 As babies, if we are lucky, someone looks into our eyes and mirrors our experience back to us…our smiles, our hurts, our engagement with the world. And when someone looks back at us and mirrors our smiling, this teaches us that our experience, our feeling is valid and real.
As adults, we are having daily interactions that elicit emotional responses from us - laughter, smiles, tears, heartache. And your experience is real and valid. In our culture we rarely make space to listen to another’s experience without going straight to analysis and judgement. I dream of a world where there is enough space to hear and validate each person’s pain (and joy). When I look out my window and see the trees, the squirrels, the sky, and clouds, I never think which one experience is right and more valid? Which one experience will I validate at the expense of everything else? Each squirrel, tree, cloud, expanse of sky deserves my acknowledgment of its unique experience. To me this is one of the messages of this season - the equinox is a time of equanimity. Where there is spacious room for night time and daylight, where each squirrel, tree, walnut, herb plant has the space and opportunity to have its OWN experience without me judging it or analyzing it. When we give this space to other humans - being witnessed in experience - healing and change can happen. If this cycle is thwarted, we keep telling our experience again and again, searching for the completed feeling of “I see you,” “I hear you,” “I believe you.” We are like a person with a wound who keeps going house to house requesting bandaging and being told there is no wound to tend. What relief when you find the person that says “come in, (no questions ask, no reasoning needed) I have bandages and soap and water for you.” If this is something you do not experience often, you are not alone. I find myself more and more being discerning about explaining my pain and experience. When someone texts, emails, or asks “how am I?” (Which I take very literally like you really do want to know) I ask myself, will I be welcomed in for a bandage? Or will I be met with judgement and analysis? Sometimes I do not know - so I take the chance - sometimes I am met with disappointment and other times with mirroring. But in all of this, my practice over and over again is to turn to myself, and deeply validate my own experience. I give myself vast spaciousness for all that arises. Anger no longer gets dismissed or needs a justification to feel it, sadness gets welcomed whether there is a “valid” reason or not, panic comes in and I try not to resist it, grief no longer gets minimized. With it all I turn to myself and say “I see your wound, let me tend to you.” The more I do this for myself - the greater capacity I have to offer it to my loved ones and friends. I see you, I hear you, yes it is real, no there doesn’t have to be a reason or meaning. Yes, yes, yes. This is my prayer for each one of us. May we be witnessed and validated in our life. May we have people we can turn to who look into our hearts and mirror what is there. And may we be our own best wound tender-er - no longer abandoning ourselves, but welcoming each experience in - without qualifier, without judgement, and give respite to ourselves. Equinox Blessings, Valerie
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 I have been quieter in my writing this year than I had planned. In fact, the only thing that has really gone the way I expected to this year is the natural world. Winter, fall, spring, and summer have all shown up - a rhythm that has been moving along since the ancient wheel of the year was created.
Humans have turned towards the natural world as a time keeper for each generation that comes and goes. The trees in my neighborhood have witnessed countless families grow through life cycles. And while weather has shifted as humans continue to engage the planet - the weather is a variation on the theme of each season - spring, summer, fall, winter have shown up in their extremes and more common states. But they always show up. So when we find ourselves in a year, a day, a life filled with the unexpected, it is a reminder that the world beyond our walls (and screens) is beckoning to us. Sacred reminders to turn towards the most consistent being in our life - earth. And earth right now in the northern hemisphere is the time of year celebrating the summer harvest. Here in Ohio, sweet corn has arrived and my squash plant has begun to fruit, a volunteer that found its way in our garden. I am cheering for that plant, unplanned but welcome, a reminder that unexpected change can delight instead of incite bracing. Another unexpected harvest this week has been the arrival of a podcast that was recorded in March around the spring equinox. It was a joy to speak with Natalie on IFS, spirituality, and how we all need external resources in addition to internal supports. You can check out our conversation HERE. As we meet this moment of Lammas 2024, my invitation is with curiosity explore what unexpected delights have shown in your garden. The invitation is not to deny the unwelcome and difficult, but to add to that conversation, just for a brief second. And as with any invitation you can turn it down - it’s ok to not want to look at the delight right now. It’s ok to sit with the challenge as long as you need. This invitation to tenderly, briefly touch into delight does not have an expiration date. It will be here for you, when you are most ready for it. May your year turn gently towards the coming equinox. And may we all find some steadiness within the consistent changing of the world around us. Sincerely, Valerie  When wisdom is elusive, one of the most valuable practices we can do is return to our very small, very present moment. Always available in these moments is what supports us in a very literal way.
