Last week, I hosted a workshop for my Cultivate Connection Community program called 2025: Your Year of Shedding and Rebirth, inspired by the Chinese Year of the Snake and my love for the snake we reside with in our little urban yard. Little did I know how committed I was to snake energy! 

While clearing out a funky old cabinet in the house on Sunday, I uncovered a snake’s tail skeleton—beautiful and symbolic of the shedding process that leads to growth. I feel so in awe and encouraged that this is the focus we need right now.

As we step into a new year, I invite you to reflect on this powerful question:

What outdated habits or beliefs are you ready to shed in 2025 while building embodied resilience for uncertain times?

Just like the snake sheds its skin, we, too, can release what no longer serves us—perfectionism, overing, self-doubt—and create space for growth, alignment, and resilience for the times ahead.

As we close out 2024, let’s take a moment to pause, breathe, and root ourselves in reflection. I led my client community through this embodied reflection activity of honoring your journey this year with kindness, gratitude, and presence that recognizes all the visible and invisible growth you’ve made. As I reflected on this time last year, intentional growth often is not showy.

Birthdays (especially those around holidays) come with a lot of reactions and emotions as we age. Society ties our worthiness and value to youth, productivity, and appearance. What has surprised me most is how liberating it feels to deinstitutionalize my body and brain from the old rules and narratives that no longer fit.

As leaders, we often feel the weight of needing to be everything for everyone. But the reality is, true leadership isn’t about doing it all on your own—it’s about building a resilient, empowered team that can navigate challenges together.

I want to take this out of abstract and share a case study from one of my 2024 organizational clients. This team example highlights the importance of building resilience in your team, not just yourself, and shows how focusing on team-wide strategies can transform both individual and collective performance.

Resilience isn't just about bouncing back. (I know, I know. I say this all the time. But most of us weren’t taught this, so it’s harder to overcome our initial understanding of resilience.) Resilience is about proactively adapting and transforming, in a way that aligns with your goals and regenerates your energy.

Resilience is adaptability and transformation that is proactive and high-impact. It’s meant to be co-created in a regenerative, healthy way. It’s a multi-directional process.

One arm of my work is partnering with leaders to transform and train their team with my Resilient Teams program.

Are you ready to see your team communicate more effectively, build resilience, and tackle challenges with confidence? Leaders who have partnered with me report measurable shifts in their teams, including:

Resilience isn’t built in crisis—it’s cultivated daily so your team can thrive, no matter what comes next.

In a world of lots of noise and needs it can be hard to stay on top of, let alone ahead. My philosophy as a coach and leader is that you only need to stay "two steps ahead," so that you are prepared for changes rather than simply reacting when they arise. By pausing to take a step back and understand the broader landscape, you’re keeping your feet on the ground in the present while focusing an eye towards the future.

When you start feeling the urgency of a pivot, your first instinct might be to start looking and applying for jobs.

I get it. I actually think looking and applying for jobs can provide great clarity. When you’re intentional and embodied in applying for new jobs, you can really learn a lot about who you are and who you truly want to become.

This month, gratitude has been harder to hold—but I’m leaning into the practices that help me stay grounded. Gratitude doesn’t mean bypassing tough emotions or forcing toxic positivity. Instead, it’s about creating space for clarity and reflection. I’m grateful for clarity in my work and what I want to be putting out to others which right now is focused on cultivating slow working practices.

Learning how to navigate shifts in or a loss of your professional identity is a key resilience skill. Your career identity can be fluid, not fixed, so you can evolve in response to shifts in your needs, values, and goals as well as to adapt and transform in response to the environment (climate, country, community, and workplace).

My life’s purpose and focus just got even clearer this last week.

I hope you also feel that.

If not, I want to offer you some resources this month.

One of my strengths is patterns and trends - individuals and groups. I’ll be honest. I don’t hold a lot of hopeful optimism. What I do hold is clarity. Having built a relationship with my grief over these last years always invites me into clarity.

Holding clarity right now feels powerful. Clarity is actionable and offers purpose.