What a year 2025 has been.
It delivered more than its share of nail-biting moments—and some truly momentous milestones. The year began in a jarring, destabilizing way, the kind that forces you to re-evaluate your priorities, your assumptions, and the stories you tell yourself about what’s possible. And yet, as I look at where I’m standing now, I feel grounded, optimistic, and genuinely proud of how I’m closing it out.
More than any single achievement, what stands out most is a conscious decision: choosing to build an antifragile life. Not just to endure stress and uncertainty, but to grow stronger because of them. To move intentionally, even when outcomes were unclear. And to see those efforts begin to compound—across my health, mindset, relationships, and creative work.
Major Milestones from My 2025 Journey
This year reshaped me in ways that were both deeply personal and profoundly clarifying.
I successfully completed all cancer treatments for a breast cancer diagnosed in 2024. Hearing my doctors confirm that no cancer remained in the tissue post-surgery was a defining moment—one that recalibrated my sense of time, gratitude, and resilience.
Alongside healing, I chose to create. I launched Bold New Quests, turning a long-held idea into a living platform focused on personal growth, antifragility, and intentional living. Writing consistently throughout the year wasn’t just about publishing posts—it became a discipline for thinking clearly, experimenting thoughtfully, and articulating what it means to build an antifragile life in real time.
Mid-year, I stepped fully back into living. My husband and I took a romantic trip to the Amalfi Coast to celebrate surviving—and growing through—the most challenging chapter of 2025. Beauty, movement, and shared joy have a way of restoring perspective.
One experience from that trip stands out above all others: hiking the Path of the Gods. The trail sits more than 2,000 feet above sea level and ends with 1,900 steep stone steps down to Praiano, where we began. After months of surgeries, treatments, and recovery, completing that hike felt symbolic. It was a quiet but powerful confirmation of what the body and mind can reclaim when approached with patience and respect.
I closed the year where it matters most—celebrating the holidays with family, in true cross-cultural fashion, fully present and deeply appreciative of each shared moment.
Five Lessons 2025 Taught Me About Growth
This year didn’t just happen to me—it taught me. These five lessons were lived, not learned abstractly, and they will continue to guide me in 2026.
1. Self-Awareness Is a Force Multiplier
Increasing self-awareness—of how you feel, act, react, and decide—gives you leverage over your life. Conscious living raises both your tactical decision-making and your existential clarity. Mindfulness, meditation, and intentionally lengthening quiet moments helped bring stillness to what could have remained a hectic, reactive year. Stillness simplifies. Simplicity creates power.
2. Values-Based Living Is Non-Negotiable
Knowing your values and directing your thoughts and actions accordingly is essential to living a purposeful, fulfilling life. When I consistently brought my values to the forefront, decision-making became easier and cleaner. Values act as a compass when circumstances feel uncertain—and without them, it’s easy to stay stuck in patterns that drain motivation and energy.
3. Reframing Is a Critical Skill
When you’re stuck, continuing down the same mental path is the default—and the most costly—option. Learning to pause, reframe, and reconnect with the why behind an effort restores agency. Reframing doesn’t deny difficulty; it transforms how you engage with it. It’s how you sustain momentum and keep purpose front and centre.
4. The Right People Help Build Your Strength
Who you surround yourself with matters more than most people want to admit. Compassionate, grounded, optimistic people don’t just offer support—they model fortitude. This year reinforced that antifragility is rarely built in isolation; it’s strengthened through shared perspective and mutual encouragement.
5. Vision Requires Execution
Setting a vision for how you want to live is essential—but vision alone changes nothing. Breaking that vision into small, executable actions is what creates progress. Antifragility isn’t built through dramatic moments; it’s built through consistent, imperfect execution over time.
Woven through all of these lessons was one undeniable truth: physical and mental health are inseparable. You cannot sustainably sacrifice one for the other. True wellbeing require working on both, together.
Looking Ahead to 2026
As I step into 2026, I’m doubling down on awareness, values-based decisions, experimentation, and execution. I’m committed to continuing this work—on the page, in my body, in my relationships, and in how I design my life.
Here’s to another year of asking better questions, choosing courage over comfort, and building lives that don’t just survive—but grow stronger under pressure.