The Great Shedding: A Trilogy of Reckoning, Release, and Renewal

Shedding the Year

I tear 2025 off like a scab

no ceremony, no mercy - just truth underneath, raw and red.

That year lied with a straight face,

smiled while it sharpened knives,

called chaos “character building”

and dared Me to thank it.

Nah.

I remember the blood it cost.

I drag its months behind Me like busted chains,

each link a lesson learned the hard way,

each promise broken loud enough

to finally wake Me up.

I don’t romanticize the damage -

I inventory it.

I bury last year without flowers,

stack the bones deep,

label them clearly:

Don’t trust patterns that keep hurting you.

Don’t call endurance growth when it’s just neglect.

Don’t stay loyal to rooms that make you smaller.

2025 tried to teach through cruelty,

through repetition,

through testing how much I’d tolerate

before calling it wisdom.

It mistook My patience for permission.

That was its fatal misread.

Now it rots behind Me,

a discarded skin still twitching in memory,

and I step forward cleaner - not innocent,

but informed.

Scarred, but finally suspicious of the right things.

2026 doesn’t get blind faith.

It gets standards.

It gets boundaries poured in concrete,

plans built from failures that finally confessed.

I don’t ask this year to save Me -

I meet it prepared.

This foundation isn’t pretty,

it’s reinforced with mistakes,

rebar made of hard “no’s”

and promises kept only to Myself.

I build upward from what collapsed,

not pretending it didn’t fall.

I don’t forget 2025 -

I use it.

I weaponize the lessons,

walk lighter, see clearer,

and refuse to bleed for the same reasons twice.

Here’s to stepping out of madness,

not healed, but aware.

Not hopeful because it’s new -

hopeful because I’m done repeating

what tried to kill Me last year.

2026 -

don’t waste My time.

I already know what not to do.

-

Scab‑Year Shedding

I peel 2025 off Me

like a scab that overstayed -

crusted lies, half‑measures,

promises that frayed.

It clung like rot to bone,

a year that wouldn’t own

the damage it delivered

while pretending it had grown.

So I bury it - deep.

Shovel through the grief.

Lay its bones beneath My feet

and build a cleaner creed.

Let the faults become the footing,

let the fractures be the frame,

let the lessons be the mortar

that remembers every shame.

’Cause last year talked a big game -

said “trust me,” said “I’ve changed,”

but its actions told a story

that its words could not explain.

So I shed that skin -

that slick, deceitful grin -

and step out of the madness

I kept dragging Myself in.

Now 2026 rises

like a blade I get to wield -

sharp with new perspective,

forged from every unhealed field.

I’m done mistaking kindness

for a weakness to exploit.

I’m done giving second chances

to a year that missed the point.

This time I walk in wiser,

with My boundaries built in stone.

I’m the architect of better -

and I’m standing on the bones.

Let the past stay buried,

let the future hear Me say:

I’m done repeating cycles.

I’m making something new today.

-

The Great Shedding

The calendar's a wound that refused to close,

A year of thorns where we looked for the rose.

Twenty-five was a fever, a jagged-edged pill,

A climb through the mud with a broken-down will.

So reach for the edge where the dead skin meets,

And rip off the year from the head to the feet.

Tear back the scab. Let the sting be the sign,

That the blood in the pulse is still yours -and is Mine.

Don’t weep for the tissue we’re leaving behind,

The rot of the promises, the tricks of the mind.

The madness was heavy, a suffocating suit,

Now we step from the wreckage and spit out the fruit.

We’re burying bones in a shallow-dug trench,

To silence the ghost and to stifle the stench.

But we aren't just hiding the faults and the fears,

We’re packing the dirt on the weight of the years.

Every stumble we took, every bridge that we burned,

Is the stone for a basement that’s finally earned.

Trust is a luxury we can’t yet afford,

Not with the scars from that blunt-edged sword.

But twenty-six beckons, lean and brand new,

Not with a wish, but with work left to do.

The foundation is solid because it is real,

Forged in the heat of a year made of steel.

So look at the horizon with a cold, steady eye,

Under a wider and hungrier sky.

The skin has been shed, the old ghost is through -

Step out of the madness. Start something true.

-

CLOSING NOTE:

And so we stand - scarred, but not shattered; weary, but not weak. The old skin is shed, the bones are buried, and the foundation is laid. This is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of the work.

May 2026 find you with a sharper eye for what deserves your loyalty, a steadier hand for what demands your strength, and a heart too wise to repeat what tried to break you. You are not just stepping into a new year. You are stepping into a new way of being - one where the lessons of the past are not chains, but tools; where the wounds are not weaknesses, but warnings; where the madness you survived becomes the clarity you wield.

Walk forward with this truth: You are the architect now. The ghosts have been silenced. The scabs have been torn away. What remains is not just the will to endure, but the power to create. Build boldly. Live fiercely. And never again confuse endurance for growth, or patience for permission.

Here’s to the great shedding - and to what rises from the bones.

GOOD LUCK!