DECEMBER 23 — As the year tilts toward its end, a collective silence falls. We pause not because life has reached perfection but because we are no longer the people we were in January.

We are the survivors of a year that did not go as planned. We are the products of moments that broke us, changed us and quietly gifted us lessons we never thought to ask for.

At the start of this year, many of us carried our whys like stones in our pockets. Why did this fall apart? Why did they leave when the shadows grew longest?

In counselling, we often speak about “processing” pain in order to find closure.

But this year taught us a harder, yet liberating, truth in that closure is not always found, it is lived through.

Some stories do not end with a neat bow. Some chapters close without apology, without clarity, without justice and yet, the sun rose anyway. Life continued. And so did we.

Somewhere between silent nights and moments of exhaustion, we began to realise that the mind’s endless search for logic often tightens the knots of suffering.

As Carl Jung once said, “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

Making peace with destiny, or “berdamai dengan takdir”, is not an act of surrender, it is an act of survival.

It is the moment we stop fighting the ghost of who we used to be and start asking how to live with who we are now.

This year forced us to live in the here and now. Not in the flowery language of poetry but in the grit of reality.

We learned that being present often means carrying a dull ache while still showing up for work, for family and for ourselves.

We learned that healing follows a jagged timeline and that a “bad day” is not a failure but proof of our humanity.

We stopped expecting people to be forevers and learned to accept them as lessons.

We discovered that sometimes, the bravest thing we can do is to stop asking and simply let things be.

Letting go is not about forgetting, it is about giving ourselves the grace to move forward without dragging the weight of yesterday.

There is power in that silence. When the mind quiets, the heart heals in its own way often through simple moments like watching a sunset, feeling the rhythm of our own breath. These are the quiet evidences of a heart that is mending.

As we close this chapter, we are not celebrating a life without scars. We are celebrating the courage it took to keep going when answers were missing.

We are celebrating a heart that learned to stay grounded while the world spun out of control.

Life does not ask us to be fully healed before moving forward, it only asks us to be honest, patient and brave enough to take the next step.

You made it through things you once thought would break you. You learned how to breathe again.

And even if your heart is still tender, that does not make you weak, it makes you real.

This year was not easy but it changed you. And perhaps, after everything, that change is the beginning of something better than you ever imagined. Trust that even in the silence, life continues.

And as it does, so will you.

* Nurfilzah Emily Mohamad Khairuddin is a Registered Counsellor with Lembaga Kaunselor Malaysia.

** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.