Au revoir, 2025

The goal of life is not to achieve. The goal of life is to live. — Corinne Low

Yesterday morning, bundled up head to toes out into the frigid New England air, I took a walk. Amongst the bare beech and maple trees, boots crunching on the layers of discarded dead leaves that created the forest floor, I reflected on how profound this new practice has been for me this year. The simplicity of it. The pace of it. The presence of it. The awe. When I was younger — impatient and restless — walks felt utterly boring. Walking for the sake of walking, without a destination in mind, didn’t seem to make any sense.

These days though, I’ve been sensing a shift inside of me: a softening, a slowing down, a moving through the world with less rushing and more noticing. I’m acutely aware of this changing pace of life, a tenderness beginning to bubble up that’s releasing the pressure I’ve steadily put upon myself throughout my early adulthood. This year, I’ve been learning a new way of moving within the world. A subtle shift of being.

At the start of 2025, I claimed my intention for the year to be immersion: to immerse myself in my work, my community, and as often as I could, the ocean — fully engulfed in whatever activity I find myself in, allowing the tides of life to wash over me with surrender and acceptance. Diving into the waves head first, tasting salty waters.

When asked in an annual review to reflect on the best day of 2025, what immediately came to mind was our adventure day up the Kalalau Valley with my husband. It was a day of immersive bliss: offline and disconnected from the world, filled to the brim with exploration, play, and deep connection. It felt like pure, uninhibited freedom. That day, we conceived.

Six weeks later, our Kalalau baby ended in a miscarriage that rocked my world. Another immersion of sorts, but this chapter felt surrounded by darkness, submerged in a depth where the sunlight could not penetrate for awhile. The shock, the burial, the recovery, the resulting anxiety. I experienced grief in a whole new way, and it opened me up to the expansive spectrum of the human experience.

A few days later, our mini Australian Shepherd 8-week old puppy, Poe, arrived at our doorstep, with what ended up being the most fortunate timing given my unexpected state. Adopting Poe was by far the best decision we made this year, a result of me spending all of 4th of July convincing my husband that it was time we got a puppy. Poe has brightened our world, ushering us into the role of caregivers and co-parents, and, for the first time, making it feel like we have a little family of our own.

And now as I write this, another being emerges: a baby boy immersed in my womb and suspended in my waters. He’s due to arrive early next summer.

On the brink of true motherhood, I’ve started to feel myself transition from self-focused striving towards a familial-focused nurturing. Perhaps I can point to this transition as the reason for such a reflective tone, and a reduced pace of life that my body requires these days. I am on the cusp of transitioning from maiden to mother, arguably the most life-altering rite of passage for a woman. I just discovered there’s a specific word for this metamorphosis: matrescence.

“The profound, complex, and multi-faceted developmental passage of becoming a mother; a holistic transformation that encompasses everything from brain plasticity and hormonal surges to redefining one’s sense of self, role, and place in the world”.

Here in Connecticut, where I’m spending the holidays, the gardens lie quiet —brown, bare, and leafless. I was first struck by their starkness, so different from the lush abundance of Los Angeles. How, I wondered, could life ever take root here again?

But I know that in a few months time, peeks of green will begin to sprout once again. I’ve found comfort in this landscape as a reflection of how Fleurvoyant has felt this year, a transition into a new city that has required a starting over, a second beginning, and with it, a slower revving up than I expected as we re-established our footing. In all honesty, at points it felt bleak, causing self-doubt to tamper with my vision for what I know I can achieve, in time. With patience. With trust.

This has been a year of testing my perseverance and resilience. One of my biggest perspective shifts came from reading The Gap & The Gain, which advises to not compare yourself to where you want to be, but rather, from how far you’ve already gone.

In that sense, we have indeed made strides this year: 13 weddings across both coasts, the official closing of our NYC studio, and countless events, workshops, pop-ups, and deliveries. Moreover, a big focus for this year was honing in on our brand and online offerings, launching a new website, online order flower delivery, merch for sale, fall & winter seasonal almanacs, and continuing our newsletter field notes. In the background, we’ve also been testing herbal formulas, gift kits, and working on a full rebrand that I’m excited to announce in the new year.

