There are lots of things to share, as my Winter Year structure finally forms up.
The second of my Beautiful Questions for the Year of Asking was what it meant to live seasonally. The simple answer to that was, a little of the summer year had to be in the winter year and visa versa.
That meant my Summer Year needed stillness and some inwards facing time. The good thing about summer is the long days and the early dawns offer plenty of early morning quiet time to read and have tea. Plus time in my journal.
So what does a little bit of Summer look like in Winter?
Visibility, was the simple answer. (Believe me, an eye roll followed!)
In winter I have a terrible habit of going into my cave and not coming out for six months. It’s terrible for my mental health. As much as I love inward facing time, time that’s effectively isolation is not good.
This winter year I am maintaining my quest to do something new every month, with someone I wouldn’t normally hang out with.
This meant that in the first few days of my winter year, when I was absolutely slayed from the end of the summer year list of projects — I still went out to my first ever supper club.
And guess what — it filled me right up.
Huzzah for playdates.
Business-wise I still need visibility as well.
Not to be outdone by the choice of something new each months, I decided to do the thing I will usually avoid at all costs — getting on video.
Anyone who has had a remote reading might think this is weird and strange. Or anyone who has been part of a zoom group.
Sitting talking solo to a screen though — urgh, please no. Not when it’s not part of a wider conversation.
Every Wednesday (day of Mercury) I shall record a short video of me reading the first page of one of the stories from This Once Precious Life. (My beloved legacy collection kind of of overshadowed by other things the Summer year demanded.)
I was inspired by Luke Arnold’s First Page Pajama Party. (I won’t be doing it my PJs, well I maybe — maybe not, that’s not the intention, but it will eventually be proper winter and who is to say there won’t be sleep pants further on?)
Today I recorded “It Could Be”, one of the vignettes.
These videos are intended to be rough and ready. I am struggling with the freeze reflex at the moment and the fewer steps between me and what I want to do, the better.
There’s no make up, I made a vague effort with my hair and I was vaguely articulate.
I’ll be back next Wednesday with another of these, hopefully a little better with this who video gig.
The dark woods was the affectionate name one of the 2023 winter women dubbed my winter depth work and how the summer year was like arriving in a hut surrounded by a beautiful garden.
When we caught up last weekend we all agreed our summer year had been busier than anticipated and not quite as idyllic as the concept of that glorious garden may have been.
One thing missing from all our summer years was each other. I don’t think we realised how important journeying together was.
It is time return to the dark woods. I am hoping you will join me in Unseen for this year’s winter depth work.
The Dark Woods
I’ve been studying fairy tales with Carina Bisset since the middle of February. Her Season of the Wolf course is a rich and complex exploration of fairy tales and science.
Last week we dove into The Robber Bridegroom and Bluebeard.
Christina, my anam cara, commented that the girls in these fairy tales (and their adaptations) and so many others we have studied, are lead/coaxed/coerced/curioused into the dark woods or far-flung houses.
Often they arrive alone to find monstrous things awaiting them. Or they travel with the person who will become the perpetrator of ills at their destination.
All these locations have on thing in common — they’re isolated.
Isolation
A few weeks ago, I spoke to my friend who is a social worker, about isolation. We were talking about my novel. My friend highlighted isolation as one of the risk factors in domestic violence, and how the setting of my novel, in Western Queensland, is definitely isolated
I remember the way extreme rural living (so different from my life in the city) facilitated the kind of brainwashing my ex got away with in my mid 20’s. And how I let so many things happen, until it was a full-blown domestic violence situation, because I was repeatedly told: this is the way we do it in the country.
(Just to be clear, no, we don’t behave like that, anywhere, ever!)
For my main character, Lucy, the isolation of the far-flung township of Matilda, is meant to be a protective factor in her leaving her sanctuary in Hobart. And it is, until someone undermines the confidentiality clause of the dig she’s working on and invites the media to town.
