2025, according to me …

I used to think years were things you used. You planned them in January with a new notebook and an optimistic pen, you filled them with intentions and deadlines, and you measured them in small achievements, like my 50-in-50 Challenge for 2025.

Now they feel more like weather. You get rained on. You dry out. You learn where the leaks are. Sometimes a storm comes along and knocks the stuffing out of something you thought was solid, and you spend a while rebuilding it with slightly better judgment and fewer illusions.

Meanwhile, you keep the little things going. You feed the cat. You do the school run. You brush fur off the sofa. You try to practise a bit of self-care in between, a walk, a fitness class, a cup of coffee that actually stays warm, just enough to keep yourself in one piece while everything else rearranges itself around you.

2025 has been that sort of year.

Not a crisis year. Not a great year. A year where things happened quietly, insistently, daily. A year of sore joints, news alerts, WhatsApp pings, and coffee that goes cold because someone always needs something just as you sit down. A year where change hovered on the edges of things, hinted, promised quietly, and then did not quite arrive. Not because it wasn’t needed. Just because it wasn’t the right time.

There were also the people who held me up without fuss through all of this. The friends who checked in. The gym buddies who noticed when I was a bit quieter than usual, who saved me a bike, a mat, a space, and by doing that saved something else as well. The ones who turned up week after week, listened to me rant or unravel, and reminded me I wasn’t doing this on my own.

It was the year I turned 50 and stopped pretending that being “fine” is the same as being well. Where I accepted that white-knuckling my way through life is not a wellness strategy, as my hormones made themselves increasingly known. That alone felt like an achievement.

It was also the year I kept asking myself, with growing bafflement, why I was doing all the right things and not losing weight, not building muscle in quite the way I had been promised, not being rewarded by my body for my good behaviour. That question, it turns out, was part of the same lesson.

Cyrus grew this year. Not just physically, although that too. He now has opinions, theories, and a tendency to explain things to me that I absolutely already know. He is wonderful and exhausting and a daily reminder that time does not stand still.

H stayed himself, Persian to his bones, convinced that pistachios and a proper meal will solve most human problems. He is not always right. But he is not entirely wrong either.

Fitness stopped being about how I look and started being about how I live. I talked about that with Cyrus, not in lectures, more in the car on the way home or while we made dinner. That exercise is not a punishment and not a performance. It’s a way through. That when days feel heavy or unfair or confusing or dark, you can move your body and something inside you shifts. You can go to Ignite or spin or kick a ball around the garden, and the feeling loosens its grip.

I want him to grow up knowing his body is not something to be fixed. It’s something that helps him carry himself through the hard bits of life. That feels like one of the more useful things I can give him.

I found different ways of coping with perimenopause this year. I tried Lion’s Mane in the hope my brain would remember where I left my phone. I hung my gym kit where I could see it, because visibility turns out to be a very effective form of discipline. And when my eyes felt tired of screens and thinking and the general state of the world, I put on an eye mask and lay still for ten minutes like a sensible person instead of scrolling.

There was also the day a man in a very large car drove up behind me and leaned on his horn because I wasn’t moving fast enough out of his way for his liking. I sat there. I didn’t budge. Not out of spite, but out of a new, quiet refusal to be hurried, intimidated, or shrunk by others. I am not being bullied anymore. Not by men. Not by systems. Not by my own inner voice.

I didn’t bust a gut to complete my “50 in 50” list. I didn’t climb every mountain, fix every habit, or become the sleek, optimised, fully evolved version of myself that lists tend to promise.

But I did do the small, unglamorous things I said I would do.

In January, I set myself a simple health and wellness reset, and for once, I actually followed through. I drank my daily shot of wheatgrass, I drank my two litres of water, I held my one-minute plank, I took my vitamins, and I showed up to try a new class. I didn’t manage all four of my Cyclone sessions at David Lloyd Newcastle, but it was due to too many new members taking class slots, and then not filling them.

February was… more educational.

I planned resistance training three times a week, 8,000 steps a day, daily affirmations, a Sunday meal plan, and ten minutes of stretching every evening.

I did some of that. I lifted more. I walked a lot. I stretched when I remembered. I wrote affirmations until I forgot where I’d put the notebook. I meal planned until life intervened. Nothing collapsed. Nothing failed. I just learned, again, that consistency isn’t a personality trait, it’s a practice. And some months are for building habits, and some months are for noticing what gets in the way.

By March, I was more myself again.

I gave myself one evening a week for a DIY spa moment, a face mask, a beauty treatment with sefidab, the small ceremony of looking after my skin instead of apologising for it. I chose clothes that made me feel like me, not just presentable. I decluttered a room, then another, and noticed that clearing space does something quiet but important to your head.

We marked Persian New Year, because culture deserves to be kept alive. And I focused again on my core, on strength, and checked my Boditrax stats as information. It was my way of paying attention to the areas I wanted to improve.

I also took part in the Blaze Community Games, which was no small thing for me. It was sweaty and I hurt my head in the process. We didn’t win, but we got free coffee and we were a team, which turned out to be enough. I wasn’t perfect. I was present. And by March, that felt like being back on track.

April was where intention met appetite.

I lowered my sugar, added lemon to my mornings, diluted apple cider vinegar like a person who had read something persuasive on the internet and decided to trust it. I experimented with my hair, but I did not, however, read 12 books. I read some. I started more. I abandoned a few halfway through when they felt like homework. I realised I wasn’t short of words, I was short of quiet. That felt like information, too.

