2025 Reflections: The Year I Stopped Abandoning Myself

2025 wasn’t a year of flashy milestones or visible wins.

It was a year of excavation.

A year of walking straight into my shadows instead of circling them.
A year of healing old wounds instead of working around them.
A year of building something real — not impressive, not performative — but aligned.

For a long time, I believed that growth meant doing more. Being better. Trying harder. Proving myself.

2025 taught me the opposite.

It taught me that the most radical thing I could do was stop abandoning myself.

The Year I Stopped Making Excuses

One of the hardest truths I faced this year was this:
No one was coming to build my life for me.

Not a mentor.
Not a partner.
Not a client.
Not the “right timing.”

I had spent years naming my dreams while quietly explaining why they weren’t possible yet. Why I needed more clarity. More certainty. More permission.

In 2025, I stopped making those excuses.

I began taking actions that aligned with the life I say I want, not the life that kept me safe, accepted, or approved of.

That meant:

• Saying no when I wanted to smooth things over
• Letting people be disappointed without rushing to fix it
• Releasing responsibility for other people’s poor behavior
• Stopping myself mid-force when I felt the urge to control an outcome

I stopped chasing certainty.
I stopped outsourcing authority.
I stopped waiting.

“You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For”

In early 2024, I sat in ceremony with a shaman and heard a phrase I’d heard a few times before:

You are the one you’ve been waiting for.

At the time, it landed as a nice idea.
In 2025, it became something I lived.

This year was the moment that phrase stopped being inspirational and became practical.

I am the one who chooses.
I am the one who acts.
I am the one who decides what stays and what goes.

No one else gets to do that for me and that realization changed everything.

What Stopped Working

Some things simply could not come with me anymore.

Not believing in myself.
Trying to be palatable.
Shaping my voice to match what I assumed others expected.
Forcing outcomes instead of allowing alignment.
Comparing myself to people I believed were “ahead” of me.

Every time I did that, I lost access to my own self-expression.

I realized I couldn’t build a meaningful life or body of work by copying someone else’s version of success. That path might look impressive, but it cost me my truth.

So I went inward.

I dug deep to uncover my own gifts, my own medicine, my own way of contributing.

That required letting go of being right.
Letting go of certainty.
Letting go of the need to appear polished or figured out.

It required being open to contribution, not just from others, but from life itself.

How Roots of Six Began

Roots of Six didn’t start as a business plan.

It emerged as a response to everything I had lived.

Years of brand strategy and design taught me how powerful stories are.
My own healing showed me how destructive the wrong ones can be.

I saw how often people and organizations build lives, brands, and identities rooted in obligation, people-pleasing, and self-sacrifice… and then wonder why they feel burned out, disconnected, or stuck.

Roots of Six has been a soft, intentional build this year.
A foundation-first approach.

Not rushing to launch.
Not forcing momentum.
Letting the work mature as I matured.

It reflects the same principle I’ve been practicing personally:
Build from truth, not pressure.

If You’re Burned Out, This Might Be Why

If you’re reading this and feeling tired in a way rest doesn’t fix, here’s what I’ve learned:

Burnout isn’t just about doing too much.

It’s about abandoning yourself for too long.

It’s about:

• Saying yes when your body says no
• Living by expectations that were never yours
• Over-giving to earn belonging
• Shrinking your truth to keep the peace

And here’s the part most people miss:

You don’t heal burnout by trying harder.
You heal it by choosing differently.

What Will You Choose?

As I close out 2025, I’m intentionally opening space.

I’m currently accepting 3 new 1:1 coaching clients.

This work is for people who are ready to:

• Stop sacrificing themselves to keep things running
• Reclaim agency and direction
• Make decisions rooted in truth, not obligation
• Build a life or business that actually works for them

This isn’t motivational coaching.
It isn’t surface-level mindset work.
And it isn’t about becoming someone else.

It’s about coming back to yourself and taking responsibility for what you choose next.

If this reflection resonated, that’s not an accident.

You don’t need more time.
You don’t need permission.
And you don’t need to wait.

You’re the one you’ve been waiting for.

And if you’re ready to act from that place, I’m here.

The next step is simple:
Book a free discovery call.

Let’s have a conversation to explore where you are, what’s no longer working, and whether this kind of support is the right fit.