Making Meaning of a Year of Endings

Seeing the Pattern: Making Meaning of 2025 and the Shift Into 2026

As a therapist, I spend my days listening for patterns.

Not just individual stories, but the themes that quietly repeat across different people, different nervous systems, and different lives. And as someone who is also energetically attuned, I notice when those patterns begin to converge not only within individual clients, but across the collective.

Over the past year, I’ve been hearing a strikingly similar set of experiences.

People ending long-term relationships or friendships that once felt foundational.

People realizing the life they built no longer fits who they’ve become.

People confronting the truth that their work, their role, or their career was chosen in a different season of survival, and no longer feels aligned now that they’re more regulated, aware, and whole.

For many, this has created an agonizing tension. Staying feels safer on paper, but deeply dysregulating in the body. Leaving feels terrifying and destabilizing. And so people find themselves frozen between stability and aliveness, paying a real nervous system cost for remaining in places that no longer nourish them.

I’ve also seen something else surface this year.

Old patterns, core beliefs, and wounds that people felt they had already worked through re-emerging with surprising intensity. For some, this has been deeply discouraging. Like losing ground. Like all the healing they’ve done suddenly didn’t matter.

From a clinical lens, much of this makes sense. Periods of prolonged stress, transition, and identity change often activate deeper layers of unresolved material. When something is nearing completion, it often rises one last time to be seen clearly.

From a broader perspective, 2025 has carried the qualities of a collective ending.

In numerology, 2025 is a 9 year (2+0+2+5 = 9), associated with completion, closure, and release. In the Chinese zodiac, it aligns with the Year of the Snake, an archetype connected to shedding, transformation, and cyclical renewal.

You don’t have to believe in numerology or astrology for this to be useful. What matters is that these frameworks offer a way to contextualize difficulty rather than internalize it.

Because without context, the nervous system often defaults to self-blame.

Why Meaning Matters to the Nervous System

From a neuroscience perspective, the brain is always trying to make sense of what’s happening. One of the systems involved in this process is the reticular activating system, or RAS. Its role is to filter information and highlight what feels most relevant, based on our existing beliefs and expectations.

When someone moves through a difficult year holding beliefs like:

“Something is wrong with me.”

“I’m falling behind.”

“Everyone else seems to be coping better than I am.”

The brain naturally scans for evidence that supports those conclusions. Not because they’re accurate, but because predictability feels safer to the nervous system than uncertainty.

Introducing a broader frame can interrupt that loop.

For some people, that might sound like:

“This year marked an ending.”

“Something old is no longer sustainable.”

“I’m in a transition I don’t fully understand yet.”

This is not about explaining away pain or turning loss into a lesson. Some experiences are simply devastating. Some losses don’t make sense, and they don’t need to. Grief has its own timing and its own intelligence, and it deserves to be met without being rushed or reframed too quickly.

When meaning is introduced slowly and with care, it can soften the reflex to turn pain inward. Instead of asking “What’s wrong with me?” the nervous system has another place to land. Difficulty becomes something we’re moving through, rather than something that defines us.

With that kind of context, many people notice a subtle shift in their body. The charge eases. The story loosens its grip. The pain is still there, but it’s no longer carrying the weight of self-blame or isolation.

Grief doesn’t disappear when we make meaning of our experience.

But it doesn’t have to eclipse everything else we are.

Standing at the Threshold

We’re in the final stretch of the Snake year now. For many people, that still feels heavy. There’s fatigue, tenderness, and a sense of being mid-shedding, even though the calendar has already turned. That’s not a sign you’re behind. Endings rarely resolve cleanly or all at once.

At the same time, we’re beginning to feel the early tone of 2026. In numerology, it marks a 1 year. In the Chinese zodiac, it moves us into the Year of the Horse. Both carry themes of initiation, forward motion, and renewed vitality.

This kind of shift isn’t subtle. It often brings restlessness, a pull toward movement, or a growing discomfort with staying where you are. The Horse is associated with momentum and visibility. A 1 year begins a new cycle, where identity reorganizes around choice rather than survival.

That said, this isn’t as simple as “good things are coming, so just hang tight.” Believing that everything will magically work out without participation tends to leave people stuck and disillusioned. Hope works best when it’s paired with agency.

I think of this energy as an opening. A moment where movement becomes possible again. Where taking a step feels less impossible than it did before. Where risk doesn’t disappear, but feels more tolerable when it’s aligned.

From a psychological standpoint, anticipating forward motion has a real impact on the nervous system. It nudges the body toward engagement rather than collapse. Motivation and curiosity begin to return. Attention shifts from constant threat monitoring to noticing possibility.

Things don’t suddenly become easy. But they often stop feeling quite so frozen. And that shift alone can change how someone relates to themselves, their choices, and what feels possible next.

An Orientation for Moving Through Change

I don’t share this to ask anyone to adopt a belief system that doesn’t resonate. I offer it as context. As a therapist, I’ve seen how having a way to understand time and transition can be deeply regulating to the nervous system. It gives experience somewhere to land. It offers orientation when things feel confusing or destabilizing.

Part of my role is bridging worlds. I work with people who value logic, science, and evidence, and who also sense that something meaningful is unfolding beneath the surface of their lives. You don’t have to choose one lens over the other. Often, it’s the combination that brings clarity.

When people can hold their experience within a broader arc, even loosely, something begins to shift. The year no longer feels like a personal failure. The struggle doesn’t have to mean there’s something fundamentally wrong. Instead, it can be held as part of a process that’s still unfolding.

This kind of orientation doesn’t require blind optimism or passivity. It allows hope to exist alongside responsibility. It supports engagement rather than collapse.

In my work, I see this reframing happen gradually. People begin to relate to their pain with a little more spaciousness. Shame eases its grip. Energy becomes available again. Choice starts to feel possible in places that once felt rigid or frozen.

As we settle more fully into 2026, I’m less interested in predicting or trying to control what will happen next. What feels more important is how we orient ourselves to what’s already stirring, and how we choose to move in relationship with it.

That shift in orientation alone can quietly change everything.