If You Are Still Standing After the Hardest Year

What grief taught me about love, loss, and learning to live forward

A new year, 2026, is finally here. But before fully stepping into it, I feel the need to pause and look back at the year behind me.

If I had to describe 2025 in one word, it would be this: grief.
Grief — and everything it forced me to become, face, and live through.
Grief from losing my soulmate, my husband-to-be, the love of my life.

And at the same time, joy, relief, and deep wonder at realizing that our connection did not end after all — it simply continued in a new way.

Without a doubt, last year was the most difficult year of my life so far. There were moments when I truly believed I would not make it to the next year. But I did. And if you are reading this after losing someone you love, I am deeply glad that you did too.

As I step into this new year, I am still standing on the ashes of a wildfire that burned my life to the ground. And yet, if I look closely, I can already see tiny sprouts pushing through the ash. They are still so small that most people wouldn’t notice them — but they are there.

In this post, I want to reflect on what going through the deepest grief of my life taught me in 2025, in the hope that it might help someone else. I know that every grief journey is unique and that there is no one-size-fits-all way to heal. I also know how lonely grief can be. We live in a society that avoids talking about death, even though it happens every day, every second — and even though it is something we will all face at the end of our lives.

This is what 2025 taught me about love, loss, and learning to live forward:

1. It taught me about the impermanence of the human body — and the eternity of the soul.
   When my soulmate crossed over, I never expected our connection to continue. But to my surprise, it did — through signs, telepathic communication, and even practical, everyday guidance. After living this experience day after day, I no longer doubt it. He is still here, just in a different form — a formless one.
2. It taught me how deeply the knowing of the soul’s eternity can support the grieving process.
   This is one of the main reasons I started this blog and wrote my book. I feel a responsibility to share my lived experience, because I know how much this knowing can ease grief. Without this connection, I honestly don’t know how I would have survived the past year. And in truth, alongside the grief, this connection also made my year magical — turning 2025 into a profound inner dance between light and shadow. From messages I’ve received and from research into near-death and afterlife experiences, I now know my experience is not unique — many people sense similar things but doubt themselves.
3. Knowing that the soul is eternal does not remove the need to grieve on a human level.
   Knowledge or even lived experience that your loved one is still there, just in a different form, will not take the pain away — but it can soften and ease the grieving process. You still need to cry, feel anger, despair, and whatever emotions arise. Grief must be felt in order to be released. It may take weeks, months, or years — but suppressing it only prolongs suffering.
4. The soul finds many ways to reach its loved ones here on Earth
   I learned this through my own experience — through Jannis’ heart-shaped signs in clouds, water, objects, food, through telepathic communication, and through the guidance I receive via the number 23. Studying the work of Michael Newton later gave me language and context for what I was already living. Understanding the nature of the soul and its journey fascinates me deeply, because it touches our very essence — who we truly are beyond the body — and how this understanding can help us live more from the heart than from the mind, bringing depth, meaning, and a deeper sense of satisfaction into our lives.
5. Grief is not linear.
   There are moments when you think, “Ah, maybe the pain is finally over,” followed by sudden moments when you find yourself crying on the floor again, completely overwhelmed and feeling as if you are back at square one. Each grief wave that you allow to pass through you releases something. Trust that grief, when faced with courage, also heals — and that over time, those waves no longer make you drown.
6. Grief affects every layer of your being — emotional, mental, and physical.
   Grief waves can be so intense that they feel almost physically lethal. They can distort your face, slow your thinking, and disrupt sleep, appetite, and memory. I lost my sense of taste and sleep for months, and many months later I lost a large amount of hair. My body went into survival mode. Everything paused so I could endure. Grief can make you feel depressed, lost, and lonely, and noticing how much is required from your body can add to that heaviness. But our bodies and minds can recover once the most intense phase of grief has passed and the body is able to begin its own healing work.
7. Grief and joy can coexist.
   We shouldn’t feel guilty when glimpses of joy start returning. Your loved ones want nothing more than your happiness and for you to keep moving forward in your life. I can promise you that feeling joyful and happy is possible after loss — even though it may take time. And when joy returns, please don’t suppress it because of guilt.
8. Time alone does not heal grief — what you do with time does.
   Avoiding grief only postpones it. When we meet our grief with presence and acceptance, it transforms. Facing emotions as they arise, instead of pushing them away, is deeply healing.
9. Grief changes you — practically and internally.
   Through my soulmate’s transition back to the light, everything we had planned together in both business and personal life collapsed. I know I need to accept that and rebuild my life from the ashes. Rebuilding takes time, because I cannot return to my old life — everything in me has changed internally as well. I am no longer the same woman I was at the beginning of 2025. I am someone new, and it takes time to get to know this “new me.”
10. And finally: you do not have to move on from your loved one.
    You never need to move on from the person you love — but you can move forward with them. Your loved one will always be part of you, whether through memory, your shared children, something you built together, or as a lived soul-level presence, if you feel open to it. This does not mean clinging to the past or hoping to get them back in physical form. It means having more courage, strength, and hope to move forward, knowing that your loved one is still there — helping you, guiding you, and, at the very least, waiting for you on the other side of the veil when it is your time to leave this magical, yet sometimes deeply challenging, human experience.

As this new year begins, I try not to place heavy expectations on the future — but I haven’t abandoned my dreams either. I start 2026 with less pain and less grief, and with gratitude for the transformation this difficult yet beautiful year brought into my life. I know that the woman who stepped into 2025 no longer exists — and that who I became was born from both the love I lost and the love that never left.

As long as we keep hope alive and continue walking — even when it hurts — we remain open to something good arriving. Despite the difficulties in my life, I still carry a quiet inner knowing that my soul knows what it is doing, and that even the hardest parts of my lived experience are part of my journey, part of my soul contract, and part of my personal growth.

If you are grieving, give yourself time. But don’t give up on your dreams — or on your wish to feel joy again.

I wish you a gentle, meaningful New Year. ✨

May it bring you exactly what your heart needs. ❤️