As the year comes to a close and the holiday season approaches, I wanted to take a moment to reflect—and to wish you warmth, rest, and a little creative magic in the weeks ahead. This past year has been full of unexpected lessons and growth. Truthfully, while I knew this past year would teach me something new, I didn’t expect how much it would challenge every expectation I had about what life should look like. At times, it felt like life had duped me. Yet, slowly—day by day, week by week, month by month—I began to see the bigger picture: a year of deep, rapid healing that sometimes felt too fast to fully take in. In the midst of it all, I started to name these moments one by one, and that’s how the lessons in this post became the pivotal points that shaped my first year starting over in a new city. I had to grieve the life I thought I’d have before I could embrace the one that was waiting for me. Leaving the city where I had built what I believed would be a longer-term life wasn’t an e...