2025 In Review

Well, shit. It’s December again, somehow.

Every time a new year begins, I find myself mired in curiosity, deep curiosity, for what this new year will look & feel like at its close. Do you feel like this? It’s almost like a yearning, to try to envision December when it’s only January. I want to know. And then, suddenly, it’s December again and I have answers for January me.

Looking ahead, for me, is always far more thrilling than looking back. But I want to let all the January versions of me know the things they are so hungry to know. I want to remember my life in greater detail; this is also what spurred on my recent decision to start a journaling practice again after a 5-year hiatus. During my Saturn return, there were simply large chunks of my life I had no desire to document or remember. I wanted no record of that suffering, but of course, at present day, I do wish I had written more down back then.

2025, astrologically speaking, has been an 8th house profection year for me, as I turned 31 right before 2025 began. My 8th house is Taurus, making Venus my timelord for this year, which is special as she is also my ascendant ruler, as a Libra rising. Right off the bat, I anticipated loss in 2025. I knew grief was coming for me, but with the lushness of Taurus and Venus holding a special place in my nativity, I prayed there would be enough softness to cushion the blows. I did not wish to avoid the loss or the grieving of said loss, but I did wish for creature comforts to soothe myself with. I wished for more friendship and connection and laughter, as Venus holds domain over all three of those things.

I wished for more money, because I’m always wishing for more money, but specifically for a job that wouldn’t completely burn me out and could provide consistent income. You may know this, but when running your own business, money is not often consistent when you’re in the early phases. I wished for some semblance of a boring routine that could scaffold my schedule and give me a reliable rhythm in my life.

As it goes, I got everything I prayed and wished for and predicted I would get in 2025, but of course nothing unfolded in any way I could have anticipated.

Photo by Esteban Arango

2025 kicked off with a wave of grief as I watched southern California burn and witnessed widespread loss & devastation through screens, feeling powerless and scared. This felt more like a pinprick that poked a hole in a water balloon of grief that I didn’t know was living in my chest, and this balloon had been slowly filling up and becoming more waterlogged with each confirmation that I can never return to many of the places I love without myself or the place being irrevocably changed in each other’s absence. The places I am nostalgic for (like the greater Los Angeles area), while some of them may still physically exist, can never exist in the precise way I have encapsulated them within my memories. Even if I return to them, I am different, and thus nothing feels the same. Or in the case of Altadena, sometimes the places no longer exist in the way I remember them. Sometimes they burn down.

I spent a few days watching footage of 9/11 and talked about fear alchemy on my podcast. It was a weird winter.

This was also the year I laid to rest a friendship that I thought would last this lifetime. Grieving this was actually a process I didn’t notice I had been doing for the last couple of years. For some reason, this year was when that process decided to rise to the surface and make itself consciously known to me. I grieved what was, and then grieved more when I fumbled through difficult conversations or panicked and made myself scarce. That experience connected me very deeply with regret—one of the most nasty emotions, if you ask me—and also burst open a vulnerability in me that has altered the way I approach friendships now.

When taking stock of all the things I wish I had done differently in the friendship I was (and am still) grieving, I asked myself very seriously what type of friends I wanted, and then what I was doing to be that type of friend for others. It was already my intention to deepen my existing acquaintanceships when the year began, but the emotional crash I experienced from that friendship ending suddenly made the pursuit of new friendships feel very somber to me, and not quite as playful or exhilarating as it felt before.

I do a lot of things from a place of somberness. I bathe and feed my child and feel the ache of grief over every besieged parent who can no longer do those things in safety. I’ve noticed that when I do an act of kindness for someone, my heart now fills up with that somber feeling and I end up wanting to cry afterwards. I began to view building friendships as an endeavor that is more humbling than exhilarating after I watched chosen family slip through my fingers. My god, what tremendous privilege to be invited into the intimate parts of another’s life. I’ve been to four birthday parties this year and they all changed my heart in different ways—thank you, Venus, for giving me so many opportunities to celebrate the birth of another, which are really just opportunities to play. The playfulness did return to me when I remembered that friendship is supposed to be fun.

We can’t talk about 2025 without talking about Jupiter in Cancer, and one of the highlights of the summer of exalted Jup was attending the first ever North Star and allowing my heart to (again) be softened and sombered and sobered by the whole experience. Rest assured though, I was still smoking hella weed at North Star. I was spiritually sobered.

Something I know I have asked myself out loud at least half a dozen times this year is “how much more can my heart take?” The literal, physical strain of heartache has gotten stronger, it seems, and my heart gets broken open all the time now. This feels spiritually sobering to me because it puts my head back on straight and reminds me of my priorities. I’ve learned how to let my heartache guide me rather than frighten or dismay me.

