what 2025 taught me

on growth, grief, and gratitude

It’s the last day of the year, and while I’ve missed writing to you over the past three months, I didn’t want to miss today.

A lot has happened in just a few months. I started a new job, moved to Madrid, turned 25, started living alone, met so many new people, experienced loss. And through it all, I keep learning, growing, and discovering parts of myself I hadn’t known before.

2025 stretched me in ways I didn’t expect and softened me in others. It gave me more than I imagined, took more than I planned for, and changed me in ways I’m still trying to put into words.

It wasn’t neat or linear, but it was real. And it was full. And I’m grateful for it all.

All of it coexisted somehow. The joy and the sadness. The excitement and the fear. The feeling of becoming someone new while shedding the versions of myself I had outgrown.

As the year closes, I keep noticing how different my life is, and how different I feel, compared to a year ago. 2025 brought big decisions and quiet reckonings, milestones I didn’t expect so soon, and losses I never imagined I’d have to hold.

Somewhere along the way, this year taught me things I don’t want to forget. And maybe, some of them will resonate with you too.

Lessons 2025 Taught Me

• Listen to yourself/your gut/your intuition, more than anyone or anything else. It’s your life. You get to choose.

• You can’t catch what’s next if your hands are still full of what’s gone. Letting go is part of moving forward.

• Get very clear about what you want. Career, relationships, priorities, pace. Clarity is power, confusion is expensive.

• The people who matter are the ones who show up when you’re at your lowest. Treasure them. Invest in them. Protect those relationships.

• Don’t be afraid to be wrong. Don’t be afraid to mess up. Don’t be afraid to fail. Nothing meaningful comes from playing it safe.

• You should be more scared of losing yourself than losing someone. Anyone who requires you to abandon yourself is already asking for too much.

• Your mental and physical health directly affect how you show up for yourself and for others. Nothing works if you don’t.

• Put yourself out there. Say yes to meeting new people. Most good things start with discomfort and a little courage.

• Know what you bring to the table and stand firm in your beliefs, your wants, and your needs. Compromising your values is not growth.

• Take your sense of safety seriously. When you understand what genuine safety feels like deep in your body, it becomes easier to notice when someone or something doesn’t feel safe for you.

• You can’t give 50% effort and expect to get where you want to go. Once you go all in, everything changes.

• There is enough success to go around. Someone else winning doesn’t mean you’re losing.

• It’s better to be scared than miserable. Don’t let fear keep you from taking a leap or betting on yourself and what you desire.

• Enjoy being in the process of becoming.

• Practice feeling free and open. We’re often weighed down by shame and guilt, but your mind, body, and spirit answer only to your highest self.

• Being ‘soft’ as a woman is not about being digestible to the world.

• Sit with uncertainty, trust yourself even when there are no clear answers, and remember that gratitude can coexist with pain.

• Create a rich and vibrant inner life, keep cultivating a beautiful life no matter what.

• Perfection isn’t the goal. Starting is.

• What a blessing it is to be alive and to feel.

The ritual I return to every year

One of the biggest things this year taught me is that life doesn’t wait for you to feel ready. It just keeps offering invitations to move, to commit, to let go, to begin again.

As I think about stepping into 2026, I’ve been doing something I do every year: creating a vision board/list.

It’s a ritual I’ve kept for the last five years, and it’s rooted in something my mom has always told me. She taught me to write down what I want for the new year in the present tense—as if it’s already mine. Not “I hope,” not “I wish,” but “I am.” “I have.” “I live.”

Every year, I write it out. Every year, I look back and realize how much of it found its way into my life. Not always in the way I imagined, not always on my timeline. Enough to make me believe in the power of intention, clarity, and trusting yourself enough to ask for what you truly want.

This year, my vision feels less about chasing and more about aligning. Less about proving and more about becoming. I just want to keep choosing a life that feels honest, expansive, and mine.

As 2026 approaches, I feel open. Curious. Grateful.

Here’s to everything that shaped us this year and to everything still waiting to unfold.

Happy New Year!

Mwah,

Silvia

P.S. If you’re thinking about your own year and what’s ahead, take a few moments to reflect on what you’ve learned, what you’re grateful for, and what you want to invite into your life next. Small intentions can grow in ways you never expect. Sending you all my love.