’m being called a waste of every breath.
He gets to just be eleven. And that, to me, is everything.
The In-Between
Johann turned 11. I turned 38. We celebrated his birthday in between two trips to the ER within two weeks.
We traveled through the South of France and all over England – me driving on the left side for the first time, him as my perfect navigator. We walked, hiked, biked. Saw Stonehenge. Took a ferry to the Isle of Wight and made it all the way to Cornwall.
When he went off to summer camp, I had my first real week “off” as a single parent since the day he was born.
I ran through NYC, Dublin, Clonmel. Had eye surgery and can now see without glasses for the first time since I was 12 years old. Quit social media in June and haven’t been back. Got a new tattoo. Read 18 books. Did trauma therapy that nearly undid me and then remade me. Fell in love with my cousin’s baby girl. Learned new Irish words. And somewhere in there, Taylor Swift got engaged to the guy on the Chiefs – six years after my own Chiefs guy went and broke my heart. Full circle, I’d say.
777
For the first time in my life, I have people who get me. Runners who also love to travel, who do crazy shit all year long, who say yes to marathons in random cities just because. We ran together in Riga. Met up in Berlin. Our WhatsApp group is still going strong more than a year later.
Next year: Boston. Then Geneva. Then Chicago. These people aren’t going anywhere and I am no longer the only ‘off’ person in the room.
The Writing
June and July were a rush of writing – poems, stories, pages pouring out of me. Everything that had been percolating underneath for years finally had somewhere to go. Dots connected easily. Things fell into place. It felt like emptying myself out. For weeks, I hardly slept as my mind was going a million miles a minute. All the rage, all the fears, all the loneliness and heartache wanted to be put into stories that might mean something to someone else someday.
Victim: A Collection came together. A new book is in progress – it’s there, taking shape.
I’ve fallen in love with writing again, realizing that letting it go was my way of cutting myself off from emotions I didn’t want to face.
Here
So here I am.
Still without a job. Still very okay with that. Still trusting.
And also: in love. Healthy. Writing. Running. More myself than I’ve ever been.
2026 is an unknown, as always. Johann and I might move to Clonmel. A whole new chapter I never saw coming. I’ve fallen in love with Ireland – unexpectedly, completely.
I don’t have a plan. I have something better: I’m wide open.
My phrase for 2026: Everything I want, wants me more.
I looooove this and I feel it in my core. After 38 years of chasing, hustling, surviving – I’m done. I’m not going after anything anymore. I’m letting it come to me. And honestly? It already is.
My Goals, dreams, visions (so far) for 2026:
- Move to Ireland – start a whole new chapter with Johann.
- Run at least 3 marathons: Boston in April (holy shit, I qualified for Boston!), Geneva in May, Chicago in October
- Finish The Real – the book I’ve been writing since July. Maybe finish book number 2.
- Create a Substack, it’s time to be more consistent with my writing again.
- Become a published author with a 7-figure deal – why not me?
- Be the mom Johann needs as he becomes a teenager – more present, more patient, more there.
- Stay open – let myself be loved without waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s challenging as fuck, but I’m here for it.
- Mayyyybe get that ring?! 😍
- More tattoos – because why not and I have soooo many ideas
Okay 2026. Let’s do this.
And if you’re reading this thinking “must be nice” or “I could never” – I get it. I thought the same thing for decades. But here’s what I’ve learned: you don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to stop fighting yourself long enough to let something new in.
So here’s to stopping. To letting go. To trusting that everything you want, wants you more.
See you on the other side.