Dear lovely ones,

This is my last letter for you of 2025, and it’s A BIG ONE.
This year, I wrote to you 45 letters and 34K words. WOW.
So, let’s make these last 1.6K words matter.

I made a short video yesterday about the importance to take a moment to integrate. How real growth and clarity comes through integration.

Check out the video below.

Yesterday, I spent time scrolling through my camera roll, month by month. Revisiting big moments, small moments, tender moments, and the tough ones too. Letting myself remember. Letting myself recognise where all of it has led me — right here, today.

We so often skip this part.

We rush forward without pausing to integrate what has already shaped us. Yet it’s in the everyday moments, where life quietly happens, that we become, day by day.

As part of integrating this past year, I’m sharing my 22 greatest lessons from 2025, with references to earlier letters you can return to anytime.

My hope is that they might support you as you reflect on your own year.

Looking back — even when a year might have been more challenging — is powerful. It helps us see what really matters to us and lands it all in our soul as clarity for what next.

22 LESSONS 2025 TAUGHT ME

1. You can’t be on all the time. You have to switch off.

   We burn out when we are scattered and spread too thin and when we don’t create boundaries to switch off. We are not machines. We are humans and meant to have downtime to just be. We need to focus on one thing at a time and create more simpler ways to work to not burn out.

2. Every time you elevate, you lose something, or something comes to an end.

   This year of the snake has definitely done some clearing. What has been meant to go, has gone or will go before this year ends in February. The truth is when we rise, not everyone and everything is going to rise with you, and that is okay.

3. Safety and security matter more than I realised.
   Not having them deeply affects the nervous system. I didn’t realise how long I had lived in fight and flight, and only when being met with safety and security, my nervous system has found peace, and I was able to switch off.

4. You can’t pour from an empty cup.

   We can’t keep on giving, if we are running empty. We need to remember to give ourselves, too.

5. Self-respect is the heart of loving yourself.

   Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. If you don’t hold on to them, you let go of yourself and your integrity. I wrote a whole letter about this, back in March. Read it here.

6. Prayer is a practice of connection.

   “Prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening to God.” Read my whole letter about what Bali taught me about prayer, here.

7. Joy is not optional. It’s essential.
   When we live for joy, life changes. What if the norm was that life and work can be filled with joy? From joy, abundance and true success comes. The best kind.

8. Family and friends time brings most heartfulness.

   When our time is up, we don’t think about work we did or projects we worked on. We think about the time we have had with our loved ones. This is everything and must be a priority. We can never be too busy for family.

9. We think we have time.
   That’s the illusion. We must not take anything for granted and savour every moment we have because…

10. Everything is impermanent.

    So is our time here, so we must live to the fullest. When I’ve learned to realise impermanence of everything, whether it is a low mood, or our existence, it just releases unnecessary tension and gives you room to allow it and ride through it wholeheartedly.

11. The best way to work: Adjust your sails and respect the wind. I wrote a whole letter about it here, check it out.

12. Love at first sight is real and you can have the love story you see in rom coms.
    I met mine in June and today marks 6 months of us and I’ve never been happier. I had always believed that it is possible to find the great love story you see in movies and books. After all, it is us who write these love stories and they are often inspired by real life experiences. They come from us, so it’s possible!

13. We are meant to work to live, not live to work.

    I have spent way too many years living to work, in this workaholic tendency where you think work is everything. It is not. The past six months I’ve changed this now going into 2026 as I slowly return to work to create sustainable work structure where joy can lead and I have space and capacity to live. Living to work leads to burnout.

14. Exhaustion has many faces and requires different forms of rest.

    Learn all about those faces in this letter.

15. Real love is a mirror revealing what needs healing.

    Once you’ve done enough work solo, and timing aligns, your person will come, but be ready, as they will be the mirror for you to go even deeper and meet yourself in a way you never have before. It is not easy but further inner freedom lies on the other side. That is what sacred union does, it frees you from your inner prisons.

16. You don’t need to fit the room, shape it with your presence and truth comes out.

    Having done a speech earlier this summer for a corporate company to a room filled with men, I learned, if I show up heart-centred, that helps others lead from their hearts, as well. Read the story here.

17. Truth brings out truth.

    One of my favorite lessons of this year. When you express your truth, it will bring out the truth in others. Not always easy, but this will show you true natures and alignments and misalignments quicker.

18. You always have the right to change your mind.

    This can be hard to face. You might realise a long relationship, the home you live in, the career you trained for, the country you’re in, or the job you have no longer aligns with who you are. You still have the right to change your mind. Allowing that change of heart — and choosing to follow where it leads — will always guide you closer to what your heart truly wants.

19. Your intuition never lies.

    No explanation needed. Always listen to it. Never ignore it no matter how hard it may be. Even if it doesn’t make any sense to you, it’s right. Trust it. Follow it.

20. We are cyclical beings. The more I tune into that, and honour it in how I plan and schedule, the better I feel and the more aligned my energy becomes.

    This year, I leaned into this deeply. We still live in a system that expects us to show up the same way every day, yet our bodies don’t work like that. When we listen to our cycles — and even notice where our partners are — we create more harmony in how we work, live, and show up in our relationships. Now we’re in the heart of winter — a season not meant for blooming. Nature doesn’t bloom all year round, and neither are you meant to.

21. Sometimes you have to stop everything at the risk of losing it all.
    So you can begin again.

    I have taken these last two months fully off. I paused all of my work just to think how I can begin again in a more sustainable way, determined but not burnt out, in a gentle pace. I have the freedom now to create a new reality, which is an incredible blessing and freedom to have. This was the hardest thing I did this year, yet most fruitful.

22. Life can change a lot in a year.

    Like the quote goes: “We tend to overestimate what we can do in a day, and undersestimate what we can do in a year.” Your life can look drastically different in a year. I was in Bali a year ago, deep into some hard lessons during solo travelling, totally broke, burnt out and deeply depressed. Now a year later I am with the love of my life, living in a beautiful house, feeling more like myself than I have in a long time, living moments from my vision board, and dreaming again. The world feels like my oyster. I am excited to see what 2026 brings.

There you go - my 22 lessons from 2025.

Reply to this email and let me know which ones resonated with you the most. ❤️ 
I love to hear from you.

As this year closes, I invite you gently to take a moment to look back, too.

Not to judge.
Not to rush ahead.
But to recognise who you’ve become.

Thank you for being here this year.
Thank you for walking alongside me.

With love and deep gratitude,
See you in 2026.
Essi 🤍