Reflecting on 2025

In the 16th century, a monk named St. John of The Cross coined the phrase “the dark night of the soul.” In his writings he muses about the depths of his pain, losing his ego, his wrestling with a sense of truths and untruths, and his soul’s return to God. He ventures through an emptiness beyond measure, a state of loss, desolation and darkness like never before. This is the best description I have for my 2025. I know it’s been a while, in fact, I didn’t even get around to sending a 2024 update, it’s been that much.

 

To say this year has been challenging would be a terrible underrepresentation of the depth of emotion and grief I felt this year in particular. I sat helpless and depressed, watching the world turn and become hostile, relentless, and cold. I lost trust in my decision making, my own intuition, and I condemned my past self like a merciless judge. Once I got over an awful sickness feeling a breath away from death, I started to explore what it meant to dream again, to want for myself. Just when I had begun that process, I got a call, one of those world shaking,heart stopping calls. Out of the blue my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Not just one, but three kinds, including a stage 4. We had no timeline, just a list of prayers, endless questions, and a handful of paperwork.  

 

My tendency when life gets hard is to isolate, to suffer in silence where no one is bothered by my pain. But I knew I had to act differently to heal differently, so I did. I did the scary thing, and I asked for help. I had the hard and vulnerable conversations with my closest friends. I made support group chats and prayer circles. I found a mentor who could walk me through her experience as a caretaker. I mentally adopted some kids who remind me about the wonders of growing up. I’ve cried my tears after workouts on scratchy gym turf, at silent book club with a book I’ll never finish, on Filipino-cohort Zoom meetings, at national policy protests, on lake sides looking up at the stars, at solo-ticket-purchase concerts, during friends’ wedding dances, laid out on the altar at church, and in the corner of the server alley at the cantina where I picked up shifts to make the month‘s bills.

 

But alas, mister St. John also has this to offer, “the endurance of darkness is the preparation for great light.” I don’t think I’m great at enduring, I’m taking my mercies new each day. I’m ever finding myself, learning how to trust her again, and to be gentle with her. I’m learning to surrender my familiar comforts for awkward new strengths. I’ve been blessed this year to see long-awaited hopes come to fulfillment in the lives of those around me, and though the longing can hurt, I faithfully await my own breakthrough.

 

Usually “darkness” is akin to bad things, but I offer the darkness of this year as a sacrifice to the coming day. There are some great mysteries that happen in the dark after all. A loss of vision can lead to other senses being heightened, a caterpillar cocoons away into a butterfly, a seed is buried while it grows, a dead man lays in a tomb before a resurrection. So if the stars I see in this dark void are just glimmers from a painful past, I’ll be grateful for their light that keeps me company ‘til dawn.

All my love,

Maggie