Fairy-tale isolation means the girls are unseen and unheard. Alone they are vulnerable — not the Brené Brown good vulnerable. Here, being alone puts them at risk.
In that regard these stories are not just cautionary tales but also modern allegories of the risks of isolation and loneliness.
Isolation, Suffering and Human Scale
Beyond Human Scale is Brené Brown’s latest podcast topic for Unlocking Us.
In her conversation with Esther Perel at SXSW they spoke about the long-hand of isolation and the immensity of loneliness and disconnection in our hyper-connected world (On The New AI: Artificial Intimacy).
Brown says: Attention is such an undervalued form of love.
Perel replies: Attention is an amazing quality because much of the time when people suffer or struggle, they don’t need fixing because some things can’t be fixed and not in the moment. So all they need is a witness. Attention is witnessing.
People have suffered from the day human beings have existed. There’s nothing new. But they always knew that the suffering needs to take placein the company of others. And these days we do too much suffering alone.
The comment about suffering in company has stayed with me.
Transformation isn’t suffering, but it is often rough. Doing it alone makes it harder than it could be.
Doing it with others makes it bearable — and times, even funny.
In The Company of Others
I was lucky enough to join a support group when I was pregnant. Preparing for a homebirth should not be fundamentally different to preparing to birth in a hospital or birth centre, but it is.
It was there, in support group, through my pregnancy and early months of mothering, and what ended up being the first three years of my son’s life, I sat with other women — drawing strength and wisdom from them.
It was there I learned the power of storytelling.
I’ve been in many circles since — both as participant and facilitator.
Both Prosperity Consciousness and Replenish had group sharing as a core component of them.
Earlier this year I also ran the Between Years sessions. We all came away from those mornings in awe of the soul and heart nourishment that being in a shared wisdom space with other women was.
Unseen
Collective storytelling and wisdom sharing, and communal learning and unfurling is one of the most transformative spaces I know. It’s what my winter depth work is built around.
We go into the dark woods together. And me navigate them together. And that togetherness forms a vital and protective illumination. It lights up the path and makes the unknown less scary.
We become the Hermit’s lantern for each other, as we seek our underworld stars.
Together we are no longer isolated. We are not alone.
We are seen. We are heard.
Unseen is a container where your struggles, your joy, your sorrow and your triumphs are all witnessed.
Your unfurling is supported in a cooperative way.
Your strength and tenacity are celebrated, alongside your tenderness and vulnerability.
Go Together
I’ve done plenty of healing and soul work alone. It has its time and place. But since Christina came into my life, I haven’t had to do it alone.
I am better for that shared experience, both professionally and personally.
On the cusp of the solar eclipse tomorrow, astrologer and social activist Chani Nicholas writes:
(the) solar eclipse in Aries is no joke. It requires us to confront the discomfort of (metaphorically) burning away what isn’t meant to stay. Occurring at 11:20 am PT (Monday) conjunct the Chiron cazimi, this eclipse invites us to go deep into our shadowlands and transmute our wounds.
If you want to take the next step, a deep dive into yourself in the company of others Unseen is the six month gift from yourself to yourself.
If you haven’t worked with me before and would like a feel for me and my way of doing things organise a TOE DIP free session.
For everyone riding the eclipse energy, be gentle. Consider the first kindness to yourself and do it.
What if January was a liminal pause where you got to complete all the things you didn’t quite finish in the year before?
What if January was an opportunity for closure — to reconcile, resolve and let go of all you didn’t quite get to before the silly season was upon you?
What if January was space to consider what’s next and lay strong foundations for what you want with steady, determined vision and intention?
And what if in 2024, it wasn’t just January but a little bit of February as well?
The Pause Between
For almost two decades I have treated the space between the Calendar New Year (an arbitrary date) and Lunar New Year (the second new moon after winter solstice–which is always an Aquarius new moon) as a sacred portal.
I’ve used it to do practical business things and meaningful personal things. It has been both mundane and magickal. It’s often been both simultaneously.
