Leaving the Year, Not the Lessons
Happy Sunday! I almost cannot believe this is the last Undoing Toxic blog for the year. Thank you for your support. Remember to subscribe to never miss another update.
As 2025 comes to a close, many of us are eager to leave it behind. And honestly who could blame us? For some, this year brought expansion, clarity, and long-awaited wins. For others, it carried heartbreak, betrayal, grief/loss, disillusionment, and moments that changed us in ways we didn’t ask for. But the truth is, we do not leave a year the way we leave a room. We carry it with us in our bodies, our relationships, our choices, our boundaries, our beliefs. The invitation is not to erase the year, but to integrate the lessons taught to us.
This year may have initiated you into something deeper. Some of these moments can be referred to as “rough initiations.” Rough initiations are experiences that break us open and alter our orientation to life, the way we see and navigate things moving forward. They are the seasons that strip away illusions, expose tender truths, and force us to reckon with what we can no longer unsee. These events are not gentle, but they are formative.
Many of us learned this year that two things can be true at the same time:
You can grieve and still be grateful.
You can feel betrayed and still believe in love.
You can be heartbroken and still hopeful.
Holding duality is part of maturity. Healing is not choosing optimism over pain; it is making space for both without abandoning yourself.
Betrayal’s Quiet Lessons
Perhaps you experienced moments this year that shook your faith in people: moments of betrayal, disappointment, or heartbreak that left you questioning your openness, your judgment, or your hope. And maybe, quietly and unexpectedly, there were moments that restored it too: a stranger’s kindness, a friend who showed up without being asked, an apology you never thought would come, a boundary that actually held, or a relationship that ended because it needed to. These experiences live side by side. They remind us of the norm of reciprocity; that care, repair, and goodness still circulate in the world, even when harm has touched us. Doing good does not guarantee we won’t be hurt, and being hurt doesn’t mean goodness has disappeared. Part of the lesson of sitting with betrayal is learning to hold discernment without closing our hearts completely to grieve what failed us while remaining open to what can still be built.
There’s a saying: If you’re looking for a red car, that’s all you’ll see. Our focus shapes our reality. When we zoom in, or hyperfocus too tightly on the pain, the loss, the one or many betrayal(s); we can miss the full picture. This does not mean minimizing who and what hurt you. It means widening the lens. I invite you to ask yourself the following questions:
What else existed alongside the pain?
What did this year teach me about myself?
Whar did I learn about my needs and my resilience?
What did I learn about my capacity to love again?
As we prepare to step into a new year, maybe the work is not about becoming someone entirely new. Maybe it is about bringing forward the lessons without dragging the weight. If you are ending the year feeling tender, unsure, or quietly proud of how you survived, there’s room for that here. You do not have to give up on hope to be realistic. You don’t have to harden your heart to protect it. You can move forward wiser, softer in the right places, stronger in others.
We leave the year.
We keep the lessons.
And we step forward. We are changed, not defeated.
Thank you for reading.
Let’s connect. Email me: moniqueevanstherapy@gmail.com
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