Finding it hard to breathe? Feel where your body meets the chair. And notice what happens when your awareness touches into that space. Struggling to get to sleep? Sense the weight of your body against what you are laying on. Notice the shifts in your body and your breath. Sense the contact points where your body meets surface. Overwhelmed by the extremes of the world? Take a pause and allow your awareness to touch into where your physical body meets the floor, (the bed, the chair, the cushion, the tree, the ground, or whatever supports you underneath). And then take a moment (or many moments) to notice how it feels to be supported, literally. So much of world right now is overwhelming, disorienting, heady, curated, heart-tugging, and supersonic-filled-data-streams. In a world that is fast, our nervous systems find nourishment in slow. The simple and profound act of returning to where our physical bodies are supported is the antidote our nervous systems crave while living in this way-too-much-world. In this season of extremes - the winter and summer solstices - my invitation is to practice the miniature art of returning to the contact points that meet our bodies and really let our consciousness sink. This practice is best done with little efforting, repeatedly throughout the day. As you sit in a meeting, or at the dinner table, this is a sacred practice to infuse our very real daily lives, and return us to ourselves again and again. And I definitely recommend it when we are most stressed, and feel we have little reserves to even blink an eye. Maybe blink and notice where and how your eyelashes touch each other. While we all may not have the support we need in a variety of spheres, (spiritual, emotional, relational, communal, intellectual, physical) we always have the support of earth & gravity. And in moments of despair, when we may question “do I belong?”, the earth - the greatest support for each one of us - will always answer with a commanding and affirming YES. Solstice Blessings, Valerie  We are halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. It’s a time of newness springing to life - lambing season, trees transforming from flowers to leaves, and the daytime is definitely longer. It is also taurus season - a sign that loves grounded pleasure, joy, and the comforts of life (with a possibility of stubbornness :). In our current times you may be hesitant to turn towards pleasure while there is so much suffering in the world. It may seem to be in more solidarity to forego any pleasure. However, in the village that is this world, we need people who remember that pleasure is a vital part of being human. To me, how much we can stay present in pleasure is deeply connected to how much capacity we have to be with discomfort. Those that can dwell within the full continuum of human experience are the companions that walk with us, throughout whatever we may encounter.
When I first began as a somatic experiencing client, I was having some really painful flashbacks. I came to my first SE session in 2019 with the goal to relieve my suffering and was therefore prepared to go to some really painful places. While we would certainly go into the pain, there was a point in my sessions, always initiated by my guide Shari, to shift to somewhere in my body or in my environment that felt a smidge less painful. “Where is there a drop more ease?” “Look around your room, what gives you a feeling of warmth, a smile to your face?” “Where is the opposite feeling of the pain in you?” Shari would ask some question that would invite me out of my pain and into something a drop more different. HOW ANNOYING…didn’t she know that the way to fix me was to sit in the pain until I figured it out?!! I am not sure why I kept coming back again and again to those sessions. I found the work slow, it did not show any observable improvement in my daily life, and I kept wondering when we were going to get to the fix it, problem solving part of our work. Shari’s continued invitations to turn to something pleasing, enjoyable, less painful, just did not seem like the way to do it. So why did I keep coming back? First, I trusted Shari. She was wise and had an infinite capacity for deep regard. I entered our time together with a willingness to be challenged and guided to uncomfortable places, even when those places were pleasure. And secondly, after each session I felt a smidge better. Did it last until the next time we met? No, but that was not the point. In that slow, titrated work with the invitation again and again to orient to pleasure, to orient to something just a bit less painful, I found my capacity to be with my pain shift. It was easier to meet my pain with more self-compassion and curiosity. I also found my capacity for pleasure and enjoyment grow. It took two solid years of consistently meeting with Shari to one day realize my inner landscape had radically changed. Drop by drop. I looked up and the world and my relationship to it had shifted. More recently I found myself one morning laying in bed unable to move due to some severe muscle spasms. I was scared and in a lot of pain waiting to head to the doctor. A good friend called and I picked up (the first miracle of the morning). “What’s up,” she said. “UGHHH