Packing My Bags: Reflections on 2025

The closing of the year has come again. I have come to look forward to this time of reflection - in the space between travel and the holidays, there are usually moments to take stock of what has been accomplished and define where I am heading. 

This year in particular feels like I am packing my bags with everything I’ve learned and heading into the vastness of 2026 with a sense of curiosity, wonder and abandon. It has been quite awhile since I have felt this way; and knowing me is to know that I love adventure. I have consistently chosen it at every life junction. I love action. I love the unknown - even when, maybe especially when, the unknown feels scary. I’ve always resonated with the idea that when something new feels a bit nerve-wracking, it often means you’re on the right path. 

Perhaps this is why it feels both familiar and terrifying to be taking this next step into the future. 

My career on Broadway held me for sixteen years - nearly half of my life - adhering to an unrelenting schedule and enduring the consistent toll it took on my body. Brutal, yes, but also a dream come true. It was a life filled with the most amazing friendships and weird, quirky people that matched my own weirdness and quirkiness. A place where I felt safe and seen. A place that held me through divorce and loss and success, and that continues to root me on as I step into this next phase. A gift. 

And yet, over time, it began to feel like a hamster wheel - a familiar pattern repeating year after year. Life happened in between, of course: all the highs and the lows. But the work itself remained the same. I know how rare that kind of stability is. I was a part of two long-running Broadway shows while so many others open and close within a few years. I was truly lucky. Still, there was always something in me that kept asking for more. 

When I began to teach yoga, it felt like stepping onto a new horizon - one foot off the wheel. Teaching yoga in New York City, however, isn’t a lucrative endeavor. You are not paying the bills while holding space for all of the lovely humans I have had the honor of meeting in the studio. But another passion? Yes.

And so it has gone since I moved to New York - plucking my way along, doing what I love and being so, so grateful for it. And as life often does, it had other plans. Eventually, the call to shift grew loud enough that I could no longer ignore it.

So I am packing my bags with everything I’ve learned along the way - with care, gratitude, and a healthy bit of fear of what’s to come. But there is also the thrill of the unknown: what might take place, who I might meet, where I might go. I find myself returning to that Dr. Seuss book everyone received at high school graduation , Oh, the Places You’ll Go. There is a wildness in my heart, and it is a call I must answer. 

For now, I remain in New York City - dreaming, building, and taking this sacred time at the start of the year to set my intentions and give life to my dreams simply by naming them. Then, defining them by creating steps to their eventual fruition. I am a dreamer. I always have been. And those dreams have led me to reach goals and travel to destinations beyond my wildest aspirations. This life is so precious. And at the close of 2025, I am finally feeling the familiar gratitude of being a part of it.