Letter of Gratitude 2025
New years come and go,
softly, though never gently.
They rarely promise ease, expansion, or certainty.
What they offer instead is something subtler:
a recalibration of how we stand inside our own lives.
“Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years.”
Honoring life does not mean celebrating it loudly.
Sometimes it means respecting the pace it demands.
Not the pace we wish for,
but the one the body, the mind, and the circumstances can truly sustain.
There were days when joy was not available,
but dignity was.
And dignity is not a lesser form of happiness;
it is a deeper one.
The kind that remains when pleasure is intermittent
and certainty is absent.
Perhaps every year invites us to contemplate turmoil
before growth and before overcoming.
Not as punishment,
but as an education in perception.
They are filled with meaning
if we are willing to open our eyes
without demanding immediate answers.
“Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.”
I am grateful for learning that honoring my life
does not mean waiting until everything is complete, healed, or clarified.
It means living fully within what is unresolved
without turning against myself.
I am grateful, too, for what existed alongside the difficulty:
moments of stillness,
unexpected laughter,
brief intervals of lightness,
the ordinary beauty of days that did not ask to be dramatic.
“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming.”