I am laying in bed and I cannot move.” That honest reply was met with a huge dose of witnessing, sweetness, and empathy. We talked about how difficult it is to be in these bodies - the pain, the unpredictability, the time needed to manage them. And then at some point when sufficient suffering had been witnessed, my dear friend said “And isn’t a miracle that we are alive together at this time?!” After her question there was a moment within me I observed myself wanting to push away this invitation. The habit of being in the pain is so ingrained. I spent years practicing for this very moment with Shari, so I took my dear friend's invitation to orient to pleasure and said "yes it is" (and I mean it). For a moment, I was transported out of my pain and into awe of the miracle I am and she is and the miracle of us being here together in this spec of time. For a moment, my body and mind felt the wonder of being here. And then I headed to the doctor for a different kind of medicine. Neither one better or worse, both needed and different. What is the point of shifting out of pain if only for a millisecond and if the pain is going to return? As humans, some pain emotional or physical will find us eventually. To be clear this is not some look on the bright side process. We do not dismiss the pain, instead it’s an invitation to an AND. Look there is pain AND there is a miracle. When I was in my greatest of grief after my father died, I said the kaddish, a prayer that makes no mention of death but instead shows devotion to the Divine and the miracle of the world. I often felt how cruel this practice was, why when at our deepest despair is this the prayer the one we are to say? But now, when I feel how painful it is to say this prayer when my heart is broken open, I recognize it is a pain that turns me just a second to “Oh right, there is life here too.” The interruption allows the door back to life to be left a smidge open for when I am fully ready to walk through. To continue to be in the inquiry of pain beyond the exploration’s usefulness simply grooves our brain to habitually go only to the pain. My bias is to have a world that can habitually shift to pleasure even for a millisecond to remind our minds, bodies, spirits, and souls that there is more to this earth plane than suffering. There are multitudes of sensations and experiences within and without happening simultaneously. I dream of a world where we can be “glass half full AND half empty at the same time” kind of people. A society where we can attune to the needs of those in front of us, and give a gracefully timed invitation to orient to beauty and pleasure. To be clear, this touching into pleasure may only last for a second and that is a WIN!!! The invitation to turn to pleasure is an art and it is not always well timed or well received. Does that mean we should shy away from the practice? To me the answer is no as long as the invitation is not coming from a place of our uncomfortability. So how do we know when to offer such invitations? Below are my thoughts on practicing the art of inviting in more ease when we are suffering. How do we know when to offer such invitations to ourselves and to others? 1. Give AMPLE space to the suffering - witnessing, acknowledging, spaciousness, etc. 2. When sitting with another consider why you are inviting the shift. Are you offering the invitation because YOU are uncomfortable, annoyed, frustrated - this is not the time to invite beauty/ease/pleasure - to make it more comfortable for you. 3. Compassion is critical to the invitation. Meeting suffering with the desire to fix, change, get them (or you) over it, dismissing their (your) suffering as not that bad is often again about our own discomfort. Compassion is free of agenda AND has boundary. 4. Are you prepared/ok with the person returning to their suffering? Remember a millisecond of something a smidge less uncomfortable/more easeful, pleasurable is what we are going for - so the return is part of the process. 5. Sometimes we do get hyper focused on pain. Patience, compassion (including self), and boundary are important. This is ok and shows that the movement to another state is not there YET. It really is something we need to practice. So my invitation to you this season, is where can you turn to a smidge more ease, more comfort, more pleasure? Not because you want to dismiss the suffering, but to acknowledge that both exist. And in a world that needs an urgent end suffering, this practice is part of what can keep us going to create a new world. A world that has more nuance, more acceptance of paradox, simultaneous truths, and multiple experiences along with humans who can hold tension and discomfort without letting go too soon. This practice of inviting pleasure is more urgent than ever. I dream of a world where we could all be full, multidimensional humans and honored for it. This to me is a world closer to less suffering and more ease for all. Blessings, Valerie  Spring Equinox is here. And while I am not ready for spring (I feel like I write that every year!), I am grateful for the invitation to orient to the natural world and for the reminder that balance is really a cultural construct in our rigid way of how we understand it.