This year, I want to offer the Pause Between Years to you. Especially if you are someone who may already consider themselves “behind” on the 2nd January (either because of what you didn’t complete in 2023 or for what you didn’t manage to initiate yesterday on the 1st!)
The Lunar New Year begins here in Australia on the 10th February (9th in other time zones).
The Pause in 2024 is just shy of 6 weeks.
The Tides Spread
Each year I create a spread to segue one calendar year into another. This year it is The Tides spread and I’ve created a mini workbook to go with it.
Jessa Crispin writes in The Creative Tarot:
“I always think of the Eights as being akin to the tide. Things are going out, things are coming in. The changes are subtle but real. What is important … is how you respond to the changes.”
The Tides Spread is what I call “a slow spread”, that is, it is intended to be done over several sittings. This year it spans the six weeks of The Pause: three weeks to unpack and release 2023 (a “7” year), and three weeks to inspire, envisage and lay foundations for 2024 (an “8” year).
This year is I am offering Between Years Sessions to support the tides spread for anyone who’d like to be in circle to discuss with others what’s come up for them in their solo work.
I’ll be there to offer additional support, perspective and ideas.
Sessions are as follows:
Saturday 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th January
Saturday 3rd and 10th February
All at 10am (AEST or +10UCT)
These sessions are $10 and you can book for all six sessions or come and go as you need.
Please note: To participate you will need your own deck of cards (tarot or oracle) and have completed the relevant section of the spread before you come to the call.
Written for the week Monday 12th – Sunday 18th June
The Fifth Spirit Tarot (first edition) by Charlie Clare Burgess
✉️ Four as Missive
🌏 The four relates to physical limitations — the limits of our body, our personal resources, the physical world. The limits of reality.
💎 It is a pause to consider what you hold close in that space. What/who is treasured. Adored. And the degree to which this is supportive, nourishing and life affirming.
🤝 Here you observe your behaviour around holding. Do you clutch and cling and hoard? Are there roots of fear or lack driving this? Or do you cradle and embrace? Are there roots of confidence and connections underpinning this?
🙏🏻 Do you trust time? And life’s divine timing?
🧭 If your values are points of a compass, what anchors your heart, body, mind and spirit. Do you know your anchors?
🧮 The four offers a chance to stocktake your personal resources — especially the less tangible of them like time, energy, agency, and love.
🗼Foundations are required to build solid and enduring structures, but if we build on the wrong foundations, we risk the long term integrity of our hard work.
🌱 The seedling that grows in fertile, cultivated ground grows differently to the one in the harsh wildness.
🪨 In the four, healthy stability and security can calcify into stubbornness, rigidity and barrenness.
🦷Our roots connect past-present-future.
☠️ Sunk deep in the past, they connect to a rich source of learning and empowerment. They can also draw up the poison of wrong turns, missed opportunities, doubt and regret.
🪴The four reminds you, plants struggle to thrive when they are root bound. It offers you secateurs to cut away what holds you back.
📖 Journal Prompts
✍🏻 Who/what/where do you treasure?
✍🏻 What word anchors/defines your heart energy?
✍🏻 What word anchors/defines your physical energy?
✍🏻 What words anchors/defines your mental energy?
✍🏻 What words anchors/defined your soul energy?
✍🏻 When combined what kind of compass does this provide for navigating a life congruent with your values?
✍🏻 Where are the drains on your money, time, love and agency? How can you make one small change to redirect the flow?
✍🏻 Where do your roots bind you? What needs to be cut away?
✍🏻 How can time act as a friend, collaborator and instigator of possibilities? If you loosen your grip, what happens? Look for the synchronicities this week.
The Tarot Primer is a text-based, espresso-strength infusion of tarot, channeled wisdom, journal prompts, poetry, life hacks and music delivered straight to your phone via Signal four times a week. The Primer returns Monday, 1st May.
Happy Day of the Horizon — my latest nerd iteration of the plethora of new year variants.
