When I was in high school, I decided I didn’t want to be in the class of 2001. Nah, I wanted it to be 2000. I wanted to be part of this historical, new millennium number. I wanted it so badly, but with a fifth year looming (we called it OAC), and knowing how important it was to have this extra year of classes under my belt when applying for colleges, I was going to have to expedite my learning if I had a prayer of walking the stage with the class ahead of me. So, I did as any good nerd does – I took elective summer school, refused to take a spare, and by the time my fourth year (Grade 12) rolled around, I had fast-tracked, and essentially skipped a year. I was a part of the Graduating Class of 2000, all five years under my belt. I was a true-blue Millennial. Born in ’82, and adult by ’00, and ready to conquer.

I guess I sort of feel the same about 2025. A landmark year. A sexy year. 2025 has a ring to it. It feels almost primal. 25 years since I took off from high school and entered in to a quarter of a century of becoming.

My oldest, Jayda, has this saying where she decides how old you are “in adult years.” I suppose that would make me 25.

In the time it took me to make it to 43, I feel weathered and worn some days. Like I drew my sword and fought on the front lines of an infinite wave of battles. Year over year, a new dragon would rear its face, taunting and daring me to take a breath. From marriage (to divorce), from careers (to being jobless), from homes (to the brink of homelessness), from personal victories to private setbacks, from professional opportunities, to preventable woes, I cascaded through the first twenty-five years of adulthood feeling a fragment of a second behind everyone else. I blamed myself, mostly. The rage and anger that consumed the majority of my twenties was self-inflicted. I didn’t have bullies in high school. But I most certainly became my own as I consistently felt letdown by my own shortcomings, my own careless decisions, and I played a solemn fiddle through my own pity parties I consistently attended, begging others to join.

In 2025, I lost my Grandmother. She was just shy of her hundredth birthday when she passed this spring. From infancy, my Grandma Humphries took me under her wing. I’m the oldest of her youngest, and the bond she and I formed was not one you can simply draw into words, or paint into a picture. I spent countless hours of my childhood with her. From vacations, to she being enlisted to babysit a toddler, to her driving me to my piano lessons and later, she rescuing a teenage runaway and driving me home. As I made my way through my formative years, Grandma stood on the sidelines, a mere phone call away. A coffee date away. A road trip away. A sit-together-in-Church away. And when I needed welfare, or low-income housing, or a divorce lawyer, or a prayer, Grandma was there. Over and over, until this year she wasn’t.

And it shattered me. When we arrived at the funeral home, I couldn’t join the procession to her graveside. I stood inside, and watched them drive her away. Processing that they were laying her to her eternal sleep wasn’t something my wounded heart would give way to. Instead, I chose to imagine her in her recliner, carefully needling a new cross-stitch piece. Meticulously running her hands through a box of puzzle pieces for the work she had laid across her kitchen table. Pointing at the pictures framed on her wall and quizzing me on who was who in our massive family. This is where she lives in my mind. At her piano. On her violin. In front of her Bible.

When Grandma died this year, it became obvious just how much I took her for granted. For every sign off on our phone calls where she would say: I’m praying for you, Carrie, I realized how much I didn’t appreciate the gravity of those words until I couldn’t hear her say it any more. Losing her shredded a piece of my heart I will forever have dedicated for her.

This year, Jan and I (after seven tumultuous years), finally got it together and committed ourselves for good. And Grandma couldn’t be there. I said to my Dad: I’m no longer a piece of shit and she’s missing it. And my father replied: You were never a piece of shit. She knew it, and she loved you. And she’s still here.

Indeed, she was at my wedding. In our backyard, never, not once since this house was built, did a rolling meadow of wild daisies ever spring up – not until Jan and I selected daisies for our backyard wedding flower and, suddenly, the yard sprang up with the most beautiful wild flowers I have ever seen. Grandma is still here. In the meadow of our home, in the sky that feigned off the rain until after our vows, in the sunrises that paint the clouds like a canvas across our little corner of the world. Grandma is still here.

Among the losses of 2025 was a smattering of excitement, wins and triumphs. Having been laid off in July of 2024, I was still licking my wounds of unemployment, so I headed off for an epic solo road trip to the East Coast to visit a friend who lived next to the ocean. I planned, prepped, had my car checked and readied, and me and my thoughts drove a day to New Brunswick. After car trouble, a wrong turn and a whole lotta praying, I conquered the second leg of the journey the following day, rolling into Nova Scotia in the pitch black, with a smile on my face and a sigh of relief in my heart.

The trip took me to Peggy’s Cove, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, featured the ocean in my Mug Shots, took me to downtown pubs, and into the nooks of coffee houses. But primarily, it left me room to consider what I was going to have to make of myself in 2025. What I was going to have to do professionally, and what I needed to do personally to achieve all that was missing. (And because I’m sort of a smarmy punk, I didn’t take two days to drive home in February. I was up at dawn, car packed, Spotify-ready, and drove that 16-hour trip in one fell swoop all the way back to Ontario as the storm chased me across Quebec. )

I wasn’t in Ontario for much longer. As I settled in, washed the laundry, saw my kids, reconnected with Jan, visited with family, I was churning out a plan to visit Europe.

Part of my plans to handle the rejection I was feeling from radio was to carpe diem. I was going to seize the opportunity, whatever that looked like. And for this gal, travel was key. I started pouring over bucket list plans and trips. And since I’d already knocked off New Zealand in 2024, I knew I had to make this next trip truly count.

