Podcast Summary: The Spiritual Hustler Host: Jessica Zweig
Episode: Shedding Season: Why Everything You Outgrew in 2025's Year of the Snake Had to Go
Date: December 30, 2025

Main Theme: Embracing the Shedding Season of 2025 and Preparing for New Beginnings in 2026

This reflective solo episode, hosted by Jessica Zweig, delves deep into the spiritual and personal transformations catalyzed by the numerological and astrological energies of 2025—the “Year of the Snake” and a numerological 9 year. Jessica explores themes of endings, shedding old layers, and necessary closures, and how these pave the way for powerful new beginnings as the “Year of the Fire Horse” (2026) approaches. The episode blends practical entrepreneurial insights with spiritual teachings, aiming to empower women to lead from love, integrity, and alignment.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Energy and Meaning of 2025’s Year of the Snake (04:36)

• Jessica frames 2025 as a year not of building, but of endings and closure, referencing numerology’s nine-year cycles.
• She notes widespread “divorces, breakups, job losses, identity dissolutions,” observing that these were not just circumstantial, but about shedding aspects of ourselves that tolerated misalignment.
• Quote:

  “What ended in 2025 was not the job or just the relationship or the circumstance. What ended was the part of you that tolerated it. And that is something to really celebrate.” (06:16)

2. Snake Medicine: The Power and Pain of Shedding (06:30)

• Drawing on the symbolism of the snake, Jessica suggests that shedding is necessary for growth, though it can be brutal and uncomfortable.
• Emphasizes that the process serves a higher purpose, preparing for expansion.
• Quote:

  “The snake doesn’t just destroy things randomly. The power of the snake—snake medicine—is so strong, it sheds what no longer can contain her growth.” (06:39)

3. Personal Reflections: Endings and Upgrades (07:10, 10:42)

• Jessica gets vulnerable about her own year. Despite external successes, she experienced significant internal changes—letting go of friendships and building a new team.
• She highlights the importance of being surrounded by empowered, loving women and shares how establishing “clean and sovereign boundaries” (07:20) elevated her circle.
• Quote:

  “I took stock of that circle and realized it wasn’t completely immaculate. This year demanded like a whole new next level of boundaries from me...very clear and clean and sovereign.” (07:35)

4. Leadership Lessons and Shedding in Business (10:42)

• Jessica discusses the challenges of team leadership when it means making difficult—but aligned—decisions and not avoiding hard truths.
• Leadership, she says, “means choosing alignment over comfort, truth over loyalty, and long-term integrity over short-term relief.”
  (10:48)

5. Shedding on the Material and Identity Levels: Moving Home (11:04)

• Transitioning into a new, custom-built home prompted a massive purge—physically and emotionally.
• The move triggered a profound self-worth initiation, forcing Jessica to release internal resistance to abundance and beauty.
• Quote:

  “The house that I am living in currently required a new version of me that no longer believed I had to earn beauty and safety or abundance through struggle...That part of me had to die.” (12:46)

6. The Spiritual Principle of Making Space (13:40)

• Jessica reframes painful changes as spiritual preparation, not punishment.
• “The deeper the loss, the deeper the expansion.”
  (13:55)
• Emphasizes that all the shedding of 2025 created the capacity for what’s next—none of it was random.

7. Looking Forward: The Year of the Fire Horse (15:40)

• 2026 is a numerological “1” year—a year of new beginnings—and the rare “Year of the Fire Horse.”
• Jessica shares cultural context (notably, the 1966 drop in birth rates in Japan due to fear of strong-willed Fire Horse girls) and reframes this as a call for powerful female leadership.
• Quote:

  “This is the year for powerful female entrepreneurs. A year of momentum, visibility, and courage in a way we have never allowed ourselves to trust.” (17:10)

8. Final Empowerment and Gratitude (18:01)

• Jessica assures listeners: whatever “almost broke you” in 2025 was a becoming, not a breaking.
• She raises a metaphorical glass to all the growth, release, and potential of her audience.
• Quote:

  “If you’re listening and thinking, ‘Wow, this year almost broke me too,’ I want you to know that you were never breaking, you were becoming.” (18:26)

Memorable Moments & Quotes with Timestamps

• “What ended was the part of you that tolerated it.” (06:16)
• “The snake doesn’t just destroy things randomly. The power of the snake...it sheds what no longer can contain her growth.” (06:39)
• “I stand in a circle of unbelievable powerful women who are so loving I could cry.” (07:25)
• "Leadership...means choosing alignment over comfort, truth over loyalty, and long-term integrity over short-term relief." (10:48)
• “It wasn’t a logistical upgrade as much as it was a worthiness upgrade…That part of me had to die.” (12:46)
• “The deeper the loss, the deeper the expansion.” (13:55)
• "We can only ride that fire horse if the snake went first. You had to shed the old skin." (17:30)
• “You were never breaking, you were becoming.” (18:26)

Important Timestamps

• [04:36] – Introduction to 2025 as the Year of the Snake and numerological 9 year
• [06:16] – Insights on endings and what truly ended in 2025
• [07:10] – Jessica’s personal story of friendship transitions
• [10:42] – Leadership, team changes, and difficult decisions
• [11:04] – Moving homes: shedding material and emotional baggage
• [13:40] – The principle of making spiritual space for growth
• [15:40] – Year of the Fire Horse preview and cultural significance
• [17:10] – Empowerment for women entrepreneurs in 2026
• [18:26] – Transformation: Reframing “breaking” as “becoming”

Conclusion

Jessica Zweig closes 2025 with a raw, honest celebration of the necessary endings and courageous shedding of the past year. By blending deeply personal narrative with collective spiritual wisdom, she prepares her audience—a community of female leaders—to ride confidently into 2026, a year brimming with fiery potential, expanded capacity, and soul-driven leadership. Her message: The greatest expansions follow the bravest releases.

For anyone seeking hope, resonance, or empowerment after a tough year, this episode stands as both a mirror and an invitation to embrace the growth that follows letting go.