Grieving 2025 (Our Annus Horribilis) Before Moving Forward

By Dorian Martin, I Start Wondering Founder

An annus horribilis.

That Latin phrase, which means “a horrible year,” came into popular awareness thanks to its inclusion in the popular series, “The Crown.” The show highlighted a 1992 speech in which Queen Elizabeth used this phrase to describe her personal feelings about a year marked by three of her four children (including now King Charles) separating from their spouses, the British tabloids’ ongoing stalking of the royal family, and a devastating fire that burned part of Windsor Castle. 

Now, as we increasingly put down our personal roots in a new year, the year that was seems poised to take on that same historical title on steroids. For many, 2025 was a tumultuous year marked by horrendous natural and man-made disasters, a breakdown of societal structures and civility, and the loss of jobs, relationships, beliefs, and goodwill. The year’s growing number of tragedies and atrocities at some level affected just about everyone, no matter what race, religion, ethnicity, or gender.

In starting a new calendar year, many are racing forward to embrace a “New Year, New Me” mentality without stopping to consider the ramifications of what we’ve just been through. Americans, especially, have been taught to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and get back at the task at hand without taking time to take stock of the emotional toll of what just happened.

But that brings up some questions. What does normal mean now? What have we lost? What have we gained? How do we continue to process so much chaos and change? And how can we find a way to move forward?

Taking Time to Grieve

Such a monumental period of time naturally leads to a period of grief, although many of us are very uncomfortable about letting ourselves descend into that emotion. Perhaps it’s because grief can be so unpredictable and, in being so, threatens to pull us away from society’s belief that everything in life should be social media-approved: shiny, sparkly, and happy. But as the main character of author Virginia Evans’ The Correspondent* notes, grief has a mind and a timeline of its own: “The stretches on the high, wind-blown roads [of grief] are far commoner than the stopovers in comfort, and aren’t we always trying to get back to the happier times?” 

Yes, grief is complicated. Best-selling author and University of Houston research professor Brene Brown in Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience* describes grief as encompassing the following:

• Loss – “While death and separation are tangible losses associated with grief, some of the participants described losses that are more difficult to identify or describe. These included the loss of normality, the loss of what could be, and the loss of what we thought we knew or understood about something or someone.”

• Longing – “Longing is not conscious wanting; it’s an involuntary yearning for wholeness, for understanding, for meaning, for the opportunity to regain or even simply touch what we’ve lost.”

• Feeling lost – “Grief requires us to reorient every part of our physical, emotional and social worlds.”

  
  

A World in Grief

When I think about my own 2025, it felt like a year of perpetual cracking. On a personal level, I didn’t have any loved ones, human or animal, die during 2025 but like many women who have reached this stage of life, I have experienced that type of grief and still feel it’s undertow at some level. 

But still, there were other types of “death.” Last year began with the news that my beloved hair guru, who I had relied on for over three decades to take care of my locks, was stepping away due to health issues. That in itself was enough to make any woman grieve. 

But it didn’t end there. At the macro level, I watched “leaders” across the globe and spanning every political party focus on accumulating personal power and money instead of finding a way to solve the world’s very pressing problems. As a result, friends lost their livelihoods and were forced to move while clients and other close relationships that I had counted on changed or faded as people dug in, hunkered down and hung on for dear life. 

As the year wore on, my world view continued to explode as I heard more and more individuals angrily make demeaning and divisive comments about people—some of whom they knew and previously had been part of a respectful community with—who looked different, sounded different or had a different faith, political party or perspective. And as someone who was trained as a journalist, I was deeply saddened to watch the Fourth Estate completely lose its bearing as a watchdog that told both sides of the story. Instead, the media became irrelevant through asking leading questions, parroting political talking points, and focusing on clickbait.

Like having a prime seat to view the Titanic hitting the iceberg, I watched in horror as some of these ominous cracks worsened as the year progressed. Wildfires, hurricanes, warfare, ill-considered policy decisions, censorship, imploding organizations and fear-mongering media headlines made it feel like we’d all stepped into the latest big-budget Hollywood blockbuster while rising prices, a rising culture of fear and unkindness, shifting allegiances, misinformation and the on-going zeitgeist of fear seemed like undergoing the proverbial death from a thousand cuts.

Finding Personal Integrity in Chaos

Amid the carnage, I kept coming back to the realization that I am the only person that I have complete control over. While I could rail at the many injustices or insensitive leaders, I soon realized that, more often than not, that was a waste of my time and energy and put me in the victim’s role. Instead, I decided to redirect that energy to figure out which steps to take and how to take them in a way that aligned with my values. Sometimes that involved speaking up about and donating to causes I believe in, while other times it involved focusing on identifying a different way of living life and then taking action to bring that into fruition.  

