Welcome to the boon of a year well lived. I bow to each one as a pilgrim of your own sacred journey through 2023. Connecting to the idea of pilgrim not only as one who travels far from home to delve deeply into life's mysteries, but also the pilgrim who stays home and finds their own journey through going deep into reflection.
I ask you to reflect on the meaning of your journey through 2023. As we pack for our journey into 2024, prepare to live with redoubled courage, love and compassion. Fyodor Dostoyevski wrote “Though shall love life more than the meaning of life”.
How were you able to be fully in the moment of life? Where are the gifts of your journey? What pearls of wisdom, or diamonds of discovery did you gather throughout the year? What gift did you bestow on yourself that may only hold meaning for you and no one else?
As Trish O’Reilly said, “If we don’t know where we’ve been, how do we know what to do the next time?” Express gratitude not only for the wins or positive experiences, but also for those moments that were challenging, grief filled, or arduous. Where in 2023 were you able to dive below the surface of your life and extricate a shadow that had been anchoring you to the past? What deep work, resolve, and tears allowed you to severe its hold to generate a sense of buoyant release forward?
Celebrate all that 2023 contained and with gratitude release it and move into 2024 with a lightness as you tap into your greater wisdom, presence, and power to fully embrace what is to come. As we release our resistance to the unknown and our desire to control our outcomes, we allow ourselves to experience life, rather than script it.
"May the stars light your way and may you find the interior road. Forward!" - traditional Irish Farewell