December 01, 2025

Shedding Skins

Quiet Transformations & Lessons From The Year of The Snake

Last week, we explored the art of letting go—loosening our grip on what no longer fits. This week, the invitation deepens: it’s about shedding skins.

In Chinese Zodiac 2025 is the Year of the Snake—symbolizing wisdom, elegance and quiet inner transformation. Snake years invite us to shed the layers we’ve quietly outgrown and reveal the next version of ourselves. Not through dramatic upheaval, but through slow, intentional and deliberate refinement.

Perhaps you’ve felt it too—the subtle pull to release old patterns, the quiet drifting of relationships and friendships that no longer fit, the shifting of thoughts and habits you’ve outgrown. There’s a gentle insistence of something new emerging.

Like the snake, we are invited to shed what no longer serves us and step into the clarity, strength, and truth waiting just beneath the surface.

If your year has looked anything like mine, it’s likely been full of shake-ups and wake-up calls—moments that stripped back the layers, bringing clarity and truths we weren’t always ready to face. There's been relationship transformations, moves, endings and new beginnings.

I’ve been repeatedly invited—and sometimes pushed—into meeting myself in raw, unfiltered ways, shedding layers I hadn’t even realized I was still wearing.

Snake energy isn’t comfortable, but it is honest—like wearing something just a little too tight. Shoes that are too small. Pants you can't breath in. A shirt with a collar that's too snug.  Eventually, you can’t ignore the discomfort. 

This entire year has been an intentional inward journey. I made a quiet commitment to spend my 40th year in solitude, silence, and self-reflection—but this past weekend took me even deeper than I expected.

It wasn’t the gentle kind of weekend retreat I’ve been choosing for myself all year. It felt more like a necessary descent—into emotions I thought I had already worked through, and into parts of myself I didn’t realize were still waiting to be acknowledged. It was confronting. Honest. Like being asked to look in the mirror again. Closer this time.  

There’s a truth I keep coming back to: if you’re not growing, you’re dying.

The snake that doesn't shed, dies. 

I noticed myself wanting to slip back into familiar comfort patterns: wrapping myself in blankets, coiling up in bed, scrolling, withdrawing, checking out. Avoiding what felt like my death.  

But instead of fleeing, avoiding or numbing, I stayed. I sat. I observed myself. I let the emotions and sensations rise. I let the truth meet me. I breathed into the discomfort, holding onto the quiet reassurance that this too shall pass. 

And it did.

It was just snake energy doing what it does best—inviting me to shed what no longer fit. 

The process of becoming the next version of ourselves is rarely graceful. It calls for an honest unraveling—a willingness to let things get messy. To be vulnerable. To strip down to the parts of yourself you usually keep hidden… even from yourself.

For me, that looked like tears, grief, retreating into hermit mode, and saying goodbye to yet another version of myself I had outgrown—making room for the Lindsay who has been quietly, patiently waiting to emerge from under the rock.

It’s like a crab or lobster molting its shell—soft and vulnerable at first, tender where the old armor has fallen away, unsure if the new one will hold. I’ve been living a bit like a hermit this year, and each time I think I am ready to step back out into the world, I find I’ve outgrown my shell before it's fully hardened. Exposed. Tender. Yet somehow, perfectly positioned for growth and expansion.

Trust the process. 

As we step into the final month of 2025, trust the rhythm of your own transformation. Honour the endings, welcome the new beginnings, and be kind to yourself in those tender in-between moments—when you’ve released what no longer serves you but haven’t yet fully stepped into the person you are becoming.

Today, I feel that tenderness—the softness that comes after shedding—but also clarity. Honesty. Space. Breathing room for what is ready to emerge.

Trust the process and the slow, quiet work of becoming.

Invitation to Reflect:

I'll share the question I kept returning to all weekend and invite you to ask yourself:

What am I ready to release so I can meet myself more truthfully?

Shed your skin—gently, in your own time.
The way a snake does when it knows a new layer of itself is waiting beneath.

Here’s to a week of soft honesty, quiet transformation, and tenderly releasing whatever is ready to fall away.

With love,

Lindsay

xo 💙

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