S2E12 Year In Review: What 2025 Meant to Me and Questions for Life's Reflection

North Node for better and for worse.

We don't get any minutes that we've lived back, but we do get to hold on to the meaning we find in those minutes that we've lived.

Meaning stays with us across time and space.

As we make meaning, we expand who we are and we appreciate what we've learned and what we are still learning.

When we make meaning, we can stay open and engaged with living.

Hi, I'm Paige Nolan.

Welcome to I'll meet you there.

A place where heart centered conversations are everything.

Living what matters is the truest thing, and sharing the journey is the best.

Hi everyone and welcome back.

Today is our final episode of season two and I decided to go solo.

For those of you who have known me and my work, it will not surprise you that an underlying theme for today's episode is gratitude.

I'm recording in the month of December.

We're at the end of 2025, and collecting lessons at the end of a year has been a steadfast practice of mine since forever.

I love to journal, as you all have heard, if you've listened to this podcast, and I'm passionate about learning and life is my favorite class.

So here's what I've learned about putting a lens of gratitude to personal reflection.

When I look at my life and situations, through appreciating what I'm learning, I become more open to the experience I want to be open.

I know that openness is a pathway to peace and it's hard to stay open.

It's almost impossible to accept a devastating reality.

It's hard even to accept an uncomfortable one.

And there's a whole bunch of variations of reality in between some realities you can only let in little by little.

And I find if we can hold on to the revelations that come with that opening, we can appreciate what we're learning about ourselves, about each other, about life moving forward.

So today I invite you to join me here.

I'm going to give you four questions that you can use to reflect on your learnings from this year.

I don't think these are the only four questions to ask yourself, but I like these questions and I tend to use them every year.

I'm going to share my answers to each one of the questions with the intention that it sparks some conversation within you.

For better and for worse.

We don't get any minutes that we've lived back, but we do get to hold on to the meaning we find in those minutes that we've lived.

Meaning stays with us across time and space as we make meaning.

We expand who we are and we appreciate what we've learned and what we are still learning.

When we make meaning, we can stay open and engaged with living.

So here we go.

The first question what was 2025 about for you?

I'm a big fan of distilling something complex like your life over the past 12 months into a main idea because it helps you to make sense and it gives you a sense of what mattered most.

For me, this past year was a heart opener.

Moving from the head to the heart is a journey.

We visit often on this podcast, really all the time, almost every episode.

I feel like there's some sort of theme or moment in the conversation that points to that idea.

It's the ultimate journey of our lives.

We don't do it once, we do it over and over and over.

We get better at it when we pay attention and start to learn what it feels like to be in the head versus what it feels like to be in the heart this year I had so many experiences where I could feel myself thinking and overthinking and strategizing.

I could feel myself avoiding the space of the heart because I didn't want to take the time to feel so much.

I didn't want to go find out what's in my heart because my mind had a plan.

And if you go trekking through the heart, you may find yourself on a totally different path than the one your mind has convinced you is the right one.

The heart is a vulnerable place to go and it can be overwhelming for someone who willingly and skillfully can walk with another into the heart.

It was humbling to feel how much I resisted opening my heart to my own experience.

It's frustrating when you're well practiced at accepting others and holding all this great non judgmental space for others, but then you can't hold yourself in that same grace.

I know that so many of you listening can relate to this.

What ultimately opened my heart is letting myself feel at the pace I could let the feelings in.

I'm a source of stability for others and I like that station in life.

I bet you're that way too.

We're built for it.

And here's the deal about that role.

If you're in your head too much and you have too many ideas about how you should be or how life should be, you're not grounded in the strength of the heart.

You're not rooted in your own courage.

So many people I love have had really life changing experiences this year, some by choice and others through unexpected devastation.

Their experiences opened my heart to more emotion than I was expecting to feel.

My own experience of change and transitions and loss opened my heart to tender places I wasn't inhabiting before.

This year I had to stay present to my own emotional life and drop the self judgment which is done in real time, not all at once, and just feel.

