The last time I did this end of the year review style post was in 2020, a year that will go down in history for everything it was. I mostly stopped doing those year-end reflections because of how self-conceited they felt. But in 2020, I made an exception. Sometimes, I think about the collective grief and trauma of 2020 and I just wonder if the current zeitgeist is essentially all one glob of post traumatic stress disorder. Who knows?
2025 feels like a year to reflect on.
In Nicholas Kristof's reflection on 2025 in the New York Times, where he tried to convince us that 2025 was not that bad, someone commented:
"I suffered through ten months of chemo this year, and yet, I still think Trump was the worst part of this year for me." NYT Comment Section.
I could end this post there and you'd understand what a year this has been. It felt like no matter the ray of sunshine, no matter the clouds of hope, no matter the glimmer of positivity, this administration worked deliberately to douse it all with a darkness of gloom.
On January 19th, 2025, I told everyone who would listen that I was desperate to not give my attention to these people. That no matter what they did I would not let them steal my joy; more importantly, I was not going to let them have my peace. I admonished people close to me. I said, "I want every Black person I know to hold our peace. It’s not worth the trouble. They want to be a spectacle, they want to disrupt our joy. We must ignore them." The problem was, we couldn't. We could not possibly ignore an administration that made it their mission to take a chainsaw, sometimes quite literally, to everything.
I gave in to despair.
For as long as I can remember, I've always believed in service. It's true. This is not one of those trying-to-sound-good type of declaration. I fiercely believe in using my God-given skills and expertise and all my education (over a decade of post-secondary education, might I add) in contributing to the greater good. When some of my own academic and professional pursuits almost destroyed me, I held on because I believed I was doing it all towards service. The reason I feel comfortable making this assertion so publicly is I'm not alone in this. Almost everyone I've met in my professional journey is fiercely passionate about serving the American people or more like, dutifully representing the American people while serving a more global population. So when they took a chainsaw to these very beliefs, to institutions I have believed in since I was sentient enough to believe anything; when I saw communities desecrated, lives destroyed; when I saw the vicious attack on people who have dedicated their lives to service, I could no longer hold the faith. My professional community was attacked at unprecedented levels and there was nothing we could do about it. All based on lies.
I gave in to despair.
I wish I had neater words with which to convey the pain this administration has caused whether at home or abroad. I wish I could wield the might of my keystrokes, demonstrating the needless cruelty of this band of oligarchs, most of whom profess the Christian faith. How can I? How can I tell you of the woman who wailed as they pulled her and her child away from her husband who was being deported; of the man who had spent over 5 decades in America and was deported to Eswatini, a country he had never heard of; of the staggering levels of unemployment among Black women; of the incessant bullying; of watching them shout at and belittle the president of a sovereign nation (a grown ass man) in front of the whole world; of retrenching funds for [PEDIATRIC] cancer research; of gutting funding that transformed lives in the poorest societies; of the firing of Black military leaders at an unprecedented level; of firing over 80,000 Veterans Affairs staff (many of whom were veterans themselves); of the senseless tarriffs; of everything. I couldn't. I can't.
That was 2025.
2025 was a tough professional year, and not just because of everything I have written. I started this year anxious, sad. I was being viciously attacked at work. As with all forms of harassment and bullying, I felt it physically. The lies being told against me; the deliberate conspiracies to undermine me and my leadership; the simple, run of the mill racism; the way the attacks piled on; all because I was being myself. I said to someone at work, this is a lynching. Oh, it was.
And yet, 2025 was my best professional year.
It's how God writes our story. If I told the exact narrative; the turn of events; the divine intervention that shielded me, you would never believe me. I said here that the difference a year can make is staggering. Spotify said my top song was Favor by Lawrence Oyor, (and my listening age is 70! ha!!) and indeed God's favor surrounded me this year. I can't quite explain that either. I just know joy does come in the morning. I just know the sun will always rise again. When it did rise, I couldn't trust it. I didn't want to. And yet, I still feel it bouncing off my face, bright, pointed, beaming, reminding me it's here to stay.
We have three more years of the Trump administration and I cannot promise to never again give in. After all, I live in a country where a man, who said Black women did not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously, was lauded a hero, a saint, a martyr. And that's nowhere near the most heartbreaking thing to happen this year: the injustice, the lack and inequality, the consequences of the inepitude. So of course, things will happen. I know though that I will always run to God. My situation at work is now so perfect I'm afraid to move, as if I would wake up from a dream where the ghost of the racists would hold out their pitchforks again, forcefully asking that I be gotten rid off.
I always felt joy.
I finally got a diagnosis to health problems I've dealt with since puberty. Anyone struggling for as much and as long as I did would tell you there is a point where even just getting answers to what has burdened you for most of your life is relief enough. I took care of my body with the precision of an athlete, and saw healthy improvements and management of said health problem. Proving again that nothing beats FIBER (25g minimum for women and 30g minimum for men), protein, some cardio, lots of weights/strength, drinking water, reading, and minding everyone’s business. If you have only one goal in 2026, let it be consuming more fiber. I started learning to swim (I have to write about this!). I got my cholesterol down to the lowest in my adult years through lifestyle changes alone (I WILL SHOUT THIS FROM THE ROOFTOPS always). I can't say I learned about people because nothing was revealed this year about anyone that I didn't already know.
That was also 2025.
Best of all, this year my niece was born.
So no matter all of what I wrote above: my niece, my niece, my niece. She colored most of 2025 and from the moment we knew of her; when she was only just an idea to us; when she was still in the seclusion of her mother's womb; when we oohh'd and aahh'd at black and white ultrasound images; when we marveled at the intensity with which our heart contracted with love for her; our lives were already forever changed. Now, every smile, every tear, every groan, every twitch of those big beautiful eyes remind us of endless possibilities, endless joy, endless promise, and endless reminders of a most wonderful, most perfect God.
A reminder of a good God.
And that also was 2025.
Friends, have a great new year ahead. It will always be well.
Love,
I
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