Hindsight 2025: What Your Struggles This Year Say About You
Every December, right on schedule, Spotify drops a little gift into our notifications Spotify Wrapped. It’s silly, predictable, curated, and yet it hits us right in the chest. Not because the playlist is all that deep, but because it's a mirror. Suddenly our year is reflected at us in beats per minute and embarrassing top-played songs we swear we didn’t loop that many times.
When I received mine this year, the first thing I noticed was how much my musical preference has changed. Staring at those songs, the ones I played on days I needed to feel something, I realized I wasn’t looking at a playlist. I was looking at a timeline of who I’ve been in 2025 and my experiences.
And with that came the quiet truth: This year was not easy. And yet here I am.
As I sat with that realization, I found myself thinking about struggle why it exists, what it shapes in us, and who we become because of it. I even found myself revisiting one of the oldest stories of human endurance: the story of Job. Yes, the same Job we hear about in Sunday school, the man who experienced pain on top of pain, loss on top of loss and did not crumble into bitterness.
This time of year, wrapped in twinkling lights, holiday programs, and the heavy expectation to be joyful, Job’s story lands differently. His story isn’t about perfection; it’s about perseverance without losing yourself. It’s about suffering without letting suffering define your integrity.
And it made me ask myself and now I pose the same question to you:
What does your year of struggle say about you?
If I Had It Easy, I Wouldn’t Be Who I Am
Let’s start here, because it’s real. There is a version of life we all fantasize about: Smooth. Predictable. Uncomplicated. A life where we get early warnings before the storms hit. Where lessons come softly, not through broken expectations or unexpected detours. But deep down, if I’m honest:
If I had it easy, I don’t think I’d be who I am today.
The resilience you admire in yourself did not come from comfort. Your insight didn’t come from everything going according to plan. Your boundaries didn’t develop because everyone respected you effortlessly. Everything you survived everything you wanted to avoid shaped a version of you that you now rely on.
If someone handed me a map of 2025 before I lived it, with all the potholes circled in red, would I have done things differently?
Absolutely. I’m human. My instinct is always to avoid pain.
But would I be this version of myself the one who recovered, learned, recalibrated, rose again, and reclaimed pieces of myself I didn’t know I’d lost? Probably not.
Struggle is the sculptor that comfort could never be.
And so, while the year may not have been gentle, it was meaningful.
The Benefits of Struggle (That We Don’t Appreciate Until Later)
Struggle is frustrating, sometimes infuriating, because it confronts us with our limits while also revealing our potential. And ironically, it is often in hindsight that we see the benefits most clearly.
Here are a few you may recognize:
1. Struggle forces clarity.
Nothing sharpens your priorities like difficulty. Suddenly, what matters becomes painfully clear and what doesn’t matter falls away.
2. Struggle builds internal credibility.
We talk a lot about confidence, but confidence grows from evidence. Struggle gives you that evidence. You can’t fake the courage it took to keep going.
3. Struggle connects the brain and the body.
Your body keeps score long before your brain catches up. Stress, burnout, exhaustion they whisper (or scream) messages we often ignore. Struggle forces alignment if we’re willing to listen.
4. Struggle deepens compassion.
You become gentler with others because you understand what it feels like to carry invisible weight.
5. Struggle makes your life bigger than the moment you’re in.
It pulls you into a story that is wider than a single season. Wider than a single setback. Wider than a single year. None of this excuses what hurt you. But it acknowledges what shaped you.
And that distinction matters.
How Job’s Story Speaks to the Holiday Season
The holidays come with pageantry sparkles, matching pajamas, the pressure to be cheerful, the emotional overload of balancing family expectations and personal exhaustion. It’s beautiful and heavy all at once.
But Job didn’t have pageantry. He had loss. He had questions. He had a life that collapsed underneath him and yet, he did not lose his integrity in the process.
Here’s the part we often miss:
Job felt everything. He didn’t pretend. He didn’t suppress. He didn’t put on a holiday smile for the sake of others. He cried out. He wrestled. He questioned. What he didn’t do was let his suffering turn him into someone he wasn’t. And that’s the invitation for you this season. You don’t have to pretend this year wasn’t hard. You don’t have to mask your disappointment or fatigue. You don’t have to decorate your emotions with tinsel.
You can feel your feelings and honor your integrity. You can acknowledge the pain and acknowledge your strength. You can be human and be hopeful.
What Does Your 2025 Story Reveal About You?
Let’s bring reflection back to you: your life, your growth, your alignment.
Here are questions worth sitting with as the year closes:
1. Does your body match the story your brain is telling?
Are you moving like someone who is exhausted? Are you masking stress with productivity? Are you ignoring signals because you think pausing means failure?
2. Are you mindful of the bigger picture?
Not the picture others expect from you, but the picture your values, experiences, and desires are painting.
3. Where did grace and gratitude show up for you?
Not performative gratitude, real gratitude that anchored you when everything felt unstable. Not surface grace, the deep kind that allowed you to give yourself permission to be human.
4. How did you keep showing up, even when it felt impossible?
Your endurance this year holds clues about your capacity. Your tears hold clues about your needs. Your resilience holds clues about your future self.
Your story is messy, nonlinear, unfiltered, and is evidence that you are becoming the expert of your life.
Not the perfect one.
Not the all-knowing one.
But the credible one.
The Holiday Season Is More Than Pageantry It’s an Invitation
An invitation to pause, reflect and to acknowledge that things happened this year some chosen, some unexpected. You don’t have to diminish your experiences to embrace joy. You don’t have to deny your struggles to embrace celebration. You don’t have to fix everything to move forward with intention.
Being human means holding both:
🧠 the feeling and the meaning.
🌱the struggle and the growth.
🤞🏽the hindsight and the hope.
This season is your opportunity to step into a deeper kind of awareness one that honors your story instead of rushing past it.
If 2025 Tested You… Let 2026 Support You
Reflection is powerful, but reflection without support often becomes rumination. If this year left you overwhelmed, stuck, second-guessing your decisions, or unsure how to move into the new year with confidence, therapy can offer the space you haven’t had all year.
☑️A space to unpack your experiences.
☑️A space to realign with yourself.
☑️A space to step into the expert role of your own life.
If you're ready to start 2026 with clarity, connection, and grounded confidence, I invite you to work with me.
Whether you prefer virtual sessions from the comfort of home or in-person sessions in my cozy Toronto office, I’m here to support you through whatever season you're entering.
✨ Book your January session today and let’s build a year rooted in alignment, grace, and real transformation.
