The Necessary Discomfort of Becoming: Lessons from the Year of the Snake

2025 – The Year of the Snake – was never meant to be comfortable.

Across many cultures, the snake symbolizes transformation and renewal, wisdom and intuition, power and resilience. In other words, change that isn’t gentle – but is necessary.

Let’s break that down.

                                        Transformation and Renewal.

Snakes shed their skin to grow. To survive, they must release what no longer fits. A lesser-known detail: during shedding, a snake’s vision becomes temporarily obscured. It moves forward without full clarity – guided by instinct rather than sight.

                                        Wisdom and Intuition.

Snakes don’t rush. They move with awareness and patience, embodying strategy, insight, and deep trust in inner knowing.

                                        Power and Resilience.

Their strength is quiet. Snakes adapt. They endure. They survive not through force, but through precision and resilience.

Now bring this back to 2025 – the Year of the Snake.

This year asked many of us to shed – to release old skins, outdated identities, and attachments that no longer aligned. Often without clarity. Often without closure. Much like the snake, our vision was sometimes blurred as we moved forward anyway.

Relationships shifted. Truths surfaced. Endings arrived before we felt ready.

And yet, 2025 also asked us to become wiser, more intuitive, more resilient – to trust ourselves, adapt quietly, and keep moving even when the path wasn’t fully visible.

For me, 2025 demanded a great deal of shedding. And while the process wasn’t easy, the outcome has been deeply beautiful.

Now we are preparing to step into 2026 – the Year of the Horse: a symbol of freedom, progress, loyalty, partnership, and perhaps most importantly, the balance of knowing when to hold on and when to let go.

I can’t wait to see where it leads.