Midyear meltdown: lessons from 2025

We're halfway through 2025, time for an honest assessment of the gap between January's ambitions and June's reality. Essentially, I'm the same person. So are you. All is not lost: Every year teaches things we didn't expect to learn.

So here's what 2025 has delivered — five truths that emerged not from achieving much, but from the messy reality of being human.

Change is hard

I've done none of the things I promised myself this year. Duolingo sits ignored. The gym membership I bought with optimism has become an expensive reminder of good intentions. The healthy eating plan lasted until I smelt a croissant.

Every Sunday, I think "on Monday, I'll be different." Mondays pass, months unfold. I used to think this made me lazy. Now I think it makes me normal.

I'm waiting for motivation to arrive, still believing I'll wake up wanting kale and excited about cardio. Still thinking there's a better version of me around the corner. There isn't. Maybe that's the point. We're not broken for struggling with change. The version that keeps trying despite failing is exactly who we're meant to be. Struggle isn't the problem; it's proof we haven't given up.

Self-acceptance is harder

Twenty years into an eating disorder, and my self-loathing has reached new depths. I avoid mirrors, photos, anything that might confront me with reality.

As such, I spent weeks in a panic leading up to my 40th birthday party. I starved myself, convinced that people wouldn't love me unless I was smaller. The party happened, and friends filled my home. They weren't there because I'd earned their affection. They were there because of who we are to each other.

Self-acceptance asks us to stop fighting wars we've waged our entire adult lives. Most of us can't. But sometimes, surrounded by people who see us clearly and stay anyway, we glimpse the difference between how we see ourselves and how we deserve to be seen

Milestones force us to take inventory

Weeks after my birthday, my every waking thought is still "shit, I'm 40." I keep checking parts of my body for evidence of this inconceivable truth. Age wasn't supposed to happen to me. I was young, for like ... ever.

I'm scared of time wasted, questionable decisions and everything I haven't achieved but was supposed to. Milestones force us to take inventory against bullshit checklists we never agreed to follow.

Nobody reads a book in reverse, and milestones are chapters in an ongoing story. Rather than rereading the pages behind me, I'm trying to focus on what's next. The characters I'll love and lose; the plot twists I didn't see coming; the ending I wasn't ready for. It's unpredictable, but the best stories always are.

Love can mean letting go

In 20 years of therapy, I haven't cried once. I discuss my mental collapse with the emotional detachment of a weather presenter.

But last month, when my therapist suggested it might be time to "break up" with anorexia, my voice cracked. Just for a moment, but enough to surprise us both. Because that's what her suggestion felt like, ending a committed relationship that comforts and consumes me.

It's not the only breakup I've navigated recently. I had to walk away from a friendship that mattered deeply. Someone I clicked with and cared for, but whose presence in my life became complicated. The hardest goodbyes aren't to people who hurt us deliberately. They're to connections we love that simply couldn't continue.

Some relationships teach us about love by ending. Others teach us about ourselves by staying too long. These relationships taught me that love and loss can coexist. Sometimes the most caring thing we can do is mourn what we cannot keep.

Life becomes precious when threatened

Earlier this year, I genuinely thought I was going to die. Not in a dramatic, metaphorical sense, but in a very real "I need to call someone" way. Severe dehydration and a body I'd treated badly made my mortality clear.

I'd spent months, maybe years, flirting with the idea that life wasn't worth the effort. But lying on the bathroom floor, convinced my heart might stop, something shifted. I desperately wanted every breath. I wanted to see tomorrow, next week, next year.

It's a cruel irony that we don't recognize life's value until it's threatened. When everything is stable, we take our pulse for granted.

I'm not grateful for the health scare, but I'm grateful for what it proved. That beneath hurt, fear and confusion, part of us knows our existence is worth protecting.

Death makes a terrible life coach, but it's remarkably effective at reminding us what matters.

So kindly on yourself, halfway through means halfway left. Enough time to cock up spectacularly or figure something out. I'm not a glass half-full kind of columnist, but there's something exhausting and comforting about having six months to get things wrong in new and interesting ways.

If 2025 has taught me anything, it's that progress doesn't feel like progress when you're living it. We're all waiting for some mythical end point where everything clicks. Spoiler alert: There isn't one. There's just the ongoing, endless, messy, beautiful work of being human. And isn't that enough?