Since I can remember, I’ve always tied one on on St. Patrick’s Day. I have zero Irish lineage in me, and I don’t know where this came from, but I have partied like a rock star on St. Patrick’s Day like I’m bred of a viking. So, I decided, let’s make 2025 count. I wanted to be there, in person, in the flesh, in the place that started it all – Dublin. When I revealed my plans to my Grandma Smith, she immediately replied with: I have a friend in Ireland! Can I come? Bring my Grandma? To Ireland? The answer was unequivocally yes, and now I had a travel companion and a base. Judith opened her heart and her home to Grandma and I for a whirlwind eight day visit. And with she based in Athlone (the midlands), I found myself visiting Europe’s oldest pub – Sean’s Bar (established in 900 AD!). With being in the midlands and nothing but time and adventure on my soul, I set out to scour the country the best I could – heading all the way West to visit Galway and the Cliffs of Moher, all the way East to be there in person for the St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin, all the way south to visit Cork and kiss the Blarney Stone. I had a true, misfit pirate granddaughter conversation with Grandma and told her she had to pick one of two excursions – get a tattoo, or try a Guinness. (She opted to sip a Guinness and then chatter away with my tat artist.)

Returning home in March meant examining what my life would look like both personally and professionally. My youngest was rounding out her first year of college, and prepared to leave the dorms to move into her first home, which meant I no longer needed my two-bedroom apartment. During my time in Ireland, I was cold-messaged by a site called booknotification.com regarding some social media marketing. And unbeknown to me, March was starting to form what would become the rest of my 2025.

I met with Graeme of Book Notification shortly after I returned home. He was well aware of my work in Social Media, having followed my Care page for several months. I explained I was on EI, and unsure what sort of commitment I could make, but herein began part-time work for a client that was interested in me, and I wasn’t forced to advocate or elevator pitch myself to death for them.

And with my youngest no longer formally living at home, the love of my life pitched me on something else: I think it’s time you come home, he said.

Jan and I hadn’t lived together since 2021. We spent a back and forth series of years that wreaked havoc on our friends and family, our kids and ourselves. We initially moved in together in 2019, and shortly afterwards, fell victim (as did many couples) of the 2020 lock-down. We went from best friends to sworn enemies in a matter of months; plagued by drama, let-downs, anger, resentment, stress, and barely knowing one another well enough to make a relationship survive, much less try to do it while in each other’s space 24/7 and juggling a business. (Not to mention I was still on radio during COVID, which meant I, and my colleagues across the country, were on the air daily giving heartbreaking updates and faced with the reality of the world.) We officially called it in 2021 and went our separate ways – for a while. And on and on it went. We went our separate ways – for awhile.

To suggest that I wouldn’t recommend an on and off light switch relationship is an understatement. By the time I’d flown the coop and sailed to the East Coast in January, I was positively convinced that my relationship with Jan was as dead and buried as the graveyard of previous relationships I’d been growing over the past twenty-five years.

By the time April rolled in, he was adamant that we stopped playing ourselves for fools and put back the pieces – for good.

I collected up my home, moved Kid C, put in my notice at my apartment, and I signed a new lease on my heart.

From the inset, it’s been Jan and I challenging ourselves to level up (thank you, Therapy), calling a spade a spade, and letting our love guide us into a new, permanent chapter in our lives is a testament to seven ridiculous years of getting it wrong, with the hope of one day making it right.

On June 21st – the first full day of summer – Jan and I called in our family, and put a ring on it. For good.

As the summer months rolled on, I eagerly dj’d every weekend for new brides and grooms saying their “I Do’s” and promising their forevers. However, I found myself rejected from every radio application I sent in, denied every interview I advocated for, and while I was enjoying my gigs, and my new Social Media work with Book Notification, it was becoming clearer and more seemingly obvious that my time in conventional media was officially over. The realization took a hold of me – what was I going to do now? I can’t stay on EI forever.

I presented my conundrum to Graeme. Well, I have more work for you, if you want it? he replied.

In August, I left EI and became fully self-employed. I (with thanks to Graeme) managed to create Daisy entertainment., the little company that could, into something meaningful and self-sustaining. I locked that final piece of the puzzle. While I have always been busy with Daisy every wedding season, and every holiday window painting December, the down months prevented me from being able to quit a conventional 9-5 in favour of working for myself. It was time.

Reflecting back on how the top of the year was wonderfully different from the bottom is something I genuinely cannot believe. I began January independent, travelling, unemployed but determined. And I finished the year married, self-employed and plotting my next destination trip.

My wonderful children are happily settled into their beautiful lives, with their partners (or, in my youngest’s case, her cat.) My husband is toggling a massive career alongside his passion. My family are nestled in Picton. And my friendships have only been strengthened and reaffirmed through-out this crazy year.

Year? Try, twenty-five years. What can a person learn about themselves in adult years? We think back to our formative years as the ones between puberty and adulthood. The years we “grew up.” But I think, I think it’s something more. There’s more to those years between 18 and now. Those are the formative years. In your twenties, you fuck up. In your thirties, you apologize. In your forties, you do better. Imagine what my fifties could bring?

As my father reminded me: you are not a piece of shit. No matter how much I like to believe that I was, or that my circumstances rendered me as such. No matter what bed of consequences I slept in, or the coma I found myself buried under in the weight of bad decisions, the only constant we have is change, and the only thing we can rely on is that time marches forward whether we want it to, or not.

I was a baby adult in the years I did everything wrong, whether or not my heart was pure or my intentions were good. And I was a teenager adult in the years I spent trying to find myself in a new city, a new job, with new friends, and a new life. And now at 25, I am young adult – still navigating, still looking for the oar when the wind won’t give me enough momentum to push across the changing current.

As 2025 comes to a close – and I recently said in my morning coffee microblog – I know exactly where the time went. I began the year unsure, but prepared to figure it out. And I finished the year with core memories, a foundation, and plan to see it through. I wish for you the same.

Happy New Year.

– c xx