2025, I came to know, was the Year of the Snake. And fitting as it may be, it felt much like a snake shedding its old skin, slowly renewing itself.
2025 asked me to slow down, to feel deeply, to hold grief, to learn and unlearn, and to return to myself again and again.
These are not lessons I learned overnight. They were lived, felt, and learned the hard way. This list is a gentle reflection of what this past year taught me about love, dating, healing, and myself.
So here it goes:
About Life
Table of Contents
1. Embrace everything. It is all a temporary human experience.
The love. The heartbreak. The joy. The pain. Everything is material for our soul’s evolution.
We are here to experience it all, not just selective parts of life.
The more you embrace everything and stop being selective about what you allow yourself to experience, the more peaceful and freeing life becomes.
2. You never know what someone is going through, so always be kind.
If our scars and wounds were made visible, we would all be walking with a hundred scars and looking beaten and wounded. Let us always show ourselves and everyone else tenderness.
If someone only saw my Instagram, they might think I’m always happy.
And while I am happy most of the time, I, too, have moments when I can barely smile or believe happiness will ever return.
If this is true for me, it must be true for everyone. We never know what someone is carrying inside. So be kind. We are all doing our best.
3. You cannot control anyone’s actions or behaviour, so it’s best to simply let them.
Their actions help you give the answers you have been seeking, clear your doubts and help you see them more clearly, as they truly are.
4. You cannot expect decency, integrity, and respect from everyone.
People are limited by their own capacities, and we cannot expect everyone to behave the way we would in the same situation.
Not everyone will give you the respect you deserve. Not everyone will truly know or care for you, even after knowing you for years.
These things come with emotional intelligence and maturity, the ability to sit with discomfort, face difficult moments, and have hard conversations.
Not everyone is gifted with these qualities. They come with growth, awareness, and courage. This does not mean they are bad people, too.
People are simply limited by their capacities and have their own coping mechanisms. It does not say anything about you.
5. What is meant for you will not pass you by.
What is meant for you will find its way to you, gently and inevitably. And what is not meant for you will never stay, no matter how many times you knock on the door for it or how many times you open the door wider.
Things fall apart to fall into place. Trust what stays. Trust what leaves. Both are guiding you exactly where you are meant to go.
6. Don’t let one bad thing erase a hundred good ones.
- P.S How to start taking responsibility for your life
- 10 Japanese Principles that teach the Art of Living
About Love
7. You are not meant to lose yourself in love.
Love should help you find yourself and fall in love with yourself, not forget yourself.
A healthy love is one which does not demand to be your sole focus.
A healthy love brings you closer to who you truly are, closer to God, closer to your potential, and closer to the world.
8. You don’t have to pretend to be strong or nonchalant with the one you love.
If you have to minimise your feelings, act indifferent, or play games, it’s not worth your energy. Remember, if it is costing you your peace, it’s too expensive.
9. Give love time to grow.
Love is more than pull, intensity, and spark. Don’t cut someone off just because you don’t feel immediate intensity.
Many of us, especially women, confuse love with anxiousness. We think that if someone makes us anxious, it must mean we feel deeply for them. But love is not anxiety or intensity. We often fall for red flags more easily than for healthy love.
The genuinely good ones rarely make us feel confused or restless, so we assume there isn’t enough chemistry.
But healthy love deserves a chance. Learn to love a peaceful love.
Love truly is gentle. Love truly is thoughtful. Love truly is kind. Love truly is reassuring.
It makes you more caring and considerate naturally. This is the love that stays. And you will know.
10. Love requires awareness and learning.
It requires the thoughtfulness to expand our capacity to love, to be generous, to think more about giving than receiving and to be a steadfast presence through it all.
Healthy love is about learning the ways your partner would want to feel loved, rather than loving in the only way you know you can.
All this while I had been running after connection, spark, rightness, not knowing that love takes more than that to build.
What truly matters is how well you connect over things when things don’t go well, how well you think you can build a life together you can be proud of, how well you can serve each other and as well as others through you, how emotionally mature you can handle things and how kind and thoughtful your partner generally is just as a person, because if they are kind and helpful as a person, they will always be kind.
About dating
11. As humans, our greatest ability is to choose.
If you don’t like something, you can choose and make changes.
Choose how you want to live each day. Choose how you spend your time. Choose the books you read. Choose how you show up. Choose the kind of person you want to be with.
