Reflecting on 2025: Becoming

A year that asked me to redefine strength, identity, and forward motion

As I reflect on 2025, one thing is clear: I haven’t been as present here as I planned.

Not because I forgot — but because I was living.

Life happened, and I let it. I went back to work and poured everything I had into becoming the best version of myself I could show up as — professionally, as a wife to my husband, and as a friend to the people I love. I got swept up in the holidays, the noise, the movement. Life moved fast, and I moved with it.

Quietly, in the background, I’ve been writing a book. One I promised myself I would finish before the end of 2026. I’m putting that promise here — not as pressure, but as truth.

What I’ve learned (and relearned) is this: when life moves fast, you have to choose to pause. Because if I don’t pause on my own, my body eventually forces me to.

Since my diagnosis in 2021, I haven’t gone a single year without a major surgery or radiation. When I actually add up the time it has taken my body to recover, it amounts to one to two full years of my life. That reality changes how I see everything.

So when I look back on 2025, I don’t see a list of accomplishments. I see perspective.

This was my first full year living with permanent facial paralysis. And while it is not something I would ever choose, it also wasn’t the end of me. It wasn’t the end of confidence, joy, or connection. It asked me to redefine strength — and I did.

I started a new job that I genuinely love and began commuting into a local office, something that quietly unlocked an entirely new rhythm of life.

I finally got hearing aids — something I avoided for far too long because I was afraid of the stigma of being a twenty-something wearing them. Here’s the truth: no one cared. The only thing holding me back was my own perception of myself.

I moved from six-month MRIs to a full-year scan cycle — a milestone that still stops me in my tracks when I say it out loud. I don’t take that lightly. I don’t take that for granted.

I celebrated my one-year wedding anniversary in Italy, feeling more grounded and more connected than ever to my husband. He is my backbone. My calm. My strength when I forget my own.

My story ran in the New York Post and the Daily Mail, and in sharing it, I connected with so many people living with acoustic neuromas. If telling my story helps even one person feel less alone, then it is worth sharing — every single time.

I ran the Berlin Marathon in a heat wave and crossed the finish line in exactly four hours while raising over $33,000 for brain tumor awareness in that campaign alone. Across all my races, I’ve now raised $100,000 for brain tumor awareness — and I’m just getting started. New York, I’ll see you again in 2026 for a three-peat. And in 2027, Tokyo — the final World Major — where I’ll ring that bell.

I also underwent another major facial reanimation surgery. Surgeons removed muscle from my inner thigh and transplanted it into my face, reconnecting nerves and arteries in the hope that I will smile spontaneously again one day. It won’t be the smile I once knew. But it will be a new one — and I’m learning that loving who you are becoming is just as important as loving who you were.

And somewhere in all of this, I met a colleague who also lives with facial paralysis. An unexpected connection that felt deeply healing — a reminder that sometimes strength comes simply from being seen and understood.

When I look back on 2026, I don’t see a year defined by illness or survival.
I see a year defined by becoming.

Becoming more patient with myself.
Becoming less afraid of what’s visible.
Becoming stronger in ways no one can measure.

I didn’t wait for life to slow down — I learned how to move through it differently. With more intention. More honesty. More trust in who I am now, not who I used to be.

If there’s one thing I’m carrying forward, it’s this: you don’t have to recognize yourself in the mirror to recognize your strength. Growth doesn’t always feel like progress. Sometimes it feels like letting go.

And I’m learning that the version of me on the other side of all of this is not weaker — she’s wiser.

Still moving. Still building. Still becoming.

“I am not returning to who I was. I am becoming who I’m meant to be.” — from my journal