We don't open our heart because we think we should open our hearts.

Our emotions are keys and they turn in connection with others and with our faith.

Our feelings unlock the depth of love and compassion we have for one another.

And what I appreciate about this year is that I'm learning to direct that love and compassion inward.

I'm learning that I need to do that.

It's not as natural for me as it is to direct it outward again, something I'm sure you all will be able to relate to.

But I'm grateful that this year is showing me how much more resilient I can be.

When I'm gentle with myself on the inside, when I offer myself grace and understanding, I'm so much stronger for others and that gives me great purpose.

So, your turn.

First question, what was 2025 about for you?

The second question is, what was something that surprised you about 2025?

My answer to this has to do with the heart opening.

I'm surprised that my emotional life surprised me, and for me, that reveals how much I expect to easily move through without pausing.

It's a personal reflection for sure, but I think that expectation is reflective of our culture.

Keep going, stay productive, be there for others, and deal with yourself later, after everyone else's needs are met.

These are the messages we receive.

There's no time for the emotional life.

The doing is much more important than the being.

So here's an example.

Before I started my own coaching practice, I helped kids get into college again, something that I've referenced in this podcast.

And I was a college guidance counselor on and off in different capacities for 12 years.

This year was the year that I was in charge of getting my own two daughters into college, and it's something that I knew I could guide them through.

But what I underestimated was how much I would feel alongside the guidance I was offering about their future and the implications of their college choice on our family and our finances and all of it.

So it seems obvious.

Of course they're my kids, so it's going to feel different.

It's going to be a different experience than it is when I help other kids.

But we do this to ourselves.

We think that when we know something about our experience or we can intellectually grasp what's happening.

We think that that cognitive understanding is going to streamline the emotional side of it for us.

It won't be so messy, it won't be so emotionally taxing because we know what we have to do.

And when it's emotionally exhausting or confusing, we often don't give ourselves enough space to feel that.

Because of course, there's the expectation that we'll get it done, we'll get it done swiftly, we'll get it done on time, and that the doing is more important than the feeling.

If I dig into the emotional experience of this year specifically, there have been many moments where I felt deeply saddened.

I don't like to dwell on sadness.

I touch it sometimes through books and movies and music, definitely poetry.

I can touch it when other people share their sadness with me.

But I realized when I got curious about my own sadness that I have a story about feeling sorrow.

I completed this workbook called Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness.

It's written by Elise Lunan and Courtney Smith, and the workbook prompts you to uncover the stories in your life.

There's a bunch of different prompts and different ways that they invite you into that insight.

And there's a chapter about sadness.

It's through those exercises in that book that I uncovered a story I tell myself about sadness.

And it goes like this.

My sadness is weakness.

Because if I can't handle what's sad to me today, how will I be able to handle something that's really sad in the future?

Whatever sadness I'm feeling, it always could be worse.

So I want to get out of the pitfall.

It's not that sad.

It's all good.

At the root of that story is fear.

It's my little brain's attempt to prepare as if I ever could for what bigger sadness could be coming my way.

It's also a fear of getting too close to sadness.

Will I come back from a big emotion?

Is it self indulgent to surrender to a big emotion?

I'm practical by nature, and practicality can feel productive.

The irony is we know that feeling your feelings, moving through them without judgment is crucial to emotional resilience.

Emotional resilience is not about feeling less.

It's about feeling what you feel and having the lived experience of what information that feeling gives you.

I know this.

We know this.

But knowing this didn't open my heart to the sadness I felt this year.

Feeling sad did.

And part of that was being surprised by it.

Feeling the profound loss of the Pacific Palisades fire.

Knowing so many families, friends and clients in that area of Los Angeles who were upended and still are upended and displaced by such a violent natural disaster.

Feeling the profound loss of Braun Levy, the beloved 18 year old son to our friends Jen and Dan Levy, and beloved nephew to our friends Sharon and Jason Hughes.

Braun was killed by an alleged drunk driver just a few weeks before his high school graduation in May of this year.

