An End of Year Pause

As the year comes to a close, I find myself returning to one word: pause. Not the kind of pause that suggests rest was freely given, but the kind that became necessary for survival. The kind that asked us to breathe while the ground beneath us shifted. The kind that forced us to listen closely to our bodies, our spirits, and our ancestors when the world felt increasingly hostile to our very existence.

This year did not unfold in a vacuum. It unfolded in a world where White supremacy and White nationalism continue to shape policies, narratives, and systems designed to diminish, exhaust, and erase Black and Brown lives. It unfolded within a political climate that has worked relentlessly to reduce entire communities to enemies or threats while rendering their suffering invisible. For BIPOC communities, women, and LGBTQIA people, especially our trans siblings, the work of simply being alive this year required extraordinary courage.

What This Year Asked of Marginalized Communities

This year asked us to carry more than was ever ours to hold. It asked women, particularly Black and Brown women, to lead, nurture, organize, and stabilize everyone else while our own pain was minimized, spiritualized, or ignored. It asked us to absorb misogyny, violence, and disrespect while being told to remain graceful, grateful, and quiet. It asked LGBTQIA communities to endure intensified scrutiny, legislation, and rhetoric aimed at erasing identities, dismantling protections, and framing lives as negotiable. And for our trans siblings, this year brought an especially cruel wave of dehumanization. Bodies were policed. Healthcare was threatened. Existence was debated publicly by people who will never bear the cost of that harm.

We witnessed hard-won rights placed on the chopping block. We felt generational trauma rise again in our bodies, echoing histories of enslavement, colonization, misogyny, and gender-based violence. And still, we showed up. Not because we were untouched by fear or exhaustion, but because survival has always required creativity, community, and sacred remembering.

Here at A Time For You, we reject the lie that strength means enduring harm without pause. We believe that rest is resistance, care is political, and healing is a radical act in a world that profits from the depletion of women, BIPOC people, and LGBTQIA communities.

What This Year Taught Us

This year reminded us that:

• We can be deeply committed to justice and still need rest.

• We can be spiritually grounded and emotionally overwhelmed.

• We can love our communities fiercely while refusing to sacrifice ourselves on the altar of endurance.

  
  

For women, for BIPOC people, and for LGBTQIA communities, especially those living at the intersections of all three, healing is never just personal. It is historical. It is communal. It is ancestral. Our bodies remember what our mouths were taught to swallow. Our spirits carry stories passed down through silence, survival, and prayer.

This year made one truth unavoidable. We cannot heal by pretending these realities do not exist. Healing requires naming harm, telling the truth, and choosing ourselves anyway.

Honoring What You Made It Through

Before rushing toward resolutions, productivity goals, or “new year, new you” language, I invite you to do something deeply countercultural: Honor what it cost you to make it here.

Honor the emotional labor women are expected to give without rest. Honor the vigilance required of Black and Brown bodies in unsafe systems. Honor the daily courage of trans siblings navigating a world that too often treats their existence as optional. Honor the ways you protected yourself, even when that protection looked like withdrawal, silence, or exhaustion. Survival is not small in a world that consistently signals that some lives matter less.

Carrying Intention Into the New Year

As we move forward, the invitation is not to do more. It is to do what restores.

To choose gentleness over grind. To choose boundaries over burnout. To choose truth over spiritual bypassing. To choose community over isolation.

You do not owe anyone your suffering. You do not need to earn rest. You are allowed to pause without apology.

A Call to Action: Make Space for Your Healing

As this year closes, I invite you, especially women, BIPOC people, and LGBTQIA communities, to take one intentional step toward yourself. Create a Sacred Pause, even if only for a few minutes a day, to breathe, ground, pray, journal, or sit without performance.

Seek spaces that affirm your full humanity. Your gender. Your body. Your grief. Your joy.

Engage tools and rituals that support your healing rather than your hustle.

At A Time For You, our offerings are created as vessels of care, remembrance, and restoration, with particular attention to those most impacted by collective, generational, racial, gendered, and religious trauma. Our work is rooted in a clear belief: trans lives are sacred, women deserve rest, and healing must never require erasure. If this year has taken more than it gave, let the next one begin with you choosing yourself again and again.

A Closing Blessing

May the year ahead meet you with safety. May your body be honored. May your rest be protected. May your grief be held with tenderness. May your joy be loud and unashamed. And may your ancestors and chosen family walk beside you as you reclaim your breath, your voice, and your belonging. Thank you for allowing A Time For You to hold space with you this year. It has been an honor to witness your journey.

With care and intention,

Rev. Tonya D. Jackson