A year of movement, courage, and unfinished stories
A personal reflection on 2025 — a year shaped by movement, new beginnings, emotional depth, and the courage to live with uncertainty.
2025 has been quite unexpected for me, due to the sheer number of things I’ve tried — not just tried, but actually stuck with 🤣.
At the same time, it was a year that challenged me emotionally more than any year in the past decade — including several other difficult ones.
Yet those challenges didn’t destabilize me or pull me away from the path I wanted to walk.
Instead, they accelerated my transformation toward the person I consciously chose to become.
My path toward fully embracing uncertainty started a few years ago.
I’ve always lived with the belief that if you truly want to achieve something, you can.
At the same time, I had to acknowledge that I left the purely academic path — a path I had considered my path for most of my life.
Not because I believed I couldn’t walk it,
but because I needed time to recover — to accept burnout, to heal, and to realize that there is no such thing as one true path.
If the universe is truly infinite — or if there are countless parallel realities — then uncertainty isn’t a flaw of existence. It is its defining feature.
And in at least one of those realities, this path was always inevitable 😉.
Emotional challenges
The most difficult moments this year were connected to a person I had known all my life — and with whom I will never be able to have another dialogue: my mother.
When she died, I didn’t immediately feel sad or empty. In some way, I was even relieved that the suffering she had to endure during her final months had come to an end.
And yet, the hole it left behind is still significant.
Even now, when I think about her or about how it ended, tears still start to well up in my eyes 🥲.
Her death also had a profound impact on my family, altering many interpersonal dynamics.
Grief is rarely as simple as the commonly cited five stages suggest. It is not linear. It is complex, deeply individual, and shaped by far more factors than we usually acknowledge.
Over time, I realized that grief is influenced by a wide range of factors — far beyond the loss itself.
This list is neither complete nor final, but it helped me understand why grief can look so different from person to person:
- Individual factors of grief
- Subjective importance of the relationship
- the role of the person in one’s life
- their impact and symbolic function
- unresolved aspects or open ends
- Type of loss
- death, separation, or emotional disconnection
- sudden, slow, or expected loss
- with or without parting words
- Personality structure and emotional depth
- emotional sensitivity
- capacity for reflection
- ability to deal with ambivalence
- need for meaning, truth, and coherence
- Prior experience of loss
- previous deaths
- emotional losses
- missed departures
- previously broken bonds
- Attachment style and grief regulation
- secure (oscillating between sharing and autonomy)
- anxious (intense, circulating, long-lasting)
- dismissive-avoidant (controlled, rationalized, delayed)
- fearful-avoidant (oscillating between flooding and retreat)
- Life situation and external stressors
- being in a state of transition
- availability of stabilizing factors
- open or blocked decisions for the future
- Cognitive Type and thought patterns
- counterfactual thinking
- ability to imagine future possibilities
- emotional integration of uncertainty
- Social resonance and support
- mirroring grief with others
- normalization and gradual letting go
- grieving alone tends to be more intense
- Neurobiological and physical factors
- stress reactivity of the nervous system
- ability for self-soothing
- sleep, movement, and physical regulation
- Subjective importance of the relationship
This list isn’t meant to explain grief completely — it merely reflects how complex and deeply personal it revealed itself to be for me.
Around the time my mother died, I also experienced several meaningful “firsts” — after deciding to explore new things for myself.
These moments involved a wonderful person. Someone who reminded me of who I once was, and of who I might still become.
However, this is not a story I want to share in detail at this point.
It doesn’t feel like just my story to tell — and without its ending, it would remain a very broken one 😅.
In many ways, this beautiful but also painful experience pushed me out of my cocoon and into becoming a butterfly 🤣 — even though I am clearly still growing (and I hope that never stops 😂).
I don’t think I have ever matured this quickly in my life.
It was deeply transformative.
I doubt I would be the person I am today without it.
It wasn’t easy — and at times it was more painful than the death of my mother 😔.
But true growth rarely is.
Some stories never fully resolve.
They remain uncertain — never reaching certainty, never fully knowing whether the cat is dead or alive, even if it’s 95% dead 😉.
Becoming a climber
One of the first new hobbies I tried this year was climbing.
I started with a few courses, mostly to figure out whether it was something for me — but the trajectory that unfolded was not something I would have expected.
My first course was top-rope climbing — and in fact my very first time climbing at all.
Shortly after, I began learning lead climbing. At the time, my weight was around 96 kg, which made everything noticeably more challenging. My technique was poor, I was very stiff, and I lacked any real sense of ease 😅.
My third course took place outdoors in the Harz and felt like a completely different endeavor. It was my first time abseiling, and I ended up blooding my legs on sharp granite.
It was significantly harder — partly because I didn’t bring proper boots, but also because my technique was still far from developed.
n August, I had one of the best vacations I’ve had so far: a via ferrata course in the Alps.
In retrospect, it feels almost ridiculous that just half a year earlier I had never properly climbed — and suddenly found myself on my first climbing summits 😮.
Only a month later, in September, I joined another course in the Alps. This time it led me to my first proper 3,000 m summit — “a real mountain,” as my guide put it.
Stepping into mountaineering turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made. I enjoy it deeply, and I’ve started approaching it in a much more relaxed way. I’m genuinely curious where these adventures will lead me next.
Along the way, I also started bouldering to work on my technique.
There’s still a long path ahead — and that feels exactly right.
Becoming a paddler
Another new hobby I tried this year was dragon boat paddling — something I had never done before.
