Turning the Page
If reflection marks anything, it marks our responsibility.
Not the kind that demands resolutions or reinvention—but the quieter responsibility of paying attention.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why the end of a year pulls us in this way. We seem to slow down not because the calendar tells us to, but because something in us knows time has passed—and that we have been changed by it.
I don’t think reflection is about counting wins or beating ourselves up over mistakes. Maybe it’s simply about paying attention to what changed us—and deciding what still belongs in our lives.
There is something ancient and quiet about this pause. We may think it’s arbitrary—just a date on a calendar—but our bodies don’t experience it that way. We feel the turning. We tend to look back, often even when we don’t want to.
For me, reflections this time of year is how I make sense of where I am now, not a return to where I’ve been.
This year changed me in concrete ways.
I’ve been changed this year by loss—the death of my sister and other loved ones and then there was my husband’s cancer diagnosis—which brought grief and a deep (I do mean deep) awareness of life’s vulnerability, including my own. And layered within that reality has also been joy and meaning: this year the gift of a beautiful, healthy new granddaughter, exciting new business opportunities, and moments of success that now feel less about achievement and more about responsibility in the work. Perhaps, this awareness itself may be one of the gifts of aging.
As the year comes to a close, my reflection on these experiences have brough into clear focus what matters most to me—justice, compassion, and staying close to the suffering of others.
Looking back, I can see the rhythm more clearly now. There were moments of moving outward—showing up, leading, building, producing. And moments of moving inward—pulling back, listening more closely, reckoning with what could no longer be ignored.
Both mattered. Both were necessary.
And what has weighed on me most, hasn’t just been personal loss. It’s the emotional climate we are living in. Fear has become loud. Hate has become casual. Cruelty is sometimes rewarded, while decency is framed as naïve.
That kind of atmosphere does something to us. I see it in myself and in the people that I work with. It tightens our chest, creating tension in our body. It narrows our perspective. It pulls us into vigilance rather than staying present. And if we’re not careful, it convinces us to pull back our compassion and disengage when staying present would matter most.
I refuse that.
And beneath everything this year has held, I’ve felt a growing restlessness—not anxiety, but a pull—to live and work in closer alignment with what I know to be true. With why my life matters. With the work that feels sacred.
That is what I am committing to this year.
If you’re pausing here too—feeling the weight of this year or the pull to slow down—you’re not alone in that. This turning of the page, especially this year, asks something of all of us.
As I look toward 2026, I’m choosing integrity, along with compassion and engagement that don’t fade when things get uncomfortable.
We don’t get to choose most of what happens to us. But we do get to choose how we live with it—what we carry forward, and what we let go.
This year changed me. I don’t feel the need to pretend otherwise.
And as I turn the page, I’m not leaving this year behind—I’m integrating and bringing it with me.
Because the goal was never to come through the year untouched.
It was to remain Real, Authentic, and Human.
And for now, that’s enough.
