Every new year arrives with its share of resolutions. Along the way come disappointments, but also solutions. And in the end, a reckoning.
Sometimes a year begins well, only to turn sour, poorly set in motion, heavy with the misfortune it seems to promise: illness, death, separation. Such great losses can, for a time, eclipse even the greatest joys.
The opposite is just as true. A year may start badly until life calls us back, finds us, and leads us to places we never dared to venture. Then the balance tilts toward the good.

And then there are those years when things take their time, quietly teaching us that small victories can lead to profound transformations.
A “How are you?” that becomes “I love you.”
A daily post that turns into a habit.
One journey that awakens the memory of others.
A decision that sets us on a path.
And, in the end, a hope that is reborn and reshapes us.

In this final article of the year, I want to share this life review with you.
Let’s begin.

A Year of Physical Renewal

At the end of 2024, after a long series of upheavals, I moved into a new apartment. As I stepped into that space, I made myself a promise: to inhabit a healthy body as well.
That promise became my resolution for 2025.

In January, I wrote and published an article whose opening lines left no room for ambiguity:
“You told me it was called growing up, when it was really called gaining weight.
You told me I was strong, when it was a joke.
You told me fat was grace, when it was serious.”
If your heart feels drawn to it, the link is still available.

Six months later, I had lost fourteen kilos. I later gained four back, a reminder that the moment we believe we have arrived is precisely when we must remain vigilant.
Still, when I look back at the road I have traveled, I don’t focus solely on those kilos regained, but on the entire process. I come from a coat of fat, and there is value in measuring success, acknowledging failure, and above all, seeking a lasting solution.

A Year of Travel

Whether I travel alone or accompanied, to explore or to connect, I love travel. I love the venture itself.
For a moment in time, my home becomes elsewhere, and elsewhere becomes my home. I cherish this feeling of belonging everywhere, of remembering that I am my own homeland. Wherever I go, when my heart is rightly disposed, I manage to feel at home.

This year, I traveled solo to Madrid, where I shared moments with Real Madrid supporters, visited the Royal Palace, and explored many other landmarks. Solo travel carries this lesson within it: being elsewhere, relying on others, and trusting the kindness and generosity of people who, just moments earlier, did not know we existed.

Then came Andalusia, a week-long road trip with a friend. City after city, landscape after landscape, this journey reminded me that while solo travel teaches autonomy, traveling with someone else reveals lightness: the art of leaning on one another because we count for one another.
In Madrid, I was a foreigner in a foreign land. With Amandine, I was almost at home. Spain, yes, but a Spain where I could survive without speaking to locals.
Seville, Granada, Málaga, Júzcar, El Caminito del Rey, Ronda, Mijas, Nerja.

I also traveled twice to Norway to visit family. A different kind of journey, because there, I felt at home. Not in southwestern France, but on the lands of my childhood, among people with whom I share distant memories. Memories that shaped us, accompanied us, and that, though shared, we did not inhabit or dress in the same way.

There was Rome, twice. Belgium. Paris. Normandy. Nice. La Pierre-qui-Vire. Besançon. Orléans. Vendôme. Île de Ré. La Rochelle. And many other destinations I may have forgotten to name, yet each of them gave me something.

Once, I read a sentence I have since made my own:
“The Earth is my homeland; humanity is my family.”
When I travel, I feel foreign nowhere. A piece of land has never made a home. Corneille sang it; I can only agree.

A Year of Faith

Life, or God, meets us along the road. We do not know when it will happen, or even whether it must. But afterward, we know with certainty that it had to happen.

Without that travel itinerary, there would have been no Rome. A friend from my parish sent me a photo for the Jubilee of Young People in Rome. There were stages before Rome, and those stages interested me more than God himself, more than the theme of hope, perhaps even more than the young people I was to share the experience with.

What I saw was the journey, an organized, cultural, enriching trip. Pontigny, Turin, Assisi, Briançon.
How surprised I was to be deeply moved by my fellow travelers, to have conversations that brought me to tears, and to let go of a faith built on habit, the kind we carry because we have always seen ourselves that way, in order to embrace a faith lived in action.

I wrote an article about it, and I am not finished telling the story of God’s wonders. Of the living God found in others, who gently tamed me. Of the God I wish to serve rather than turn away from. My doubts weigh far less than the consolation I later received.

After Rome came Verdelais, Montmartre, Lourdes, Lisieux, then perpetual adoration at the Sacré-Cœur, not forgetting the Young Professionals.
I will never claim to be greater in faith than before, only more willing. This year leaves me with this certainty: to seek God is to seek oneself. And to seek oneself is, at least for me, the purpose of life.

A Year of Surprise

It was after the Jubilee of Young People. It was summer.
I hadn’t seen my sister in six years, nor my nephew, nearly two years old. We had dreamed of this meeting, longed for it. But what are dreams without sacrifice? They remain dreams.

As I left Mass, the surprise awaited me: my sister, my nephew, my brother-in-law, arriving from the United States. My two brothers. A few friends from all corners of France.
I was not celebrating a birthday. It was an ordinary day.
They made it extraordinary.

It is a grace to have a family. A grace to be loved by them. A grace to know that, whatever life brings, you remain one of their priorities. I have a treasure. I have a family.

A Year of Encounters

This year was one of encounters. I could not say in what order to write them, but I will always remember it as a year in which God smiled upon me.
He gave me friends. Through them, I renewed my faith in God and in fraternal love. Love without color or condition, without extravagance or worldly display. Quiet friendships that mean that, in a new city, you have someone to call.

Toulouse. Tours. La Pierre-qui-Vire. Sophia Antipolis. Boussy-Saint-Georges. Ivry-sur-Seine. Marseille. Bordeaux. Wednesday evenings between eight and ten o’clock.
Friends who love me for who I am, and whom I love for having enlarged my heart.

This was also the year when, after long hesitation, an evidence emerged: the discovery of love. Loving a “How are you?”, repairing a “Not so well.” Believing in a “we.”
Letting go of perfection and the fear that it might not be the right one, to embrace hope. Telling myself there was a reason for this meeting. That he stopped. That he saw me. That I saw him. That we pleased one another.
And that we said that word we use lightly with friends, but with gravity when we know we have crossed into that other path called love.

A Year of Hope

“Hope does not disappoint.” Romans 5:5
It was the theme of the Jubilee of Young People. I believe I have learned to believe it.
In three hundred and sixty-five days, so much happens. The balance was magnificent. There were tragedies, fears, doubts. But there was something greater, stronger, more eloquent than all of that.

May this year that ends in joy remind me that for others it was a year of stripping away and falling.
May I be granted the clarity to recognize that it was my year, without forgetting that this joy must accompany me through days without sunlight.
May God grant me the grace not to forget His blessings when everything seems like darkness to my eyes.

I wish you a happy and blessed New Year.
May it be what it must be for you.
May you welcome it as rightly as you can.
Toward 2026.

Written by Aliane Umutoniwase