December Reflections
A Gentle Look Back and Forward at the Close of 2025
As 2025 gently draws to a close, I find myself resting in a quiet sense of completion. There’s a peacefulness to this moment, a soft acknowledgment that another chapter has been thoughtfully lived.
In numerology, 2025 is a “9 year,” a cycle often associated with endings and integration. I’ve always felt at home in the rhythm of nine-year cycles. They may be less neat than the tidy seven-year spans many prefer, but there’s a comforting sense that things are allowed to finish fully and naturally, just as they need to.
This December, as I reflect on both the year behind and the one ahead, my thoughts drift back to 2017. That year began quietly for me.
On January 1, I touched down at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, unaware that I was stepping gently into a period of introspection, a kind of hermit season, not dramatic really, but deeply nourishing. Life slowed. The days grew quieter, and I retreated inward for a while.
Much of that year, I spent in my study, a cozy space that doubled as my library. There, surrounded by books, I found myself reading endlessly, each title leading me down winding paths of curiosity, never with an agenda, but with a spirit of gentle exploration. It wasn’t about building a grand philosophy or finding answers, but simply following where my heart led, page by page.
I felt drawn to stories of Lemuria, Atlantis, and other ancient civilizations; tales not often taught, yet somehow familiar and comforting. Moments of synchronicity surfaced often, with ideas arriving just when I needed them, and discoveries unfolding in the most unexpected and gentle ways.
During this quiet chapter, my mind wandered back to the Bible, which I had read from cover-to-cover years before, in 2011 and 2013.
My natural skepticism didn’t prevent some passages, especially those in Genesis, from leaving a gentle, persistent impression on me, not as dogma, mind you, but as invitations to wonder. These stories unsettled me in the best sense, stirring up questions that felt quietly profound.
By the end of 2017, something inside me had shifted, though nothing outwardly obvious had changed. Internally, subtle understandings found their place; forgotten stories settled quietly within me. Only later did I realise 2017 was a “1 year” in numerology, a fresh beginning, quietly planted.
This realisation might have slipped away unnoticed, had I not begun reflecting on how 2025, and this gentle nine-year cycle, have unfolded. Looking back, I see the thread: a humble beginning, a long and unremarkable middle season, and now, the soft sense of real completion. It’s from this fertile ground that my current “ecosystem” work has blossomed—not as a calculated plan or grand statement, but as a gentle acknowledgment of how life unfolds—gradually, often without clarity, and rarely in a straight line.
Some years invite us to read and learn. Others encourage us to withdraw for a while. And some, perhaps most precious of all, are simply for living—without explanation or expectation—allowing ourselves the grace to be.
As this cycle closes, I find myself less interested in tallying achievements and more inclined to honor what the journey has asked of me: patience, discernment, and the willingness to stay present with things long enough for them to reveal their meaning organically.
That tender process is what inspired me to create The Art of Year One—not as a rigid system, but as a compassionate companion for quiet beginnings. It’s offered in response to something I’ve lived, and witnessed others living, all too often in silence and self-doubt. There’s no need to announce the start of a new chapter loudly. Sometimes, it’s enough simply to begin.
The letter below shares more about this gentle approach. For now, this reflection is simply where my heart began.
An Open Letter: Why I Created The Art of Year One
There’s something I’ve noticed for quite some time, but it rarely gets mentioned.
Whenever someone begins something new, e.g., a fresh chapter, a different way of living, or even a new sense of self, there’s this immediate pressure for results. People want direction, proof, momentum, and clarity. All before anything has really had a chance to settle.
Most advice skips right over the first year. It leaps straight into plans, outcomes, and “what’s next,” without honouring what actually happens when a real beginning takes place.
But that first year isn’t empty. It’s simply quiet.
That’s why I created The Art of Year One for that quiet year.
Not the year of big achievements, and not the year of total reinvention. But the year when something honest starts to take shape, quietly, beneath all the noise.
I didn’t set out to teach a method. I started this because I kept seeing people blame themselves for things that are completely natural: confusion, moving slowly, shifting identities, changing relationships, uncertainty about work or money.
We tend to call these things “problems.” But more often than not, they aren’t. They’re just signs that a real beginning is happening, and it hasn’t been rushed.
The Art of Year One is a weekly letter series, meant to be read slowly and lived with.
It doesn’t promise results. It doesn’t push for transformation. It doesn’t hand out steps, practices, or strategies. There’s nothing to complete.
Instead, it offers orientation. Words for what you might already be feeling, without telling you what to do about it.
This series isn’t about fixing your life. It’s about learning to stand within it, while something new quietly takes shape.
This will present itself in its own time, hence, a gratitude exchange is the beginning of getting all in coherence.
This work, indeed, isn’t meant for quick skimming. It asks for presence rather than urgency. For noticing, rather than achieving. For staying rather than rushing ahead. That kind of attention needs a different kind of space.
Making this a paid space isn’t about keeping people out; it’s about setting an intention. A paid subscription is a simple signal: This isn’t content to breeze through, or advice to grab and go. It’s something you live alongside, week by week.
If you choose to walk this path with me, you’re choosing continuity, not certainty, not guaranteed results, but the willingness to observe what unfolds when you take the pressure off.
If you’re looking for motivation, hacks, or fast clarity, this probably isn’t for you, and that’s absolutely fine.
But if you’re in a year where: things are shifting quietly, old identities don’t quite fit, decisions feel slower than usual, relationships are reorganising, work and money are being rethought, you don’t want to rush the next chapter… then this series is for you.
There’s no expectation that you change. The only expectation is that you notice.
Notice what softens. Notice what ends quietly, without drama. Notice what stabilises when you stop pushing.
That’s it. Nothing more is required. Some people will read every week. Some will read when something resonates. Some will simply like knowing it’s there. All of that is welcome.
A final note from me
This is a different kind of offering. It doesn’t promise outcomes. It doesn’t sell certainty. It doesn’t rush the beginning.
It exists because beginnings that last usually start this way, quietly, slowly, without a big show.
If that speaks to you, you’re welcome to join. And if it doesn’t, you’re still welcome to read this letter and carry on with your life, just as it is.
Nothing here is meant to convince. It’s simply here for those who see themselves in it.
Jenn
You have a way of touching the very spirit of a being and I thank you-- also, beautiful photos.