Feeling the heartbreak of a long term client whose father is nearing the end of his life at the same time as she is taking care of her best friend who is dealing with an aggressive form of cancer.

Feeling the distress of a friend whose son is battling debilitating depression.

Feeling the heaviness of the world news Feeling the quiet in our home after the girls left for college and witnessing my husband Boyd's sadness, which was totally unfamiliar to me.

There are more examples, but the reflection I make here is that my heart is open.

I didn't expect it to be opened this way.

I didn't expect the great losses of 2025 and even the things I did expect to make me sad, like the girls leaving for college left me more tender than I anticipated and it wasn't something I could think my way out of.

It was, and still is an experience I'm feeling my way through.

It's definitely changing who I am and how I understand what it means to be human.

So question number two for you.

What was something that surprised you about 2025?

Okay, question number three.

What's one thing that supported you the most in 2025?

For me, the answer to this one is an idea.

And it's the idea that it's okay that things are different.

It's okay to change.

Our family life is not the same as it was 12 months ago.

Los Angeles is not the same as it was before the fires.

People I know are not the same after loved ones have died.

This year, people I know are facing difficult choices and challenges and are not sure what path to take forward.

Things are different.

Life is changing and it's okay even when things are not okay.

And so many things are not okay.

Young people dying in massive fires that take out thousands of homes.

The fact that life changes us is okay because it is what life does.

This year, anytime I was able to bend and be with what is, I felt more grounded.

When I argue with what is or refuse to accept it or deny it, I feel powerless.

It's a place of defeat and depression.

We need to feel empowered to move forward and evolve.

So this year, when I was longing or sad or angry or burnout or exhausted.

The thing that offered me the most space to be was my journal.

Again, this is something that's come up before in the podcast.

Journaling is often a practice that I turn to.

I had a friend ask me the other day about journaling.

She's going through a really hard time, too, and she's kept a journal here and there over the years, but she's never consistent with it, and I could tell from her questions she was approaching it very much from her head.

She suspects that journaling could help her through this difficult chapter, but she's already judging her journaling practice before she's even started.

So I'm going back to number one with this reflection.

The more you can approach something with your heart, the less judgmental you'll be.

I don't hold myself to any rules when I journal.

The paper is a place to go to doodle, to write down feelings or thoughts I don't want to share with anyone, or I just scribble a word or a phrase.

Journaling, to me, feels like decluttering.

It's cleaning out random items and trash that's accumulated in your car.

After I fill up a piece of paper like that, my head is clear and I can move forward with lightness.

This is the practice that felt the most supportive to me in 2025.

The other day I was waiting in the doctor's office for a medical procedure, a quick one.

It wasn't a big one, but it did involve an iv, and I was nervous because it's medical stuff and I haven't had an IV in forever.

It feels like.

I think the last time I had an IV I was in childbirth, and so I didn't know what it was going to feel like and what I had to do with my.

Or what I chose to do with my racing thoughts.

And all my worry is to draw in my journal.

And I was doodling a sketch of a woman who was laying down in the sun with this palm tree, and I was doodling all these encouraging words, and the nurse came and got me and got me set up, and she was watching me draw and she asked me about it and I was telling her how this act of drawing, of dropping into my body using my hand and focusing on the page is the thing that gets me out of worry.

And she happened to be a journaler too, so she could relate.

Anyway, it just led me to that idea of it's okay, because that idea of it being okay is inside your body.

Your mind will fight with that idea.

But your body has the truth and the reality that it's okay for things to change.

It's okay that life is different.

It can feel so strange at times, unfamiliar territory.

But it's okay.

And your body knows that to let it be what it is and accept that it's a change is enough.

Just that it's plenty.

So question three is what's one thing that supported you the most in 2025?

It could be a person.

It could be a group of people, an experience, a habit, a routine, a place.

Or it could be like, in my case, an idea.

The fourth question what inspired you this year that you can take with you into 2026?

For me, that answer is the power of connection in both community and friendship.

That's what inspired me the most this year.