Fortunately, I had chosen a subtheme of sustainability in 2025 along with my yearly theme of sovereignty, which helped me keep my balance on a metaphorical surfboard. As the global tsunami swept in, this approach allowed me to weigh my options. That combination also led me to develop and continue to engage a healthy dose of skepticism, an increasing reliance on my own inner wisdom, and a commitment to key personal values that I want to embody moving forward.

I also credit The Presence Process* by Michael Brown with helping me approach most of 2025’s rapid shifts from a place of responding to what was emerging instead of resorting to knee-jerk reactions.

Moving forward into this new year, I now see a personal path opening up that includes squarely facing the challenges and recurring unwanted patterns in my life. I also am looking for glimmers of hope that our collective annus horribilis might have actually opened people’s eyes to the realization of what we’re in danger of losing and the importance of personal integrity and sovereignty. 

And maybe, just maybe, those glimmers are emerging. Case in point – the novel Theo of Golden* by author Allen Levi, which has become the little book that could. First published as an independent book in October 2023 with no major marketing campaign, the book has become a surprise bestseller and garnered buzz on social media, including a recent shout-out by Oprah Winfrey.

The story revolves around a mysterious elderly man who arrives in the fictional town of Golden, Georgia. He soon engages in a series of random acts of kindness to a wide range of individuals, regardless of ethnicity, gender, age, or mental or immigration status. As a result, his choices have a ripple effect on both the individual and community level.

Why publish the book now? “I started writing this novel, Theo of Golden, just before COVID became a familiar word for all of us,” Levi said in a YouTube video. “Already it felt like the world, at least I was seeing it around me, was in a pretty foul humor that has since only deepened in the last few years. It felt and it feels now like we would benefit from a story about kindness.”

The lesson – one that the year 2025 may have taught us in spades – is that small choices and personal passion projects can make a huge difference. That definitely is true for Levi, who can now claim the title of New York Times bestselling author and is now writing another book based on one of the characters from Golden.

Finding Your Own Way Forward

Yet no matter what our best intentions are for moving forward, the emotions and trauma generated during 2025 are a lot to hold and we have much to grieve. So how do we do that when we’re facing so much ongoing uncertainty? Using Brown’s research as a foundation, here are some tips:

• Take time to mourn what was. This can involve journaling, meditation, movement, art or any form of ritual. You could create your own equivalent of a funeral service to commemorate your losses in 2025, whether that’s the ending of a job, a relationship or a chapter of life. You also can use the symbolic personal ritual of writing a note of what you’re releasing and then burning it or burying it in the ground.

• Find a connection. Grieving is not a time to remain in complete solitude. While being alone has its place, community, compassionate listening and storytelling are important – and having a supportive group of people is so valuable in both helping you hold the sorrow and also identifying a way forward. In fact, the Lakota tribe elders use the phrase, “mitakuye oyasin” (“We are all related”), to help members realize that the death of a community member is felt by all, according to John Frederick Wilson, honorary research fellow and director of Bereavement Services Counseling & Mental Health Clinic at York St. John University in a 2023 column in The Conversation. 

• Seek individual support, if needed. Extreme grief can be witnessed and guided through getting support from a therapist, a spiritual advisor, a grief counselor or a wise, compassionate and trusted family member or friend. 

• Give grace to others who are grieving. In a recent column, Amanda Kloots, who lost her husband in 2000, recently wrote, “Grief rewires a person. It changes their energy, their capacity, their tolerance, their timing. Your friend may cancel plans, go quiet, say the wrong thing, or seem distant. It’s not about you. It’s not a lack of love. It’s not ingratitude. It’s grief – unpredictable, exhausting, all-consuming grief.” If you have family members and friends who were affected by 2025 (and who doesn’t?), realize that they are navigating a new path as much as you are. It’s important to give them compassionate space to find their way forward to a new normal.

• Take stock of what’s here now. Even as we remain somewhat shellshocked by the year 2025, it’s important to take stock of what remains. Express gratitude for those people, things, and events that stood the test of time and maybe even find a renewed sense of appreciation for their place in your life after facing and completing an “annus horribilis.” 

In the end, it’s important to take whatever time you need to grieve what was instead of rushing ahead. With that said, I’d invite you also to begin to dream about what is possible in the open space that has been created. We’re in a “both this and that” time of life where the paradigm is shifting and glimmers of hope are starting to emerge. 

And in this time, perhaps you, like Levi, can find your own small personal passion projects and choices that not only heal your heart but also make a truly meaningful difference to one person (or many) who needs your wisdom and gifts. 

*All purchases through Bookshop benefit an independent bookstore. Proceeds from the purchase of these books will be used to support I Start Wondering's programming for women who have reached mid-life and beyond.