From the Year of the Snake to the Year of the Fire Horse: What This Threshold Means for Eating Disorder Recovery
When growth looks like letting go — and aliveness asks to be lived
As 2025 came to a close, I felt a natural pull inward.
A desire to pause, digest, and take stock of what actually unfolded—not what I thought should have happened.
I took time to consciously choose not to replay the familiar end-of-year narratives of judgemental self-evaluation or self-punishment.
Instead, I let myself feel what the year was all about for me.
2025 year moved me.
It unsettled me.
It stripped things back.
It pushed me, and at times, I resisted.
I lived in three different homes.
A significant relationship ended painfully.
I attempted to launch group programs that didn’t lift off.
I nearly cancelled my end of year retreat more than once.
There were moments that felt confusing. Disappointing. Even humiliating.
Moments where I found myself asking:
What am I doing wrong?
Why isn’t this working?
Why does everything feel harder than I imagined?
What is wrong with me?
And yet, standing here now, I can feel something different beneath the surface.
The Year of the Snake: When Things Don’t Lift Off
Looking back, I can see that many of the things that didn’t work, didn’t launch, didn’t continue, or didn’t arrive in the form I expected were doing important work.
They were clearing space.
The Year of the Snake has not been flashy.
It is subterranean, aligning, and exacting.
Snake energy sheds what no longer fits often without explanation or reassurance.
This Snake year showed me:
where I was overreaching
where I was performing instead of inhabiting
where I was forcing momentum instead of listening
where I was holding on out of fear rather than truth
It gave me space to grieve, to recenter, and to build strength and confidence from the inside out.
I didn’t get the year I planned.
I got the year I needed.
And that distinction matters—especially in eating disorder recovery.
Because recovery and growth are not synonymous with achievement.
It’s about alignment. Snake doesn’t rush. It digests.
And sometimes alignment looks like:
endings
failure
things falling away
being brought back into contact with your actual capacity
Over time, I’ve learned to recognize these moments not as punishments, but as reorientation.
They brought me back into integrity with myself.
Back to the truth of my needs, desires, and limits.
Back to coherence.
If you’ve lived with an eating disorder, you may recognize this too.
Recovery is often less about fixing and more about unlearning the belief that you must override yourself to be worthy of life.
A Different Way of Reflecting on Your Snake Year
As this year closes, I’m less interested in asking:
“What did I achieve?”
And more curious about:
What fell away because it was no longer true?
Where did life intervene, even when I resisted?
What asked me to loosen my grip on control?
Who am I becoming—and who am I becoming with?
You don’t need clean answers to these questions.
One of the deepest challenges in integration (whether from a year like this or from psychedelic journeys and somatic experiences) is resisting the urge to conclude too quickly.
Snake taught us to have patience in the ambiguity.
Can you stay with what isn’t resolved yet?
Can you live the questions as a quest, rather than rushing toward certainty?
Entering the Year of the Fire Horse: Aliveness Returns
And on February 17th, 2026, we cross a threshold.
2026 is a Year of the Fire Horse.
And it does not ask you to be small.
Fire Horse is untamed life force. Instinct. Appetite. Boundaries. Desire. No more starving.
This year does not reward obedience. It does not reward self-control dressed up as virtue.
All that you shed and are shedding in the Year of the Snake has been preparing you for this.
Aliveness, authenticity, integrity.
Fire Horse energy breaks what’s been tightening the reins:
silencing hunger
swallowing words
shrinking pleasure
apologizing for taking up space
Assertiveness here is not aggression. It’s the body saying:
“I won’t abandon myself to be acceptable.”
For those in eating disorder recovery, this matters deeply.
Because eating disorder recovery is not simply about food. It is about learning how to be with our authentic aliveness.
Fire Horse restores horsepower to the nervous system:
personal will
forward movement
pleasure as orientatin
courage to be seen without masks
It asks you to stop hiding behind people-pleasing or compliance and to meet your fears not as proof of failure, but as signs you are moving closer to truth.
A Year for the Body to Lead
2026 is also a 1 year, a beginning. And all beginnings require courage.
This is a year for:
choosing nourishment over control
letting desire inform direction
saying no without justification
refusing to live half-alive
Snake prepared the ground.
Fire Horse asks you to move.
Not recklessly. Honestly.
Not performatively. Embodied.
If you are in recovery, this year may ask you to trust your body a little more than your fear.
And that, too, is a beginning.
Photo by Bozhin Karaivanov on Unsplash