Over the weekend, I commented to a friend who I met through astrological circles, that I was fascinated by the fact that I was literally running a week behind with everything. Deadlines I had set for the previous weekend, were finalising this weekend. I spent most of the week feeling disheartened, running a failure narrative, at my inability to finish everything I wanted to complete before the equinox.
You know, if I’d just tried harder. Been more focused.
If the energy of the equinox portal had fucked me up so completely.
And dozens of other opportunistic bullshit.
A few minutes later, my friend messaged to say the transiting sun wouldn’t hit my first house for a few days… and boom! I checked in with my chart and saw that the sun would cross the threshold of my first house on Tuesday (yes, exactly a week after equinox!)
I wasn’t running behind schedule at all.
I was powering along in perfect alignment with my own intrinsic energy, cycles and timing. Yet again I’d worked hard to undo myself with an arbitrary date (one of the fixations and self sabotaging behaviours I’ve ben unpicking since January).
And Breathe
The most remarkable thing happened next — the shifting of my timeline suddenly freed up all the stuck, shitty energy I’d been caught in. I mean, we never completely wipe clean the slate, but I was clear about the energetic ties I wanted to cut moving into this new year. And gifted a moment of insight, I received a powerful reframe (and you know, an extra 36 hours grace!)
I could breathe. I could move. My world suddenly bloomed with possibilities.
I relaxed into the final moments of finishing a two year ghost editing project with Leah.
I turned up with excitement for the final few poems of a poetry project with Christina (not un-ironically called “Thresholds”)… and just generally enjoyed the feeling of what I wanted: a new year that felt like it had a clean slate.
Happy New Year
Just before 5am today, the sun kissed my horizon and my new year begun.
I don’t think it’s a “thing” (not like solar return charts are) but I cast a chart to see what the moment of “emergence” offers for the coming year, and there is plenty there to excite me professionally and creatively.
Especially in a year where my debut solo novel comes out.
My client books are shut this week. I’m not doing the Poetry Primer.
I’m giving all of me, to me.
I also postponed the beginning of The Poetry of You to open the necessary space to download the shape and nuance of it (which I knew had been patiently lingering in the wings waiting for everything else to finish).
The Coming Week, Prelude to the Underworld
Over the next few days I will share more specific details of what The Poetry of You will have in terms of shape, concept, context and content as it comes through.
I downloaded several exciting pieces swimming this morning.
What I can say at this point, there will be strong elements of Underworld mythology via Inanna (who, if you’ve read Postmarked Pipers’ Reach, you’ll know Ella-Louise was obsessed her), Persephone (who is on the wall of the room I get network chiropractic) and Psyche (who is my current obsession — what’s not to love about a woman who takes the back door into the underworld with cake to fed the hell hound!).
These stories are symbolically rich.
Ripe for retellings that strip away the patriarchal bullshit (where women only excel at beauty — or running away, only to be turned into trees).
These stories are also gentle and empowering structures to write our stories within. I’m excited to use them as spaces reorientation for (re)discovering our selves past-present-future.
If this sounds like something you’re in for now … sign up here.
Or join me here this week, as it unfolds for both of us in real(ish) time.
My Favourite Superpower
Opening doors for people and helping them step across the threshold is my favourite superpower as a depth worker.
In the process of doing this with myself right now, as I kiss the horizon and face al the fears, as I prepare to descend, I’m readying myself to be the best companion for you on your journey into the depths.
PS: *deep breath* I am experimenting with writing more and holding less tightly to it … freeing my time from the constraints of perfectionism (which is the antithesis of what being a writer is often — but perhaps more attuned with the energy of a word witch?) Closer to “clean skin” wines … this is a one-and-done and beautifully imperfect. All grammatical and spelling errors are on me and this crazy first-pass effort.
I wanted to cultivate a closer relationship with Mercury (and myself) this year and I set out to create a set of postcards that I could write and mail to myself, as kind of markers for how the year unfolded.