The equinox is a moment when daytime and night time are in perfect balance. For one day (out of 365) equality between these two states happens, and then the rest of the year we are moving into the extremes. I find comfort and compassion for my humanity when I consider that even nature does not have the perfect static balance we humans strive for. Beyond balance, other concepts I have been contemplating recently is disorientation and orientation. Often when we feel disoriented in life we have this reactionary sense we are doing something wrong. We are a focused, path forward obsessed culture, so when we feel and experience disorientation we try really hard to get out of it. We struggle against it, try to push through it, search for clarity, our path, and our purpose, as if only one way, one purpose, one path exists for each of us. This makes sense…disorientation can feel really uncomfortable and we have been trained to move as quickly out of the discomfort as possible. There are some times when we need to move to comfort and orientation and then there are other times when the medicine is in the disorientation. Disorientation isn’t inherently uncomfortable. With a better understanding of disorientation as part of the human experience, we can give ourselves more space and compassion. And with more space and compassion, we can move into curiosity (I will say it as many times as I need to - curiosity is a physiological dependent state). But if we are fighting against the human experience of disorientation - there is not much room for self-compassion - the fighting squeezes out all the space where we might show kindness to ourselves. So why speak about disorientation now with the spring equinox upon us? It is a point in the natural year that invites us to continually orient… we turn our face upwards to the warmth and the light of the returning sun or we bend low to whisper words of endearment to the flower just budding. And since we are organically orienting in this season of growth, it is the perfect moment to lean into the opposite to practice the movement between two very human states. The natural world calls us into turning towards the new life around us (orienting) and with that brief moment of ordinariness we can have a reprieve from the disorientation. And this reprieve makes turning back towards (or falling back in) to disorientation a bit more comfortable. This touching into one state and then the other is the innate wisdom of our systems before life and society got us into worshipping at the altar of unattainable consistent regulation. In my spiritual training I was taught that disorientation is just as important to the human journey as orientation. Disorientation if entered into with the curiosity of what gifts lie here provides the space and opportunity to unlearn so that we may relearn. Disorientation offers us the space to review and examine the road we have traversed and to pick up pieces or correct any missteps we have made. In the state of disorientation, we can let go, unwind what binds and constricts us, we can shake off what is no longer required in our lives. Disorientation can invite us to sit, rest, and turn inward while we gather energy to move into orienting to what is on the horizon. With springs arrival, I hear the invitation to take the time to move between orientation and disorientation in these micro conscious ways. And if you wonder if micro steps can do anything for lasting change in our lives. I can assure you that micro steps lay a sturdy foundation (neuroplasticity is built on micro steps) to bloom anew, in your own time, in your own way, in your own dance of disorientation and orientation. My hope for this spring is that we take the time to orient to what brings us hope and beauty and that our disorientation is just as affirming and easeful as when we know the way. Blessings, Valerie  The end of January, beginning of February in the Northern Hemisphere seems too early in the year to turn towards renewal. It’s been cold and rainy here, and the gray seems to drown out much of the signs of spring. During this time, nature maybe turning towards spring, but the signs are subtle, and we must attune with great awareness to witness them.