This year, I dedicated myself to being the most honest I have ever been, and I was not always perfect at it. It did come with some unpleasant and unexpected consequences, like ramping up my avoidant tendencies to an embarrassing level at times because the truth is the only acceptable path forward—and the truth scares the absolute shit out of me. Honesty is a mirror, and holding up the mirror to myself over and over again has never gotten any less uncomfortable. I have grown a tolerance for it, though. I am quicker to admit (out loud, even!) when I’ve fucked up. Even when it terrifies me, I move toward conflict at a quicker pace than I used to (I’m still slow, but I’m not giving up).

This dedication, to honesty even when it sucks ass, has truly sobered my perspective on my entire life. It’s hard to verbalize, but I feel like there was a fog before where there is none now. Take that, Neptune.

Saturn has been dragging her feet through Pisces for so fucking long at this point I’m about to regress to my 2007 emo phase. I don’t know about you, but that brief pocket of Saturn in Aries this year was just the energy I needed to navigate through yet another personal housing crisis and land myself in some temporary housing through a series of kindnesses that still, to this very moment, breaks my heart wide open.

In June, I finally got a job offer after many consecutive months of applying to no avail, but the issue was that we were losing our housing and had nowhere to go. I had to crowdfund yet again to attempt to pay off our back rent and establish ourselves in a new place, and while it was a blow to my ego who swore we would never ask the public for help ever again, I didn’t really have the time to catastrophize about it. My new job began in July, and it has provided me everything I begged Venus for: 4-day workweek, predictable daily routine, doesn’t burn me out, provides reliable income, genuinely good management. Fucking hallelujah.

Eventually, we secured our current living situation through the generosity of a dying woman, and it was nothing short of life-saving. Yes, Venus in my chart rules the 8th house from down in the 4th house, so it’s quite literal to be gifted the shared resource of housing through someone who is in the process of leaving this world. The lushness of the backyard here, with its ferns and firs and furry neighbors, is the most Taurean place I could imagine to have a temporary (and very soft) landing spot. Venus did provide what I asked for after all, but like I said, nowhere close to the way I imagined it: even in precarity, there is softness and creature comforts and something sweet to eat. There’s still laughter and connection and friendship and blankets and creeks and music and orgasms and inside jokes and chocolate, and I have been blessed to experience all of these things in abundance in 2025, despite the horrors.

Aries is my 7th house of intimate relationships, and transiting Saturn often represents my spouse since he is an Aquarius rising. Saturn in Aries, however brief, was a crystallizing time for my relationship. We both felt confident enough in the skills we’d been learning through marriage counseling to take a step back from it during Saturn in Aries, and through our housing crisis we grew closer and stronger as a unit. We have grown and matured so much as parents this year, as well. I’m looking forward to the rest of Saturn’s transit through Aries, to see what more can be solidified in my marriage and how much stronger our foundation can become.

The 8th house is the idle place; it’s invisible to the ascendant and initiates the loss of daylight every evening. But it’s also a succedent house and thus offers support to other areas of life. In many ways, I have felt like this 8th house year has moved slowly, despite how quickly it seems to have flown by in retrospect. I have felt very idle at times, especially when playing the “hurry up and wait” game with several different bureaucratic processes (like getting my licensed reinstated, yay!). Movement has been occurring, but much of it has been occulted. If you see me gliding smoothly across the surface of a lake, just know my little duck feet are pedaling for their lives under the water.

Moving forward to my 9th house year, my timelord will be Mercury, so I’m planning on petitioning them for more speed and more space in my life to write. In my solar return chart for next year, Mercury is in Sagittarius in my natal 3rd house, which bodes well for teaching (hint hint), but does indicate to me that I may be teaching or communicating with unconventional or adapted methods, since Mercury is fallen in Sagittarius. I might be attempting to speak on some very big ideas, and may find struggle in breaking those big ideas down into puny human words. It’s nice to have this kind of foresight.

If you want the same kind of foresight for your 2026, I’m doing year-ahead astrological reports for the third year in a row, and I’m not the only one who’s excited about it.

Your year-ahead report is a bespoke resource to help you plan ahead for whatever next year is bringing you. I use a variety of techniques (transits, solar returns, annual profections, secondary progressions, and a dash of electional astrology) to break down the high and low points of your 2026 and identify areas of the year that are most auspicious for your goals or plans.

Written reports are $150, and I offer 5-month and 10-month payment plans. If you’d prefer a hybrid experience that includes a more in-depth Zoom consultation and a condensed written report, those are $225 with payment plans also available—hit me up for the booking link.

Now that 2025 is winding down, I’m so curious what you’ve learned about yourself this year or ways you’ve noticed yourself change. Are there any parts of December 2025 you that are unrecognizable to January 2025 you? What are you most proud of? I’d love to know.