By the time I entered this year, I wasn’t standing at the starting line with a fresh notebook and a cute word-of-the-year energy. I was already on my knees. Emotionally. Energetically. Nervous-system-ly....
The years leading up to this one were a complete and utter shitshow. Starting a brand with no stable home, losing a parent, navigating immigration and bureaucracy and grief and instability all at once, while still somehow being expected to function like a normal, ambitious, well-adjusted adult. By the end of last year, it felt less like burnout and more like having taken repeated hits to the back of the knees until standing back up quickly was simply no longer an option.
So when this year arrived, I didn’t come in guns blazing trying to prove I was fine. I didn’t dust myself off and pretend I had my shit together. I made a very conscious, very unglamorous decision to take the pressure OFF. To slow down intentionally. Which, for the record, was a brutal gear shift because “slow” has literally never been a setting I’ve known how to access. (Capricorn. Control issues. Internalized perfectionism since childhood. You get it.)
The point of this year was never to achieve. It was to bookend a chapter that had quietly stretched way longer than anyone realized, honestly closer to eight years than two...OOPS. I knew I needed to extract the crutches that had helped me survive the final stretch of that chaos, but I also knew I couldn’t rip them away without further traumatizing my body or my mind. No dramatic reinvention. No proving resilience. Just space.
So I observed.
I still worked, obviously. I’m never not doing something. But I watched myself move through it. I paid attention to what felt real, what felt obligatory, what was mine, what belonged to other people, and what was just some outdated idea of who I thought I should be by now. And in that process, I actually got a shocking amount done. Loose ends tied. Loops closed. Energy leaks plugged. Including hosting the very first JOYBODY retreat, which I could only do because I finally had the capacity to hold something that expansive, even though it took way more out of me than I expected and put my control issues FULLY on display. (Humbling.)
This year brought roadblocks. Slowdowns. Flat tires where I wanted flow. And every time I tried to force something, it fell flat. Which became a pattern. And eventually, a lesson.
All of this is what led me here.
To these seven AHA'S from a year of observing myself like a lil movie character in a year I didn't fight.
*me entering 2025*
Aha One
Taking the pressure off wasn’t giving up. It was triage.
I think part of me believed that slowing down meant failing, or letting people down, or admitting defeat. What this year taught me is that when you’ve been in survival mode for long enough, taking the pressure off isn’t a character flaw, it’s medical. It’s saying “nothing new gets added until the system stabilizes,” and trusting that this still counts as movement, even if it doesn’t look impressive or productive or explainable to anyone else.
Aha Two
Survival mechanisms have to be unwound, not ripped out.
This one is tender. Because some of the things I had been leaning on were not just mental habits or personality quirks or “coping strategies” in the cute, sanitized sense of the word. They were physical. Chemical. Behavioral. They helped me survive a stretch of life that genuinely overwhelmed my capacity, and they worked until they didn’t.
What became very clear this year is that you don’t get to violently extract the things that once kept you afloat without destabilizing the entire system. Doing it too fast would have shocked my body. Doing it too slowly would have kept me stuck. So this year became about unwinding those mechanisms carefully, with support, with patience, and with a level of self-trust I hadn’t accessed before.
It wasn’t about punishment or discipline or “doing better.” It was about learning how to stand differently so I didn’t need to numb, override, or escape myself anymore. And that, it turns out, takes time.
Aha Three
If the energy isn’t PURE, it falls flat. Every time.
This year had absolutely zero tolerance for performative action. ZERO. Any time I tried to do something from a place of proving, pleasing, posturing, or living up to an outdated version of myself, it went nowhere. Quietly. Awkwardly. Sometimes embarrassingly. And honestly? Thank god.
The tricky part is that when you’ve been praised for perfectionism your whole life, it’s not always obvious what’s pure and what’s performative. Sometimes they feel identical in your body. Slowing down was the only way I could actually tell the difference. (Extremely annoying. Extremely necessary.)
Aha Four
Watching yourself is actual work. Even if it looks like nothing.
This year, observation became my main job. Watching how I make decisions. How I react. Where I tighten. Where I rush. Where I override my own signals. Instead of fixing or optimizing immediately, I let patterns reveal themselves. And holy shit, when you stop interrupting the loop, you finally see the loop.
Did this look productive on paper? Absolutely not.
Did it change everything underneath? Completely.
Aha Five
Coming back into your body after burnout is… not cute.
I had been pretty numb by the end of last year. So feeling again was welcome, but also deeply uncomfortable. This year came with anxiety-adjacent sensations showing up in calm moments, learning how the nervous system recalibrates after prolonged stress, and finally taking my healing seriously instead of treating it like a side project.
The goal was never to eliminate discomfort. It was to stay present long enough to understand what my body was actually doing and why. Big difference.
Aha Six
Capacity changes everything you think you’re capable of.
Hosting the first JOYBODY retreat would not have been possible for me even a year earlier. Not because I wasn’t capable, but because I didn’t have the internal space to hold something that big without it costing me too much. Even this year, it stretched me, drained me, and poked every control issue I have. But it also showed me what’s possible when timing and capacity finally meet.
Hard AND nourishing. Both can exist.
Aha Seven
Not forcing things creates completion.
This was the quiet miracle of the year. When I stopped pushing, things resolved. Loose ends tied themselves. Long-running loops closed. Energy returned in places I didn’t expect. I learned that movement doesn’t always come from charging forward. Sometimes it comes from standing still long enough for everything else to catch up.
And that kind of completion creates space, not urgency.
This year also changed how I relate to OJOIE. The version of me who built this brand was operating from survival and instinct, and while I’m endlessly grateful to her, I don’t need to run the business from that place anymore. That doesn’t feel like inconsistency. It feels like care.
All of this is what led me to the year ahead. Not a reinvention. Not a hustle era. But a year of NOURISHMENT. Nourishing the brand. Nourishing my body. Nourishing creativity. Nourishing relationships. Nourishing a nervous system that finally understands it doesn’t have to be on high alert anymore. Including forms of nourishment that don’t look productive, impressive, or easy to explain.
If you’ve been here during this chapter, thank you. Truly. This work exists because it’s felt and carried forward.
Here’s to the years that don’t make sense until later.
Here’s to choosing meaning over momentum.
Here’s to nourishment. (Finally.)
With so much love,
Janelle