May was about movement and people.

I kept showing up to classes. Zumba, Ignite, Blaze, Rhythm, even Cyclone. Not always gracefully, but often enough that it began to feel like a rhythm rather than a resolution. I didn’t quite make it to the sponsored Zumbathon I’d imagined myself doing, all neon and goodwill and righteous sweat, but I stayed connected to the community that makes movement feel like belonging rather than effort.

I spent my 50 minutes a week on things that weren’t productive in any obvious way, reading, thinking, writing, sitting. I started learning a little more Farsi, one word at a time, mostly forgetting it again.

By June, I was quietly back in my body and back in my life.

I booked the health checks I’d been avoiding, made myself go to them, and felt better just for having looked properly. I put a bedtime routine in place, and for once I slept.

I did the small acts of kindness I’d promised myself, notes, messages, small moments of paying attention that turned out to matter more than I expected. I took a photo every day, not for performance, just to notice that I was here. I took one whole day off from screens and felt my nervous system sigh in relief.

June was the month where I actually did what I said I would do.

By July, something had shifted.

I was lifting heavier weights, not dramatically, but I felt proud of myself in a way that had nothing to do with mirrors. My core felt stronger, my posture felt different. We cooked more, ate together more, and for a while, there was no bread. I swapped one coffee for herbal tea, reluctantly, and discovered that the world did not end. July felt better.

August was… fine.

Not transformational. Just fine, which turns out to be quite a high bar. I ate more plants. I tried 16:8 without becoming unbearable about it pre-holiday. I spent my 50 minutes a week doing things I actually enjoyed instead of things that looked virtuous. Despite a lovely holiday to Crete, nothing dramatic shifted, but nothing fell apart either. My energy was steady. My mood was mostly kind.

August didn’t fix me. It held me. And that was enough.

.

By September, everything wobbled.

Routines slipped. Energy dipped. The summer gave way to real life again.

I stepped outside my comfort zone in smaller ways than planned, by admitting I was tired, by asking for help, by letting things be imperfect. I looked back at my vision board not as a motivational poster but as a record of who I thought I needed to be, and who I was actually becoming.

I did some Pilates. I stretched a bit. I tried to be kinder to my spine and my expectations.

September didn’t move me forward. It reminded me where I was.

October was my birthday month, and it was busy.

Busy in the way that looks great from the outside and feel slightly hollow from the inside. I saw people, celebrated, showed up, smiled, said yes. I didn’t journal every day. I didn’t really recharge. My diet slid back into whatever was quick and comforting.

I was able to reconnect with friends in snatched conversations rather than deep ones. I marked my birthday, but I didn’t really rest inside it. October didn’t give me space. But it showed me how much I needed it.

November was busy too, in a different way.

Less celebratory, more practical. More lists, more just getting through. I wanted a final push. I thought I would tidy up my fitness goals, revisit my Boditrax stats, recommit to my core, draw a line under the year.

Instead, I did what I could. I kept moving at weekends, I kept showing up. I did the bits that worked and let go of the rest.

November didn’t give me closure. It gave me continuity.

December finally slowed me down.

Just enough. I rested a little. I looked back at the photos I’d taken all year and saw not progress, exactly, but presence. I had journaled about what had been hard, what had helped, and also what had changed.

I didn’t hit every metric. I didn’t get visible abs or perfect Boditrax numbers. But I finished the year knowing myself better than I started it.

I celebrated what there was to celebrate. I set intentions instead of demands. I let the year land.

And that felt like the right ending.

Some things were done. Some were started. Some were quietly abandoned in favour of more urgent care, more urgent rest. And this surprised me. It didn’t feel like failure. It felt like discernment.

We celebrated more birthdays than I can count in gym kit this year, cake and coffee between classes, and the slightly surreal joy of being sung happy birthday to by my Ignite instructor and members in my sports bra at 10am. We spent a lot of time with the little Persian community we’ve built around us, a small circle of people who understand instinctively that strength isn’t just physical and that some things only make sense if you’re living them. Being held by others, quietly and consistently, has mattered more than I can say.

2025 taught me that a life isn’t a checklist and growth doesn’t look the same for everyone.

It has been revealing. Not dramatically. Midlife-ly. So I’ve stopped apologising for wanting stability, money, meaning, and a bit of power over my own time. I’ve started, gently, to build something that belongs to me.

My body has also been busy doing its own thing. It would like sleep to be taken seriously. It would like me to stop pretending hormones are a personality flaw. I go to the gym not to punish myself but to come back to myself. I lift things. I sweat. I feel steadier afterwards.

I kept writing through all of this, not because I’m disciplined or virtuous, but because writing is how I notice what’s happening while it’s happening. It stops my life rushing past me unnoticed. You read it. You write back. You say, “Yes, me too.” That is not nothing. It is most of the point.

What I learned in 2025 isn’t glamorous. I can’t outwork a nervous system. I can’t bully my body. I can’t perform my way into peace. I can’t wait until I feel ready to live.

But I can make dinner. I can walk. I can write. I can pay attention. I can love the people in front of me.

I can be braver about being myself instead of easier to deal with. That turns out to be enough.

So I leave 2025 older, yes. A bit more tired, probably. A bit less tolerant of nonsense, definitely. But also steadier. Clearer. Kinder to myself. Which, at this age, feels like winning.

Here’s to whatever comes next. Not a perfect year, but a lived one, shaped with intention, kindness, a bit of courage, and probably just as much coffee.