What This Year Shook Loose: My Reflections On 2025

In the final hours, on the final day of the year, I am writing from inside of 2025. Still holding its weight. Still feeling its tension. Still honest about what this year has asked of me and, from what I can tell, asked of many of us.

This is not an attempt to tie things up neatly or to rush toward optimism. It is an acknowledgement. A pause. A way to name what has been while I am still standing in it. And an intentional effort to cleanse my palate before stepping into 2026 with as much hopeful openness as possible.

This has been a complicated and heavy year.

Not always in loud or obvious ways, but in the quiet ways that settle into your body over time. The kind of heaviness you feel before you can explain it. The kind that slows your pace, sharpens your awareness, and forces you to pay attention to what you can and cannot keep carrying.

For me, this year included deep loss.

I said goodbye to my sweet grandmother Beulah and to Mr. Vic, a longtime mentor who walked with me through a season of life that greatly shaped who I became as a young man and how I engage the world around me. Grief has a way of slowing you down and reminding you of your humanity. It strips life to what really matters. It reminds you that time is not promised, and that life and love leave a mark long after someone is gone.

What I am realizing more honestly now is that grief is not something you complete or move past. It is a lifetime journey. One that changes shape over time, but never fully disappears. This year has made me more sensitive to the loss all around me, near and far. More aware of how many people are carrying grief quietly. How many are suffering in silence or in disconnected ways, without language or the comfort of loved ones. That awareness has softened me. It has slowed me. It has made me more attentive to the humanity in front of me.

Grief also showed up in other areas of my life.

I found myself closing chapters for multiple creative endeavors that have brought me life throughout the years. CLT DJ Battle. The Fair Play Music Equity Initiative. Hue House. Each of these mattered. Each brought beautiful people into my life, allowed me to be a part of purposeful work, and taught me lessons I will carry forward.

Closing these chapters was not easy. And I am learning that the difficulty, and even the conflict, that sometimes accompany an ending are often necessary. Without them, I would likely resist the very change required for growth. I would cling to what is familiar, even when it no longer fits or when I can no longer serve it as it deserves. Endings disrupt us just enough to make room for something new.

And often, closed chapters create the space required for what is NEEDED next.

As I have stepped out of these seasons, I have found myself leaning more deeply into what has always been most central in my life: my spiritual life, my wife, and our growing family. This season has created the margin to be more acutely aware, patient, and present, allowing me to celebrate them more intentionally and honor the relationships I value most. It has reminded me that the presence of hope at home and in the world are connected forces. The love, perspective, and steadiness that come from spiritual alignment and family are not separate from the work; they are what sustain it.

From that grounding, I have also found myself excited to lean more fully into Bridge Builder Consulting and the growing community of leaders connected to this work. Not as a strategy, but as a realization. A recognition that the heart of this work, and much of who I am, has always been about relationships and creating spaces where people can see one another more clearly.

I am increasingly aware that this work is bigger than me. Bigger than Charlotte. Bigger than any one season or chapter. I now find myself able to imagine leaders engaging across cities, learning together, building trust together, and carrying the heart of this work into places I was never meant to reach alone. This is not about expansion for its own sake, but about stewardship. About trusting that the work grows best when it is shared.

When I look back on 2025, the word that keeps surfacing is shaking.

Not chaos, but disruption. The kind that unsettles what has quietly settled over time. Shaking reveals what was already unstable, what had been held together more by momentum than intention. It brings to the surface what we might have ignored if things had stayed comfortable. Shaking does not create the cracks. It exposes them. And in doing so, it offers clarity we rarely choose on our own.

There is a familiar truth that the light shines brightest in the darkness. Not because the darkness is good, but because it clarifies what the light is for.

So as this year comes to a close, my hope is simple.

That we do not rush past what this season has revealed. That we give ourselves permission to name the weight, honor the losses, and acknowledge the growth that only comes through difficulty.

And that with a cleansed palate, we step into 2026 a little lighter. A little more grounded. A little more committed to the beauty of love, life, and the long work of building bridges where they are still needed.

Not because everything is resolved.

But because we are still here.

🥂 Cheers to who we will BE in 2026.