My company has a dragon boat team, and I decided to join mainly to see whether team sports could be something for me. I also wanted to step a bit further out of my comfort zone and build new connections.
The Schachtpiraten are a wonderful team — warm-hearted, supportive, and with a strong sense of harmony.
Apparently, that wasn’t always the case, as I’ve been told repeatedly 😅.
Taking up the paddle, learning the technique, and truly finding the right rhythm within a team turned out to be far from easy.
Over the course of the year, I also joined my first team competitions.
It started with a relay race, followed by several regattas with our dragon boat team.
Overall, it was a fascinating experience — intense, challenging, and accompanied by many fun side moments.
And, of course — since it’s me — the year ended with me becoming captain of the Schachtpiraten 🤣.
Becoming a swimmer
This year, I decided to learn how to swim — apparently I wasn’t learning enough new things in parallel 🤣.
After a few YouTube-guided training sessions, I took my first hesitant swim in a lake — very poorly, and only for a brief moment.
That experience convinced me to take several basic swimming courses for adults, focusing on breaststroke and freestyle.
Recently, I even completed my first proper swim in the Atlantic, off the coast of Tenerife — a truly salty experience 😁 (although technically in 2026).
Becoming a blogger
A few months ago, in September, I started working on NoCertainties.
Originally, I planned to write one article per week — which, admittedly, has turned into roughly one article per month 🤣.
Writing more — and writing regularly — had been on my to-do list for quite some time.
During my Dachstein adventure, I finally found the motivation to start a blog.
I hope it will grow into more than just a collection of articles — perhaps the beginning of a project whose future shape I still can’t fully foresee.
Along the way, I didn’t just start blogging, but also began creating content on Instagram and Facebook.
Now all that’s left is learning how to grow my follower numbers 🤣.
My first solo sports events
This year, I also participated in my first official race — the Harz Gebirgslauf half marathon — which was a personal highlight for me.
I absolutely loved the atmosphere, and I enjoyed the fact that I ended up running trails I would normally hike.
On the way home, I met a marathon runner I ended up traveling back with.
He inspired me more than he probably realized. On average, he runs two marathons every second weekend. By the time I met him, he had already completed over 40 marathons, finished two Ironman races, and even a 100-mile race — all in the same year.
He works full time, is in a long-term relationship, and still manages to train around four to five hours a day — once in the morning and once in the afternoon — often using public transport to get to races 😊.
Ironically, he found it unbelievable that someone would choose one of the hardest half marathons in northern Germany as their first official solo competition 🤣.
I consider that a badge of honor 😁.
Later that year, I also decided to do my first long-distance walk: a 55 km hike, covering 55 km through Berlin.
Luckily, I found great company along the way — a therapist and former director of a mental health clinic in Berlin, who regularly goes on solo treks around the world, always in search of adventure.
Becoming a trekker
This was something I had been thinking about for quite a while — and it turned out to be the next real cornerstone on my personal path.
It also came with many firsts: my first time boarding and flying on an airplane, my first journey to Spain, and technically even my first trip to the African continent.
I began my first multi-day trek along the GR 131 “El Bastón” on La Palma.
The route led me across volcanic landscapes — ash and lava fields shaped by countless eruptions. On the first day, I was even accompanied by a raven for a while, which felt strangely fitting.
I slept in a simple shelter and later camped beneath the stars near the highest point of the island, Roque de los Muchachos.
It was only a short trek — four days in total — but it was nonetheless deeply impressive.
Standing above the vastness of the Caldera de Taburiente, it became clear to me that this was more than just another adventure. It felt like the beginning of something I wanted to keep returning to.
Traveling
Overall, I traveled more this year than ever before.
I spent a total of two weeks in Austria across two separate trips, a few days in Slovenia, and a full week in Croatia — including visits with friends.
I also spent a couple of days in Italy, as well as a week in Spain, exploring the Canary Islands — La Palma and Tenerife — with the journey extending into the first week of 2026.
Travel gradually shifted from being an exception to becoming a natural part of my life.
I rarely start with a fixed plan, instead figuring out where to go and for how long once I’m already there.
Looking towards 2026
Part of me feels intimidated when looking toward 2026, especially given how deeply transformative 2025 has been for me.
This year, I am the captain of a dragon boat team.
I’m also planning to run my first marathon in April, attempt a run-hike across the Harz, and take on a 55 km ultra trail run in the Harz — probably my most ambitious goal so far 😬.
Yet the biggest challenge I am currently looking toward is a volunteer experience in Nepal, likely lasting at least a full month, which I have just started planning 😅.
It may even include a trek to Everest Base Camp 😁.
I’m also considering other journeys, such as a climbing trek along the east coast of Sardinia with the DAV Summit Club — following the Selvaggio Blu, one of the most demanding treks in Italy 😉.
Of course, there are many smaller — and more personal — challenges and experiences I’m looking forward to as well.
The year has already begun with several unexpected and memorable moments. Then again, this is what tends to happen when you explore life while accepting that there are no certainties.
If we never give things a try, we’re left wondering what could have been — not because uncertainty wouldn’t exist anyway, but because we usually don’t wonder about all possibilities.
We wonder about the ones we felt drawn to, but didn’t explore — because we lacked the courage to face the unknown, anticipating outcomes that kept us away rather than possibilities that felt less certain 😔.
I wish you all a wonderful year in 2026 — and the bravery to accept that nothing is certain until it has been realized 😉.
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