Learning to Listen

On intuition, timing, and the quiet work of a year

It’s hard to encapsulate a year. The instinct is to focus on the highs and lows, the moments memorable enough to justify their own retelling. But that approach glosses over the quieter, everyday moments, which are really the essence of how we lived.

I began 2025 alone in my apartment in Mexico City, celebrating with a charcuterie board and Amélie, my go-to movie for holidays spent alone. I’ll end the year in Effingham, back at my parents’ house, with another charcuterie board and whatever bad television my dad has chosen for the night. Neither moment is remarkable on paper, but both feel quietly special–familiar bookends to another year.

If I were to note 2025’s highlights–the good alongside the difficult–they would include closing up my apartment in Mexico City; spending early winter in Baja California Sur; traveling to Tulum with my mom; securing an entrepreneur visa in France; moving to Paris and quickly sensing it wasn’t the right decision without understanding why. It would include leaving Paris and spending a month in Sri Lanka; getting E. coli; seeing my childhood best friend for the first time in years; receiving a lymphocytic colitis diagnosis; celebrating my birthday in Puglia; losing my friend’s mother, who had been like an extra parent to me growing up; spending a month in Crete; and celebrating the holidays with my kids in Spain.

These are the moments that look significant from the outside. And some of them were. But 2025 wasn’t defined by where I went or what happened to me. It was the year I learned the most about myself–how to truly listen and act accordingly, to pivot when what I had planned no longer felt right, and to set boundaries when activities and relationships no longer matched my energy.

Leaving Paris was the catalyst for much of this work. I didn’t understand why the city didn’t feel right, only that it didn’t. Leaving didn’t make sense on paper. I had worked too hard for my Parisian life–the residency, the bank account, the phone number, the apartment–to walk away from it so quickly. But I listened anyway, and I left before I would have had to register my business and begin paying taxes. I didn’t have language for that decision; I only knew that staying felt like a kind of self-betrayal.

Leaving didn’t mean closing the door forever. I’m not convinced I’m done with Paris–only that the timing, or the circumstances, weren’t right. Listening meant accepting that what doesn’t fit now might fit later, under different conditions or as a different version of myself.

In Sri Lanka, my days slowed, and I felt myself expand and breathe. I read. I wrote. I meditated. I practiced yoga and studied my astrology. I took long walks and journaled daily. The days were simple, yet rich. On the flight to Colombo, I decided I wouldn’t drink alcohol for the month I was there–a choice that felt surprisingly easy, aided by the country’s refreshing lime-and-mint sparkling waters and the clarity that comes when the nervous system finally settles.

I read or listened to The Four Agreements, The Power of Now, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild, and The Untethered Soul. Each approached the same essential question from a different angle–spiritual, psychological, mythic–but the message was consistent: alignment is not something you force; it’s something you allow.

Learning not to force things is not easy. I have long recognized that when I try to fit myself into spaces where I don’t belong–relationships, jobs, situations–I feel it physically. A heaviness settles on my shoulders, and my body contracts. Once I remove myself, that sensation lifts, and I feel I can breathe again. That’s how leaving Paris felt. It’s how leaving academia felt, too.

The difference now is that I’m learning to listen earlier. When I slow down, my body is already flagging warning signs–signals the nervous system registers before the brain can fully make sense of them. Paying attention to those cues has allowed me to step away before reaching the point of exhaustion or resentment.

To others, this way of living can look confusing–perhaps because so many people continue living lives that no longer serve them, either because they aren’t listening or because they don’t feel they have permission to change. Friends have commented on my plans shifting, or the fact that I’m not doing the thing I once said I would do. I’ve had to learn not to care so much, which doesn’t necessarily come naturally–I am a Libra, after all

The most difficult part of this shift has been the whittling down of the people I allow in my life. When I began paying attention, I realized I was maintaining relationships that no longer felt aligned or even good, for that matter. Some had never made me feel valued. Others were built on versions of myself I had outgrown. Some felt forced or stagnant, or out of step with my fundamental values around equity and justice. Letting relationships go has been difficult, but continuing them out of obligation feels disingenuous–to them and to myself.

Somatic work gave me a framework for what I had already been experiencing. I learned the difference between fear and misalignment, between discomfort that asks for growth and dysregulation that asks for care. When I stopped overriding my body and stayed curious about its responses instead, decisions became quieter and clearer. Less dramatic. More honest.

That clarity reshaped my relationships as well. Boundaries stopped feeling like walls and began to feel like regulation. I wasn’t pulling away; I was protecting my capacity. Creating boundaries around who I spend time with, and how I spend my time, has improved my life in ways both subtle and profound. The relationships that remain are richer and more reciprocal.

Looking back, 2025 taught me to slow down enough to listen to myself. When something doesn’t feel right, I’m learning to pause instead of forcing clarity. That’s what I’m carrying into 2026, along with the ambiguity that comes with it–trusting that letting life unfold isn’t drifting aimlessly, but responding intentionally.