Closing Doors. Opening Others.

I have never liked New Year’s as a holiday. I have never been great at transition. The forced optimism, the clean lines we draw between one year and the next, have always felt a little dishonest to me. Life rarely resets on schedule. More often, it carries its weight forward.

This year reminded me of that.

Stepping down as Chair of the Democratic National Committee was not easy. That role shaped me, tested me, and in many ways defined a season of my life. It came with extraordinary responsibility, extraordinary pressure, and extraordinary people. Letting go of it meant closing a door I had lived behind for years. It also meant trusting that there were still rooms ahead I had not yet entered.

And there were.

This year, I opened the door to Vision Blue Strategies and Vision Blue Media. These were not pivots so much as continuations, an extension of the same instinct that pulled me into public life in the first place: build something durable, tell the truth plainly, and create space for voices that are too often ignored or flattened. Starting again is exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure. You trade certainty for possibility. But you also reclaim authorship of your own time and imagination.

One of the unexpected gifts of this transition has been time. Real time. The kind that does not show up on a résumé but reshapes your life.

I have been able to go to violin practices. To linger over date nights with my wife instead of squeezing them between flights. To take trips with family and friends without watching the clock or scanning the news every five minutes. These moments may seem small from the outside, but they recalibrated me in ways I did not know I needed. They reminded me that leadership begins at home, and that presence is its own form of purpose.

There were also highs that reminded me why this work still matters so deeply to me.

Being honored by Yale’s African American Cultural Center with its Legacy Award was one of those grounding moments that stops you in your tracks. Yale has been a through line in my life, not just as an institution, but as a community that challenged me to think harder about power, history, and responsibility. To be recognized in that space felt like a quiet affirmation that the long road still has meaning.

Then there was At Our Table.

At its core, At Our Table is an homage to my grandparents and to the powerful moments and conversations that unfolded around our table growing up. That table was where stories were told, disagreements were worked through, lessons were passed down, and love was affirmed. It was where I learned to listen before speaking, and to understand that truth often lives in the space between people who see the world differently.

What began as a simple belief that we need fewer talking points and more honest conversations became one of the most energizing parts of my year. Sitting across from leaders and storytellers, letting them be human rather than headlines, reminded me why listening is still a radical act. Conversations with Vice President Harris, Governor Walz, Rachel Maddow, Hunter Biden, and many others were not about viral moments. They were about vulnerability, reflection, and complexity. About the messiness that real leadership actually requires.

Alongside all of this, I have been quietly working on my book.

Writing it has been harder than I expected. Reliving certain moments, especially those marked by conflict, disappointment, or loneliness, can reopen old wounds. But there is also something deeply therapeutic about naming what I carried silently for so long. Writing without filters has allowed me to reclaim parts of myself that were flattened by the demands of office. It has reminded me that truth, even when uncomfortable, is a form of freedom.

This year was also hard professionally in ways that are less visible.

Opportunities that have traditionally opened for former chairs never materialized. Doors I was told would open quietly stayed shut. That reality forced a familiar response, one deeply embedded in the DNA of most Black folks in this country: smile, hustle, adapt, create. There was no glide path, no safety net, just the necessity of making something out of almost nothing. As the old saying goes, it meant making a dollar out of fifteen cents, because that is what survival, and often success, has required of us for generations.

And this year was hard to witness.

2025 laid bare how fragile our democratic institutions can be when they are treated as disposable. Programs that people rely on to survive, to heal, or simply to get a leg up were slashed or hollowed out with alarming indifference. It was hard to watch families live with the fear of immigration raids, workers lose jobs overnight through massive layoffs, and the spectacle of pardons for pay unfold in plain sight.

What may have been most troubling was the fecklessness of too many Republicans who knew better. Leaders too meek, too scared, or too compromised to stand up for what is right, even when the stakes were obvious. Silence became complicity. Cowardice dressed up as pragmatism. And the damage, to trust, to stability, to human dignity, will linger long after the headlines move on.

But this year also carried real loss.

My grandmother, Ms. Bookie, passed away, and with her went a living archive of love, memory, and grounding. There are people who shape you not through speeches or lessons, but through presence. She was that for me. Her passing left a quiet ache that no achievement can offset. Grief has a way of humbling ambition, of reminding you what endures when titles fade. I carry her with me into whatever comes next.

I have never been much for choosing a word for the year. But my wife started 2025 with hers: flourish.

If I am honest, 2025 was not a year of flourishing for me. It was a year of survival. Of adjustment. Of reinvention. Of learning how to breathe again after holding it for too long. And maybe that is okay. Not every year is meant for bloom. Some years are about keeping the roots alive.

But I am leaning into 2026.

I am hopeful it brings some of the political luck we last felt in 2006. Hopeful that persistence meets opportunity again. Hopeful that rebuilding in rural communities, strengthening our footing in the South, and telling honest stories begins to show itself not just in effort, but in outcomes. Hopeful that we retake congressional majorities and remind ourselves what is possible when we refuse to give up ground.

So if I had to choose a word this year, I would borrow from my wife, but it would not be just for me.

It would be for all of us.

Flourish.

Not as a slogan. Not as denial. But as an insistence that even after loss, even after setbacks, even after years that test us, growth is still possible. That dignity still matters. That democracy, like people, can recover if we are willing to care for it.

I step into the next year not pretending the road is easy, but believing it is still worth walking.

Onward.