Happy new year! Here’s a look at 2019.

To end 2019, some Her Stories writers have reflected on what story has stuck with them the most this year. Read their thoughts below, and feel free to write us at herstories@huffpost.com to share yours.

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Thanks for reading, and happy new year!

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My favorite feature for Her Stories this year was definitely HuffPost India’s coverage of the defamation case that revealed how an influential artist was battling an anonymous Instagram account. An October ruling from the country’s Supreme Court ordered Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, to reveal the creators behind the @HerdSceneAnd account, which had published allegations from women who said sculptor Subodh Gupta had sexually harassed them.

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I appreciated how Gopal Sathe and Nehmat Kaur explained the ruling’s implications for data privacy around the world: Had Facebook revealed the user behind the account, it would have had a chilling effect on free speech in the digital space. The article highlights how activists have come to rely on social media and technology to speak truth to power — but also how those tools can be used against them when social media companies face pressure from powerful individuals or governments.

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— Aurora Ellis, U.S.

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Without question, my favourite story in Her Stories this year was the one about climate change and the choice to have children. Laura Paddison’s feature on the topic merged the personal and the journalistic in an intimate and timely fashion, making it feel much more relevant than many, many other pieces about climate change.

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I’ll be honest: It wasn’t a topic I’d considered before, and with two children of my own, the expressions of guilt Laura described rang deep. But even beyond the piece itself, the responses of our Her Stories readers have stayed with me all these months later. In the letters I received after sending out that issue, I was introduced to women who were in the midst of thinking about these exact things for the first time, as well as those who had made this choice decades ago — and had absolutely no regrets.

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It opened up new perspectives to me in a way that I think the best journalism can, and gave me a new lens through which to talk about these issues that tend to fall on women’s shoulders. It was a reminder that no matter how much we think we’re contending with new ideas in 2019, there is plenty of wisdom to be found in the past and we should never stop looking for it.

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— Rebecca Zamon, Canada

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Monica Torres’ piece about single, child-free women being treated unfairly in the workplace really made me think about the ways companies discriminate among employees. Although it had occurred to me that this was the case, I was shocked by how blatantly some managers told women they wouldn't get a pay raise, vacation time or holidays off because of their marital status or lack of children.

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Readers' stories responding to this piece relayed frustrating treatment they faced in a variety of life circumstances over the decades: with children, without children, pregnant, single, married and divorced. Even though we've made strides in how some female employees are treated, there's still more work to do.

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— Sara Bondioli, U.S.

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