I am absolutely astounded by the healing that happens in groups.

I get to see this in my professional work as a facilitator all the time.

And it happens in community life for all of us.

When people show up to witness each other with compassion without agenda, it offers such a deep sense of belonging that people are free to be who they are and to remember that who they are is enough.

That's the ultimate remembrance.

I've been a part of a members only community for women called Let It Break for a couple years now, and in the groups that I facilitated this past year, I was so inspired by how honest and heartfelt the women share.

When one person says the truth, it invites everyone else to tell the truth.

Now, some may not tell it out loud, but just to be in the room with truth means that what is true and real is welcomed here.

And that is a gift of authenticity which inspires lasting connection.

The same is true for the groups I facilitated with women who have been victims of the Palisades fire.

Grief is complicated and exhausting.

It touches every single aspect of life and it continues well beyond the initial outreach of support.

It continues in invisible and seemingly infinite ways.

This year I've learned how the edges of heartbreak that can be so cutting and isolating are soothed and softened in a circle of safe sharing.

Just to name an experience, just to describe it without even understanding it, can release some of the weight of it.

Grief is too much to bear alone.

Staying connected in community and to friends is the light that leads us through the darkest hour.

I've learned this also through the light of the Live Like Braun movement.

Watching that movement grow has been so inspiring.

Braun was a larger than life person and with all of his talents and and energy and gifts.

He is probably most known for his extraordinary kindness.

Since Braun's passing, Jen has been leading the Live Like Braun foundation with a boundless purpose and commitment to the mission of helping students achieve their dreams, building public tennis centers, which was Braun's passion, and raising awareness about impaired driving risks.

Beyond the foundation, Live Like Braun has taken on a life of its own.

It brings people together.

It brings so much love to everyone who knew Braun and misses him.

Whenever I wear my Live Like Braun hat in my neighborhood, someone notices and knows his story.

The Live Like Bron movement is so powerful because it's about connection.

It's about meeting each other with openness and kindness, and it's definitely something I'm bringing with me into next year.

The power of community and friendship has the ability to lift us up through the darkest passages.

It inspires us because it brings us in spirit and invites us into the heart.

There isn't a place in the mind where the devastating things that happen in our lives make sense.

There just isn't a place.

But there is a spot in the heart where the truth of loss can land and be held in love.

So question four for you.

What inspired you this year that you can take with you into 2026?

Okay, here's my summary.

All this year, I'm appreciating what I'm learning about the heart.

I've seen people rise into new circumstances with such courage and fortitude.

I've seen people show up for each other with grace and vulnerability.

I've been humbled by life.

I've prayed a lot.

I've cried a lot.

My faith is stronger for it.

I've come to accept the places in my own heart that are softer than they were before.

I understand my parents a lot better now.

Now that I have two daughters who don't live at home anymore, I know more about my husband's heart.

I see the depth of love he has for our kids in a new way.

As our family dynamic shifts, I understand more about his hopes and his fears.

And I'm growing more attuned to how we can stay open to each other in this next chapter of our marriage.

I have a deeper respect for my emotional life.

I'm getting better at feeling.

At least I think I am.

My heart feels bigger, that's for sure.

My hope is real, and I'm going into the new year open, intentionally compassionate and open.

Okay, y', all the four questions one more time.

I hope you'll take some time and ask yourself, what was 2025 about for me?

What was something that surprised me about this year.

What's one thing that supported me the most this year?

What inspired me this year that I can take with me into 2026?

May your reflections lead you into some meaningful insights.

Wishing you all a very happy and healthy new year and I will meet you here again soon.

Thanks to each of you for being here and for listening.

I'm so grateful we get to share life in this way.

As always, full show notes are available@paigenolan.com podcast there you will find a full summary of the episode, timestamps and key takeaways, and any resources mentioned in our conversation.

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Podcast production and marketing by North Node Podcast Network Music by Boyd McDonnell Cover photography by Innis Casey okay y', all, that's it for now.

I'll meet you there again soon.