2025 had hands… but it also had layers. This 2025 reflection for Black women holds space for all of it — the joy, the grief, the growth, the tiredness that doesn’t always go away with sleep. In this season of goal-setting and high expectations, this episode offers something different: a pause.

Because before we move into “new year energy,” there’s power in naming what this year truly held — not just what you survived, but what shaped you.

In this deeply personal check-in, Shirl holds space for everything this year brought with it — the beauty, the heartbreak, the quiet resilience. It’s not a list of to-dos or a highlight reel. It’s a short conversation about what it means to survive a year that asked so much of you… and still show up with love in your heart.

Just truth, reflection, and an invitation to lay some things down before you step into 2026.

If you’ve been feeling unseen, unheld, or just plain tired, this episode with created with you in mind.

In this episode, Shirl reflects on:

Why both the hard and the healing matter

The emotional cost of being “the strong one” again

The quiet things you might still be carrying into the new year

Five questions to help you release what no longer serves you

A reminder that you don’t have to earn rest, support, or peace

This isn’t about pretending 2025 was easy — it wasn’t. But this 2025 reflection for Black women is about telling the truth about what it asked of you and how you kept showing up. It’s an honest, layered moment to release what you’re not taking into 2026.

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Shirl  is the creator of Support Languages™ and host of Shades of Strong® — a movement shifting the narrative from Strong Black Woman to Supported Black Woman™ through language, rest, and real support.