We said it would be our year….We didn’t shout it. We didn’t make a show of it. We said it carefully, like something fragile we wanted to protect. After everything we’d already survived, 2025 felt like it owed us something gentler. Something lighter.
And in its own strange, unpolished, deeply human way—
it was.
This year wasn’t a fairytale. It was a year of incredible highs and soul-crushing lows, often sitting uncomfortably side by side. A year where joy arrived without warning—and fear followed close behind. A year that asked more of me than I thought I had to give.
There were moments this year when simply existing felt like work. When my mind was louder than the world. When my OCD whispered “what if” so convincingly it felt like truth. When anxiety lived in my body instead of just my thoughts—pain, exhaustion, inflammation, fear. I questioned everything. My health. My instincts. My safety. My future.
Some days, surviving meant doing the bare minimum.
Some days, it meant showing up tired.
Some days, it meant holding on by my fingertips and calling that strength.
But here I am.
I didn’t disappear this year.
I didn’t magically heal. I didn’t conquer my anxiety. I didn’t silence my OCD. But I learned something new and vital: I can be terrified and still keep going. I can feel broken and still love fiercely. I can live alongside the fear instead of waiting for it to leave.
Work was hard. Change was hard. Routine shifts hit deeper than they should have. I assumed I was failing when I wasn’t. I waited for bad news that never came. I doubted myself relentlessly—and yet, somehow, I kept proving my own anxious predictions wrong, even when it didn’t feel like progress at the time.
And threaded through all of it—steady, grounding, unwavering—was love.
Real love. Safe love. The kind that doesn’t flinch when things get messy.
Joel was my constant this year. My sun. He didn’t love me in spite of the chaos—he loved me through it. He saw me unfiltered: the panic, the tears, the fear I usually try to tidy away. He learned the rhythms of my anxiety, the patterns of my spirals, the moments when I needed reassurance and the moments when I just needed someone to sit beside me in the dark.
He knows me inside and out now.
The good, the scared, the strong, the shaking.
And he stayed.
He held me when my body hurt. He steadied me when my thoughts ran wild. He never rushed me. Never minimised me. Never made me feel like I was too much. I don’t think he will ever truly understand how grateful I am for him—or how deeply, quietly, fiercely I adore him.
Despite everything—or maybe because of it—we became even closer this year. Our love didn’t grow because things were easy. It grew because we kept choosing each other when they weren’t.
Parenting layered everything even further. Loving Matilda—my star—while navigating my own storms was both grounding and terrifying. She felt everything deeply this year. Changes were hard. Letting go was hard. Nights were hard. But watching her resilience, her softness, her humour reminded me why I fight my own mind every single day.
Because she deserves a mum who stays.
Even when it’s hard.
Especially when it’s hard.
2025 taught me to stop waiting for the moment where everything feels “fixed.” Healing didn’t arrive neatly. It came in fragments. In rest. In tears. In laughter. In ordinary days where nothing spectacular happened—and that had to be enough.
I didn’t become a new person this year.
But I became truer.
More honest.
Less afraid of admitting when I’m struggling.
More willing to stay.
So yes—2025 was our year.
Not because it was gentle.
Not because it was perfect.
But because it proved that what we have is real and resilient. Because it showed me that I don’t have to face my darkest moments alone anymore. Because love didn’t disappear when things got hard—it showed up more clearly.
We claimed this year by living it.
By surviving it.
By loving each other through it.