Nature, while extreme at times (hello climate change), also speaks in more nuanced and quiet ways. This time of year, a cross quarter time, whispers are the main inflection of the moment for the natural world. Quarter times are like quarter moons to me, very potent moments that are often overlooked because they aren’t considered sexy enough in a culture that equates spirituality with what it can consume. But as we know, life infused and embodied with spirit isn’t about glamour and big moments, but about whispers, nuance, and almost imperceptible signs. The quarter days of the wheel of the year are days that follow between the solstices and equinoxes. They are the places that if you give enough attention, you can see the ratio of day to night shifting, the plants changing, and the energetics of the season rewiring. This late winter/early spring festival is traditionally known as Imbolc, The Celtic pagan holiday. Snow drops, fires to St. Brigid, healing herbs, and clearing out the old is often how one marks this “quickening of the year.” It is the fertile darkness that is rich with possibility and knowing. My invitation to mark this turn of the wheel is to reflect on what is stirring for you? What is striving to breakthrough? Even if it doesn’t make it, the honoring of what was reaching for renewal is so important. The honoring that something inside was stirring, is the smallest action needed. Turning towards what was even if it never comes to light is a powerful act to honor what grows within you. A spiritual life isn’t about what was accomplished and beholden by everyone. That’s our dominant cultural overlay. In the spiritual life it is enough to whisper the inner knowing and let it land in your heart. The honoring and the witnessing is the sacred ritual. We need to retrain ourselves to honor our inner whispering without the push towards continuous action. Sometimes this honoring brings up grief and sadness for what we long for but aren’t able to bring into creation. You aren’t doing your spiritual life wrong if that happens. We live with practical constraints and real societal structures that are limiting. But those structures can’t take away the knowing and the honoring. Just to witness parts of ourselves that we have pushed away because “it’s not possible” is a deep source of healing. Until we turn our gaze to something and acknowledge it we can’t possibly know what opportunities it holds. If we continually turn away from ourselves we will not be able to truly turn towards another. With so much of our world in turmoil and chaos, it is hard to find the steadiness and the consistent. For many it is the world outside, our relations that reside in the natural world - the trees, plants, oceans, rivers, animals, the sky, the planets, the stars. These quarter wheel days are a wonderful way to honor and say thank you to this constant and steady source of inspiration, regulation, and connection. Whisper to the leaves that are energetically forming on the trees, whisper to the plants making their way to the surface, and whisper to the wind your prayers and burdens. These small acts of connecting and consecration are how you LIVE a spiritual life in a modern world. One small act at a time – a perfect honoring for Imbolc – the day that honors the hidden that will soon be seen. Warmly, Valerie  This time of year I feel like I’m sitting in the middle of a pressure cooker. The energy and tension seem to build until it shifts quite dramatically on January 1st. I am so curious about it. I study/observe/sit with it year after year. Certainly it is a transition and humans often struggle with transitions of all sizes in big and small ways. But at this time of year we are urged to move through the transition without a hint of honoring the trepidation we might be feeling and so I think for many it becomes an unconscious pressure that miraculously feels lighter when New Year’s Day comes around. But this has left me wondering “How often in our world are we invited to simply linger in the in-between?”
