This week, your Instagram feed will be flooded with recaps of 2025. Highlights. Lessons learned. Perfectly packaged pain and progress. Alongside them will be resolutions, intentions, and carefully curated visions for 2026.
I think often about the power of social media. In many ways, it is connective and inspiring. It can make us feel less alone and more seen. But it also lacks true intimacy and privacy. It creates the illusion of closeness, of being “caught up” on someone’s life, when in reality we are only seeing a smudge on the canvas. Not the whole, big, beautiful, messy piece of art we call a life.
In this blog, and on my Instagram, you did not see my biggest, heaviest, or happiest moments of 2025. I kept them for myself. On purpose.
As I get ready to share differently, more intentionally and more vulnerably, I want to offer this reminder. Some things deserve to stay sacred. Not everything is a share. Not every win, loss, or highlight needs an audience, a caption, or a timestamp.
There is power in holding parts of your life close. In letting moments belong only to you, or to the people who earned their way into them. Privacy is not secrecy. It is self respect. It is discernment. It is knowing that meaning does not increase simply because something is visible.
As we step into a new year, may you feel permission to protect what matters most. Share when it feels true, not when it feels expected. Remember that the most important parts of your life do not need proof to be real.
Some things are meant to be lived, not posted.
The Forty Files 