I’ll be honest, my 40’s have been far from ecstatic.
They have been hard. Fucking hard. All manner of rough comings out — from polyamory to being psychic. Reinventing myself as a writer. Revisioning then rebuilding the kind of experience I wanted in publishing (and I’m still so so so far away from it, but that’s okay.) Fumbling through what it means to be multi-passionate and how to do business when you’re not flying just one kite.
There was the navigation of high school with a chronically ill son, then making my own way through years of chronic illness born from more than a decade of chronic stress and isolation.
For so many years I felt as though I was slow-falling through any sense of solidity or certainty. I tumbled down an endless Alice abyss.
And I hated it.
I railed.
I fought.
And I fucking resented everything.
Endlessly.
I couldn’t wait to get beyond each fucked up year and get a fresh start. The thing was, I never did. It was like stepping in dog shit and treading it from one year to another.
I wanted to stop feeling trapped and tortured by my years.
That liberation began with changing the relationship I had with the passing year.
Four Quick Hacks I Embraced
1. I quit shitting on the year that had shat on me.
I stopped labelling years bad and just let them be neutral. I mean, you’ve heard it, or even said it yourself:
“Can’t wait for this year to be finished.”
“Shit year!”
“This year can fuck off.”
Three years of a pandemic has had us collectively saying some version of “Twenty-Fucking-Twenty…”
While this might provide short term rapport with all the other people also pissing on the year, the thing is, if you do this, you take the resentment, animosity, grief, disappointment and whatever else the year stirred up … you take into the new year.
You repeat patterns.
You miss a fresh start.
2. I honoured all of the year by getting curious.
This let me see if there was something, anything, beneath what was going on. Especially the hard-as-shit stuff. Attempting to see if, then how, I was changing: growing and adapting in positive ways to the challenges.
It let me gentler in how I perceived the hardships I’d gone through. It let me make conscious, specific choices about what I wanted to leave behind.
In the beginning it was hard to see them. As the years have gone one they are more apparent.
3. I got discerning
This meant celebrating the peak experiences alongside the obstacles, dead ends, frustrations, the heart breaks and unexpected failures. It allowed me to rehabilitate my focus away from obsessing on everything hard or not going my way.
I started to acknowledge it was like that some of the time, but not all the time.
4. I let my years be multi-faceted.
I embraced gloriously imperfect years which lead me out of two-dimensional monochromatic shit storms of misery that could be summed up in one or two catchy words.
Few years are all good or all bad.
Even the worst years have a few shiny spots in them if we’re open to search for them.
A Clean Start
Few people can simply wake up with a clean slate by sheer force of will and 8 hours of sleep between Dec 31 and Jan 1.
Spending time with my year, holding it lightly and honouring all parts, let me cut the passing year away cleanly. Itt was a huge relief to enter a new year without the other one hissing and spitting at my heels.
Best of all, I stopped dragging the old year into the new as the forever compare-and-contrast. The new year got to be bold, beautiful and full of potential on its own terms.
The Thresholds Tarot Readings
In 2021, I created the Thresholds Tarot Readings out of this practice.
I wanted to provide a space for clients to intentionally review the passing year with an open-heart and mind. Through the cards, questions arise to give clients a unique journey through (and perspective on) their year.
These 90-minute readings are super-charged and provide insights into the themes, peak experiences and growth points of ‘22, with guidance and suggestions for celebrating and cutting lose the year that was.
Places are limited.
Bookings are recommended sooner rather than later to get the best date for the farewell you and your year deserve.