In my tradition, the in-between, the thresholds are something to be sanctified. We place a ritual object called a mezuzah within our doorframes. This relic for me is a deep reminder that beauty and the divine can inhabit the smallest of spaces and that the in-between is just as valuable as where I am headed. A mezuzah also reminds me no matter how small or large a space is, it can be a place for contemplation, connection, and devotion. At this gate of the new year, my first invitation is for you to literally sit in a doorway. I like to sit (or stand) with my back leaning against one side of the doorframe (with the mezuzah above my head) facing the other side of the door frame. Here I sit and envision the mezuzah dropping a sacred divine blessing into the top of my head. If do not have a mezuzah and you would like to have your own sacred image in your doorframe that would be lovely (or any image that feels like a blessing to you - a dove, heart, spiral, sun, star, moon, etc). You can visualize the symbol or tack one up above you and then sit against the doorframe and breathe. Feel the threshold supporting you, not pushing you into the present or the past, but to linger in this in-between space and notice if even a drop of your being says “thank you.” My second invitation is into reflection with me. Not to change anything (you can if you want), but to take account of your life lived. To create space for what dwells inside you: your hopes, dreams, frustrations, disappointments, resentments, insecurities, talents, grief, gifts, and everything else which resides in your being-ness. Where are the thresholds inside you - the places where two emotions, two feelings, two thoughts touch? What is the smallest drop of reverence and devotion you can invite into this internal threshold? What oh-so-very-ordinary, mundane space inside you can you adorn with a sacred, beautiful energy to show how miraculous the ordinary truly is? I hope as you move into this next year, the threshold is a space where you can return to again and again as a source of blessing, wisdom, compassion, and gentleness for the journey of being human. Blessings, Valerie  The days leading up to the winter solstice are my favorite time of the year. I love the longer nights which welcome cozy evenings at home and an early start to bed. I enjoy bundling up for chilly walks and the Christmas lights that bring whimsy to the neighborhood. I used to think I was so weird for this being my favorite time of year when summer is often highlighted as the season of fun. But the winter suits my nature and my sensory system best. I feel less resistance to being me this time of year.
And that is the beauty of being human, we can each have our own predilections and propensities. Where it gets murky is when societal (and individual) expectations send messages of what we enjoy and embody are wrong. I am passionate about fertile darkness, nighttime, the hidden mysteries, grief, sadness, and loss. I love talking about them because for many of us these are topics not welcome in our daily lives. We haven’t been taught to be with each other in our pain and discomfort without rushing towards fixes and answers. But for grief, loss, sadness, and pain - often the fix is being with, offering spaciousness, and time for us to feel what is within us. Now I do not want anyone to be stuck in their suffering, or to feel alone in it. But if we are always pulled out of our very natural experience of discomfort it will stay a wound prone to festering. I dream of a world where someone asks me “How am I” and they really want to hear the answer. They want to enter into my humanity with me. There is no greater gift than being seen, heard, and deeply understood. But how do we package that up and put it under the tree or the menorah? So, this solstice my invitation is who can you give the gift of witnessing them in their humanity? Offering them all the time, spaciousness, and regard the human soul is worthy of. To invite them to share what love looks and feels like to them, what heartache and regrets they carry (as we all carry them), and the joys they hold close but are too afraid (embarrassed, shy, worried, etc.) to share. To show them they have your love no matter if they fall to pieces, lose control, or inhabit the messiness of their humanity. Gift them companioning because their humanity makes them worthy of companionship instead of having to earn it by putting on a smiling face and a mask of happiness. This is my invitation and my prayer for each one of us. That we have those in our lives who can witness and hold us in the full range of our humanity. AND that we have the courage and willingness to be the person who is the witness for others. Solstice Blessings, Valerie  One of the first lessons I learned on my spiritual journey was the wheel of the year, a way to keep track of time by the natural world - the equinoxes, solstices, and the cross-quarter days (Imbolc, Beltaine, Lammas, Samhain).