Covid in June disrupted a lot of things I had ticking away with clockwork precision and among the things which fell after June were my monthly tarot journal and with it, the Mercury postcards I’d committed to making and sending.
This week, in the Tarot Primer, we’re working with the 10 of Pentacles and the “In Action” part of the download for this week is to write out the aspects of the year that made it possible, with the option to write and send yourself a postcard of celebration.
Maybe it’s something you’d like to try also?
Or maybe on the other side of the festive season, you’d like to reach out and connect with people as one year flows into the other. Postcards are a time efficient way to say hello; I was thinking of you.
Below is a repository of downloadable postcard templates. All you need once you’ve printed off the template is some cardboard, scissors and glue. They take less than five minutes to complete.
This is my beloved Mercury Rx spread — rejigged in 2022 to reflect the fact that Mercury retrogrades between Air and Earth giving two distinct feels to the three week period.
You can download the full spread and worksheet here.
Years ago I sat in a Greek Restaurant in West End with a multi-passionate friend who was telling me all about a new idea she had for the salsa studio where she danced. I ate and drank heartily, as much in the sharing of her idea, as the food and wine.
When the night came to a close, I jokingly said my dream job would be to sit and listen to people share their ideas. I’d do it in exchange for dinner.
It lit me up, the notion I could be a first-time sounding board for something new. To support a fledgling idea, in a grassroots way, where just being there and listening, energisesd and shaped the idea.
Where I could see myself asking the right question, at the right time, and something shifted in a powerful way. Or I offered a unique perspective that threw a hidden door wide open and the idea appeared on the other side, transformed, and one step closer to tangible reality.
I especially wanted to witness ideas where I had no background knowledge. They were the ideas that excited me the most and where I felt I could be of greatest assistance, in the very early stages.
This all flashed through my head in the time it took to stand up, gather my stuff and say good-bye to my friend. As I walked off, I filed the idea away as a pipe dream, until last week.
Grow Your Ideas Sessions
On the 5th Day of Simone Seoul’s Summer Camp and my insomnia-riddled, over-wrought central nervous system finally calmed enough (thank you Jaime Durso) to get excited about something in the playbook of activities.
As I read about the play dates activity, the bright shiny idea I’d never have had the gumption to consider as part of my business, shimmied across my path and sang: me me me!!
You know the endearing but relentless way small children do it.
See, the thing is, I rock the shadows. I’m so fucking good there; as a soul having a human experience that’s my default place of comfort. And I’m exceptional as a word witch shepherding clients through those same dark spaces. But I’ve been summonsed in the last fortnight to honour the light in the same way I do the dark. And to step up, right up, and into it.
What do you create in the starlight and what do you create in the sunlight?
~ Chris-Anne on The High Priestess (The Muse Tarot)
It’s been something I’ve been sitting with and gently exploring in my own soul work. With the sun frolicking in Leo it’s time to step forward with something sun-drenched for the world.
I am offering ten Grow Your Idea sessions for anyone who’d love to come and talk about a new idea with me for a special introductory price of $33.
I want to hear what is inspiring you.
Calling to you.
That thing that’s been nagging you and no matter what, won’t go away.
Your heart’s yearning.
The spark.
What you promised yourself you’d make time for this year.
It can be related to work. It can be related to pleasure. Maybe it’s a side hustle. Maybe it’s a dream. It doesn’t have to be serious. And actually, the less Big and Important it is, perhaps the better?
All ideas start as an energetic spark of something simple before our humanness complicates them.
In a Grow Your Idea session you’ll get 45 minutes with me to chat.
If you want, I can walk you through the compass points of collaboration, joy, heart break and direction to help you know your idea better.
Or we can just let the idea guide the conversation—after all, it is the main event and it’s what I want to hear all about.
And if you’re in the Brisbane area, and you know a brilliant establishment that supports winter al fresco dining, we can honour my original idea of dinner in exchange for idea incubation. Drop me a message via the contact form.