It’s been a year of creativity and most of all, creation. Long days spent in the studio with music blasting and doing what I love most: making art with flowers, crafting medicine with herbs, and transcribing thoughts into words. Its these moments of flow state that remind me why I am on this path, devoted to the flowers.

This is the year I’ve found myself feeling more aligned and living in accordance with my values than ever before. No longer on the aspirational track of getting good grades or climbing the corporate ladder, I find myself in a fortunate spot of being able to follow my curiosity and lean into my feminine, where I feel more and more drawn towards these days (I suspect a common effect of matrescence).

Lastly, I’m grateful for working alongside Tracy of Long Weekend this year, a fellow small business owner who has inspired me that it is possible to run a successful creative studio, travel the world, prioritize wellbeing and work/life balance, invest in relationships, and approach each day with poise and purpose. We need more role models like her in our lives. Thank you, Tracy.

Looking back at 2025, the word that stays with me is savoring — a way of paying attention to small, everyday moments that stretch time and anchor us in the present. When attention sharpens like this, even the simplest experiences feel expansive and quietly beautiful. It’s a kind of presence that brings back youthful wonder, gratitude, and ease: morning cuddles with my puppy, sipping tea at sunrise, basking in the sunshine during lunch, escaping to the beach at dusk, gathering with friends around candlelight. Watching the privet outside our kitchen window transform season over season, from fragrant blooms to leafy greens to navy blue berries. Witnessing it all, in rapture.

In the Disney-Pixar film Soul (which I just rewatched on the flight back east), the protagonist, Joe Gardner, finds himself reckoning with his life after a near-fatal accident — one that happens just as his long-awaited “big break” as a jazz musician finally arrives. His narrow fixation on achievement is precisely what leaves his life feeling small and unfinished once he enters the soul world, as if failing to fulfill his singular vision of purpose rendered it unworthy. Over the course of the film, Joe comes to realize that what he once believed to be his life’s purpose is not, in fact, what life is really about. Rather, it’s the falling leaf off of the tree, caught in a ray of sunlight as it dances down to the pavement, that symbolizes the true meaning of why we are put on this earth: the simple beauty of being able to experience life itself.

This year, more than ever, I’ve finally begun to understand this message.

At 33, I’ve been leaning into a well-worn cliché, ‘Enjoy the journey, not the destination’, while trying to take to heart the advice that keeps resurfacing this year: ‘Worry less.’ Easier said than done, of course. Anxiety and insecurity have a way of leaving their marks, and I still feel the undertow of old wounds.

Yet even so… I’ve never been more acutely aware of how good this specific moment in time feels. I am grateful for my new tea ceremony practice that has become my own form of mindfulness meditation, rooted in the present while cupping a steaming bowl of tea, emptying my mind and opening up my senses to the alchemy that transforms before me. Spaciousness. These moments of stillness, solitude and simple pleasure have reshaped my perception of what matters.

And here’s what I’ve found matters most: our people. The texture of our lives is shaped by the people who live alongside us. Research backs it up too: the Harvard Study of Adult Development found that good, close relationships are the single strongest predictor of a long, healthy, and happy life. I believe it.

That truth showed itself most clearly this year in the time I spent with my family and in-law’s. I savored our weeks together, while slowly coming to understand my parents in a new way as I step closer to becoming one myself. As my mom has always said, family is everything. I finally understand what she means.

Beyond family, I immersed myself in my friendships this year. They were the ones that showed up with flowers at my door while I cried in their arms. They were the ones I danced all night with, celebrated with, and created magic with — from Sophos Society dinners to book club to morning tea ceremonies to impromptu moon circles. These are the moments I’ll remember most: when we showed up for each other, time and time again. My friends are the reason this year has felt so saturated and colorful and rich. Umami in human form.

In truth, I feel unspeakably lucky, soaked in gratitude for the life I’m co-designing with my husband, the family we’re creating together, and the people we’re choosing to love.

As 2025 comes to a close, what I feel most proud of now is not so much what I’ve done, but how it’s felt. A slower pace, a shifting body, a life filled with blooming and being — immersed in the current and savoring every moment.

Bonne année!

xx, Em