Looking back on 2025

In recent weeks, temperatures have finally plummeted as wind and snow swirl on the roads and in the forests. The sun makes an appearance for 5 hours each day, tracing a short, low arc across the horizon before re-entering its 19-hour slumber. Daylight in December became a perpetual sunrise-sunset; the sun so low in the sky I can almost look at it with the naked eye, the city awash in golden hour, the sky pink-tinged. 

For the most part, though, I live in an eternal night. The darkness is pervasive, consistent, a constant companion. It’s a time for rest, hibernation, and rejuvenation. After the semester ended I spent my days inside, catching up on all the slow activities I didn’t have time to do during these first frantic months in Finland. Cooking, baking, knitting, painting, listening to music, podcasts. 

Spending winter break freely and peacefully on my own has given me a lot of time to think and reflect on the past year; all the ways I’ve grown and changed. 

Part One: All My Love 

I spent the first seven months of 2025 in my hometown. When I think back to those months, I remember growing increasingly restless as time went on, feeling the pent-up frustration of being stuck in the monotony of a place I didn’t want to be in. 

I remember attending a Lunar New Year celebration where one of the activities was to write down goals for 2025. I felt like a snake in its old skin, unable to molt, unable to escape, straining against the confines of what it once was. No room left to grow. I remember the goals I wrote reflecting the frustration I felt at the time.

But when I look at my journal and my camera roll from those months, I see entries about, and photos of, the people in my life. My family, my friends, my community. In my desperation to feel less suffocated and trapped, I grasped at human connection. I coached youth hockey and volunteered at events and went to protests and picked up odd jobs. I went to poetry readings, live music, and the farmers market. I traveled: the UK in March, Finland in April, Boston in May, and the PNW in June. I played hockey and went on long bike rides and swam in the river and said yes, yes, yes to everything I could. 

Without the pressures of school or a long-term job, I was free to open my heart wide open to everything that came my way. And I did. I loved so deeply. 

And somehow, the time passed.  

I said goodbye to my hometown at the beginning of August, with the intention of not returning for a long time. I don’t know when or if I’ll ever again live in the place that raised me, but I know this: I have never loved anywhere like I love Montana, and I will love these mountains and rivers and plains and forests for the rest of my life. Everywhere I go, I look for reminders of my home. 

Part Two: Begin Again, and Again 

There are plenty of blogs online about how to live like a local or ten things you should know about living in Finland and it’s filled with information like sauna culture and drinking coffee and tips on how to survive the winter. There are guides on how to set up a phone number and pay rent and which stores have student discounts. 

But what nobody talks about is that in grocery stores, eggs are unrefrigerated and categorized with potatoes and bread. Or that to get on a bus you have to make eye contact with the driver and stick your arm out to the side to indicate you want to get on, otherwise the bus goes right on by and you have to wait for the next one. Or to open a door, you have to twist the big handle while also turning another, smaller handle for it to open. 

I took for granted how much my old, everyday life was delegated to the subconscious. How easy it was to go to the grocery store and quickly pick up what I needed. Now, I stand in the spice aisle and painstakingly google translate every single spice because I’m looking for dried basil and can’t tell if what I’m looking at is rosemary, or parsley, or oregano instead. 

Every day there were things I didn’t know, had never seen, had to figure out in real time. Confusion and embarrassment were my constant companions in social settings. Simple tasks became a whole ordeal, a moment that unwittingly becomes an experience, unwanted in a day full of moments turned into experiences. 

Fall semester forced me to grow and stretch aggressively, painfully. I encountered big problems and small ones and spent a lot of time crying about it all. 

And yet. 

Is this not what I begged for at the beginning of this year? To grow beyond the confines of what I know, to enter a space so vast that I can’t even begin to reach the ceiling? 

This January, I’m moving to a new apartment. As I packed up my belongings I uncovered the list of goals I wrote for Lunar New Year, eleven months ago. The list read: 

1. Go to grad school  

2. Get out of Montana 

3. Become more comfortable with myself and my identity 

4. Read lots of books 

5. Swim in the ocean 

6. Go out more with people I love 

7. Find and be around community 

As I read through my list, I realized that I’ve accomplished everything I wanted so badly ten months ago. Even just six months ago I had no idea the magnitude of ways my life would change and continue to change, and all the wonderful, terrible, beautiful experiences that would come with.

In the past five months, I completed my first semester of grad school. I joined a hockey team and traveled with them all over Finland. I found a master’s thesis project. I made new friends. I took countless vitamin D supplements. I went to the sauna. I learned how to travel solo.

This year I did so much growing and loving. I cried a lot and laughed a lot too. I feel so lucky to experience it all, and I look forward to more. 

Happy New Year!