Sophia Bush Reflects on Turbulent 2023 Amid Illness & Divorce

Sophia Bush is reflecting on 2023.

The 41-year-old One Tree Hill alum spoke out in a candid post following New Year’s weekend on her Instagram.

“What a year. My whole life I’ve heard the saying ‘put your own oxygen mask on first’ and this year I learned what it meant,” she began.

“This past year humbled me, broke me, built me, betrayed me, freed me, and showed me what it means to really be alive.”

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“No more playing small. No more turning my back on myself. No more settling for what falls short because ‘who am I to ask for more?’ This year put me back in my body. I left it a long time ago, in such a way that I forgot what it felt like to inhabit my own skin. I feel my whole self from the tops of my ears to the tips of my toes now. It’s breathtaking. Life giving. Affirming,” Sophia continued.

“This year taught me to listen to myself and no one else. To let go of expectation that wounds and grasp possibility that frees. To not care about optics and instead invest in honesty. The truest and deepest and purest kind. This year sent me inward. More than I’ve ever been. It took me out of relationship with many of you but put me back into relationship with myself,” she wrote.

“I hope you are all doing well, but for this quiet and deeply personal experience I am supremely grateful. This year reminded me that we work like waves. Sometimes we explode in symphonic beauty up front, sometimes we line up at the back of the rolling set, cheering and drumming and watching others make magic as they spray and exclaim ahead of us,” she added.

“Watching from the rear these past months has been a gift. It has been rest and reclamation. I hope you get to experience both, too. I hope you get a year that jolts you. That brings you back from the edge. That gives you medicine.”

She also made a book recommendation.

“This year the pages of Maggie Smith’s book saved my life. This year I started writing again. Almost every day. I found my inner voice, and got quiet enough to listen to it. This year I slowed down; first because illness forced me to. Second because recovery required more stillness. In that way both sickness and healing are a gift. For those gifts I am so grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you to this life for teaching me. Thank you, thank you, thank you to this year that changed everything,” she concluded.

“That allowed me to burn what never served me, and find what does in the ashes. Charcoal is a purifier. Clarity comes like lightning in the dark. This is my deepest learning season yet. Thank you, a thousand times.”

She pulled out of the West End production of Danny Robins’s 2:22 – A Ghost Story due to illness in July.

Sophia Bush recently up about her divorce from Grant Hughes and sharing an idea she has to turn her breakup into a movie.