It would be easy to flatten this following into a rote, two dimensional cliché - fall, winter, spring, summer - with their ascribed meaning and symbols always the same year in and year out. But after 30 years of following this rhythm I’m in awe of the nuance, subtleties, and differences that each season brings year after year. This is my 48th Halloween and no two have been the same. There maybe whispers of the years past, imprints of what the season represents and holds. But it’s impossible to meet each Halloween exactly the same, because I am not the same year after year. Yes the basic blueprint of me is constant, but constant does not mean static. We are not static beings no matter how much we so want to be. So while we can say fall is a time of pumpkins, candy, and leaves falling, there is so much more variation from year to year. Lately noticing the subtleties is what gets me through the day. Often as we move through our spiritual lives the signs and guideposts become more and more wisps and whispers. If we continually expected the very loud moments again and again we would soon find ourselves disappointed or on a quest to find bigger, better, more and more or what could be called spiritual greed. But if we move out of cliché and into the realities of life - paradox, complexities, nuance, and contradictions, these qualities lead us into the quieter and deeper layers of our being. And there we might find more contentment and less of the grabbing quality that comes with bigger and better. This is what the Samhain season invites us into. When the veil between the spiritual and the material thins, things may not get more showy and obvious but quieter and steeped in the unknown. It’s the invitation into a whisper and a stillness. An invitation that doesn’t rest on only the logical, linear, and tangible. What a reprieve this season offers us from our modern expectations. We are midway between fall equinox and winter solstice during this first week of November. We are moving to the more quiet and barren (vulnerable) time of year. This time is an invitation to begin the travels to the deep within. So light the fires and let them whisper to you. Feel the warmth of your tea (or pumpkin spice latte) mug and let it gently soothe you again and again. Invite these simple rituals to help you navigate your own internal landscape. What is inside you that needs tending to at this moment? What is whispering that has yet to be heard? How are your feelings showing up and asking to be witnessed? Invite spirit to come and sit with you in silence and notice how the release from the expectation of answers offers freedom for both you and spirit to just be. Let this season burrow inside you, so as the winter approaches you are more and more comfortable with your tenderness and in turn the world’s tenderness. Blessings, Valerie  Last year between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur I participated in a reflection project called 10Q.* For ten days, I was sent different questions prompting me to reflect on the year I was leaving and the one that I was entering. The final question was “What are your predictions for the coming year?” And my answer..."I am wise enough not to make predictions."
Clearly, I wasn’t falling for this trick of a question :). A more witty response would have been “my prediction is that my prediction will miss the mark.” And a more honest response “my prediction is I will have some health challenges, life will take unexpected turns that will frustrate me and knock me down for a bit (or longer). I will have moments of forward movement towards my work and personal goals, and other moments where I will take two steps back. I predict the year ahead will have some pain, love, difficulties, wins, and lots of opportunity for the mundane.” I am a prediction rooted in honesty and reality person with a dash of feminist utopian ideals (à la Octavia Butler). The Jewish High Holidays align with the Fall Equinox this year (welcome to the unpredictable rhythm of a lunar calendar). And with this alignment, I invite you into your own reflection for the coming year. Taking our cue from the natural world, and consider yourself more like a planetary body with its own rhythms and seasons…(expansive, contracting, resting, growing, composting, birthing, hibernating, renewing, destruction, retrograde, eclipsing, etc). Below are some questions to help guide your reflection. - What do you want to turn or re-turn towards? - Where did you miss the mark? And why? - What do you keep trying to fix that isn’t a fault but your nature? ("Not a Flaw to be corrected but a trait to be accepted", Sherlock on Elementary) - When life gets too much what do you need to pull in and what needs to be removed? - What ground did you cover last year (or the year before) that you need/want/desire to cover again? - “What conversation are you not having, and with whom?” (the most brilliant question from Modern Love Story) - When you review your reflections how do you feel? What do you notice inside as you review your reflections? What do you struggle to accept about yourself? What do feel proud of? And how in the next year can you bring these two (struggle to accept and proud of) closer together? Fall equinox is a pause in the natural world. A moment of balance between night and day. Balance of equal measure isn't the dominating force when we closely examine the natural world. Culturally we have made balance into a strive for perfection in equal measure and it creates a dynamic where culturally we are aiming for something that isn't inherently natural in large quantities. Balance has missed the mark in our culture. Instead of uniformity what about rhythm and harmony? These require less of sameness and are more personalized and dynamic. Considering this personalization and dynamic nature, maybe this is your season of reflection, or maybe yours is during another time. And if you are the latter, that is beautiful and the questions above will still be here when you enter your reflective season. My hope for you (and me) this season is that you have more moments of turning towards the natural world for inspiration on how to live and be in this world.That you find your unique expression and lean deeply into what makes you, you. And with you being YOU, life becomes less of striving and more of an unfolding. Warmly, Valerie *10Q was inspired by the traditional ten days of reflection that occur between the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a period of time that’s long been considered an opportunity to look at where you're at, where you've come from, and where you're heading |
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