Conscious Completion
A Soft Ritual to Close Out 2025
If you’re ending this year feeling more tired than triumphant, I hear you. I don’t know when it all became so exhausting but it did. No matter what time I go to bed these days, I’m waking up feeling unrested. Tired legs. Achy feet. A heaviness that I just can’t seem to shake.
And I don’t feel like I’m doing anything wrong. No, I’m not perfect, which basically means yes I miss a day here and there on my yoga mat, but one missed day out of the week doesn’t mean I’m doing anything wrong. Days are full. Fuller feeling than they’ve ever been. Which is why I’m prepping for a stripped down and simplified start to 2026.
But before I get to the New Year, I’ve recently pushed myself to pause and reflect on the past year and the ways in which 2025 has flowed… or not.
I certainly didn’t hit every goal I set out to accomplish. Heck I’m still just trying to get my a** out of bed at a consistent time each day. That has been its own kind of challenge. Every. Single. Morning.
I also feel like I’m processing a kind of grief. About what? I don’t quite have a name for it but it does relate to this ‘mid-life stage’ of perimenopause and the kind of morphing that’s happening deep in the cells and tissues of my body.
So many times this past year, pictures of my former self have come up and with it, a deep sadness and longing for the woman I once was. Even though I know that that woman is still here today, just differently, I feel melancholic when I see her and sad that who I was is no longer.
And yet, there has been some wonderful growth this past year too. Most of which no one but I know about.
Also, I’m just feeling full. Not full of joy or clarity, but of questions and emotions and feelings that don’t neatly fit into a blog post, caption or hashtag.
Which is why I took sometime time to sit and reflect with a few questions so I could clarify and close out 2025 with a kind of conscious completion. It’s been very helpful for me. In the past, I’ve found that the year end has crept in with a huge amount of pressure to plan, to set intentions and to ‘be better’ than what I was or am.
Thankfully, this year is feeling different. Instead of rushing into what’s next, I’ve been pausing to honour what was. It’s helped me look at myself not through a lens of achievements, but of truths I’ve lived over the last 365 days.
This is what that looks like :
A Year-End Ritual for the Woman Who’s Done With Hustling Through Healing
Find a quiet place to sit with pen and paper on hand. Light a candle or incense if you like. Then, check in with your posture, close your eyes, and take three nice and slow, deep breaths. Let yourself get grounded in your seat and in the moment. When you are ready, open your eyes and reflect on the questions below.
(NOTE: The following questions are not intended to fix anything, but simply to invite you to feel something, anything. This is not a productivity tracker, or goal-critiquer, but rather this is a quiet moment for you to say : ’Thank you 2025. I lived you. I learned. And now, I release you.’ )
These prompts are meant to hold you. Let them bring you back to yourself.
- What has 2025 taught me about myself?
- Where did I grow roots? Where do I feel more grounded or assured? (In my body, my truths, or even my boundaries)
- What have I outgrown? What did I shed because it no longer fit?
- What cracked me open, or surprised me in ways I didn’t expect?
- What am I ready to bless and let go of through the lens of love, not shame?
- What quiet victory am I proud of?
- What has my practice (on and off the mat) taught me about presence, trust, and becoming?
Upon completion, pause again with your eyes closed over three long, slow deep breaths. When you are ready, open your eyes and repeat these words aloud:
“I honour the woman I was in 2025. I thank her for all she has carried and all she has done. I safely release her with tenderness and love. Now, I am ready to hold space for the woman I am becoming.”
Since answering these questions myself, I’ve been thinking about the phrase full circle. Not in the sense of coming back to who I was, but in a kind of accepting who I’ve been, who I am, and who I’m still becoming.
In this photo, I’m demonstrating a posture called Eka Pada Rajakapotasana. A posture that’s always felt symbolic to me, even it I didn’t fully understand it. Someone once explained it like this: The feet represent the mundane, the messy, the very human stuff we have to move through. And the head symbolizes the divine, the part of us connect to something bigger. When the feet and head come toward each other, it’s not about making them meet in a big, deep pose. It’s about integration. About meeting yourself where you are.
And while I’m still not quite back to that practice of touching my foot to the back of my head today, I do feel like something has been coming full circle for me. Not in a neat bow. Not a final answer. Just a quiet and real kind of accepting…
All that being said, you and I don’t need a five-step plan to close out this year, or any phase of our lives for that matter. And we don’t need a new version of ourselves, either. We just need to see ourselves clearly, and lovingly, before stepping into whatever’s next.
May you and I close this chapter with reverence, and walk side by side into the next season of our lives.
Big love,
Michelle
