A quiet reflection on love, distance, chosen closeness, and the gentle rituals that carry us into what comes next The year ends not with a bang, but with a long exhale. That is how 2025 feels when I look at it from this quiet threshold between what has been and what might come next. We are not a household of resolutions. None of us - neither my wife nor our boyfriend nor I - have ever been particularly drawn to the ritual of promising ourselves radical change at the turn of the calendar. Perhaps it is because life already asks enough of us, or because we know too well how unpredictable the coming months will be. Instead, we do something gentler and, in its own way, more demanding: we reflect. We sit with the year, turn it over slowly, notice its textures, and then we begin, carefully, to imagine what the next one might hold. When I think of 2025 as a whole, the first word that comes to mind is "full." Full of days that rushed past too quickly, full of evenings where exhaustio...

There is a kind of silence that belongs only to Christmas. It is not the silence of absence or emptiness, but the silence of something profound choosing not to shout. I have often found that this silence speaks more clearly to my heart than sermons, debates, or explanations ever could. In it, I sense a truth that has shaped my faith, my marriage, and my understanding of myself: the secret of Christmas is not power, but humility; not self-assertion, but self-giving; not spectacle, but quiet presence. I write these reflections from a place that may seem paradoxical to some. I am a husband who understands himself as feminized in his role, and I am also deeply religious. In many contexts, feminization is reduced to fetish, performance, or sexuality alone. That framing has never been sufficient for me. For me, feminization is not primarily about desire; it is about vocation. It is about inhabiting a way of being that emphasizes receptivity, gentleness, service, and attentiveness to others. ...