Choose, and learn to choose well.
After my breakup, I decided that this time, I would choose.
I would stay open to dating without rushing into a relationship with the next person I met.
I allowed myself to simply know someone and take my time.
I think, as women, we are not taught to choose.
We are shamed for dating just to know, shamed for leaving when things don’t work, shamed for our choices.
Men, however, often know how to choose instinctively: who they should invest their time, energy, and resources in. We women, are rarely taught this, and I think we need to learn that it’s okay to choose and it’s okay to take our time.
12. 2025 taught me discernment.
It taught me that I must be discerning about who a person really is, instead of relying solely on my feelings, especially while dating.
Be discerning about someone’s character before you let them in and allow your feelings to lock onto them.
Observe how they are as a person:
Are they kind? Are they helpful? How do they treat you? How do they treat your pets, your loved ones?
Do they truly support you? How do you feel around them? Are they emotionally aware? Do they have friends? And most importantly, how do they handle conflict? Do they communicate, or do they run away?
The reason I’m saying this is because once we get our feelings attached, none of this matters, and we tend to ignore so many of the mild red flags.
Earlier, I relied only on feelings and believed everyone was inherently good.
This year taught me that while people may be inherently good, you don’t have to fall for potential or try hard to see their goodness.
Be with someone who is naturally good as they are.
Fall for who they truly are instead of falling for who they could be.
Take your time. Use your discernment. You are not selfish for choosing and moving slowly.
About Healing
13. Trust in the impermanent nature of all things.
Everything is impermanent, and that is a good thing.
Because things are always changing, we must loosen our grip on attachments and learn to have faith.
If life isn’t going well, trust that it will change. And if life is going beautifully, cherish it deeply, because that too is impermanent.
14. Allow pain to show up and meet it with tenderness. Pain arises so it can be acknowledged, processed, and released.
15. Healing comes in waves. Letting go doesn’t happen once. You have to return to yourself again and again.
16. Forgiveness is what closes a chapter completely.
Like healing, forgiveness, too, might come in waves.
It may take time to forgive the ones who hurt you. It’s okay to feel a range of emotions.
But if ultimately, you have to choose upon an emotion, choose forgiveness
Forgiveness is what closes the cycle in peace, so that you may never return to it again, and so that the chapter does not open again, even in another lifetime.
Choose to close that account with forgiveness.
17. Self-forgiveness matters more than you think.
For a long time, I was angry with myself for trusting someone I shouldn’t have, for not holding stronger boundaries and for letting my walls down.
But with time, I learned that I don’t have to be harsh to myself for being kind or for opening my heart. That was not a mistake. It was a reflection of who I am.
I trusted, hoping things would be different, and when they weren’t, I chose to walk away. I’m proud of myself for being open-hearted and leaving disrespect and betrayal, and for showing kindness until the very end.
- P.S 11 Signs you are healing even if it looks like you’re breaking apart
- 100 Heart Softening Affirmations on Healing
About Myself
18. Learn to be seen and take up space.
I learned that I really have to allow myself to be seen and take up space.
I don’t have to shrink myself or be afraid of showing up fully. It’s okay to be seen as I am.
Nobody is really judging me except my own self, and even if they do, who cares?
Wherever you are, you belong there.
Where you place your feet, where you take your breaths, act as if God asked you to be there, because He did.
19. Not everyone deserves access to my life. I don’t have to feel guilty for removing access to people who no longer align.
20. Practice grace in all situations. Show yourself grace. Show others grace. And especially practice grace when you’re in love.
21. Kindness is everywhere. You just have to notice it. What you give is always returned in ways you don’t even ask for. No kindness is ever wasted.
22. I am not lazy. I just need to use my phone less.
23. Keep your intentions and purpose close. I do this through prayer, meditation, walking, and alone time. This is how I recharge and return to myself, and I must keep them close every day.
24. Don’t take your thoughts too personally. They are always changing. You are not your mind. You are not your thoughts.
25. Be rooted ~ in yourself, in your values, in your purpose and determination.
Final Note
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I am thankful for everything I have shed without even realising. Old versions, old patterns, old ways of loving and holding on. What remains feels softer, truer, and more rooted.
I am learning to trust life’s timing, trust God’s plan, to choose with care, and to meet both love and loss with grace. I carry these lessons forward and aspire to move through life with openness, faith, and a deeper return to myself.
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