Last week I flew home for 5 days, turned 37 while still in the air on the way back, and had surgery requiring general anesthetic.

Anyone who knows anything about energy and change would now tell me to be still and let all of that integrate into my cells.  My body feels sore and strange, but my brain is straining to write and create and get on with the process of a whole new year of my life.

I’ve decided to spend today gently working on a dream board and a gentle plan for my year ahead.

In the most recent Circe’s Tribe call (I highly recommend Circe’s Circle!) Jamie asked about the conditions that we need to flourish. This is a perfect question for me today as I feel like I am well placed to begin my fresh new year.

In the past, making vision boards always made me irritated and disillusioned because the things weren’t showing up and I got depressed when I tried to be positive and bad things still happened over and over and over.  I read and meditated a lot about this and I have finally realized that instead of being specific on my vision boards about things I wanted, I should focus on my ultimate goal because I know that the Universe/ God/ Goddess/ the Divine (whatever feels right to you) actually has bigger better plans than I can possibly imagine.

What if me putting big things on my vision board was actually limiting the amazingness that could be??!

So I think that in order for me to flourish what I really need is the ability to get out of my own way.  When I set my compass and my vision for happiness and joy and connection (which is what all of the things I want actually represent) and I try to make decisions that will bring me closer to those things rather than push them farther away, and I have faith that what is coming is better than what I could imagine, I feel a lot better.

Following Jamie’s lead and calling it a Dream Board rather than a Vision Board has helped too – it’s not about what I want, it’s about how I want to be.

What else do I need to flourish?

• Beauty. I need it like I need water and sleep!
• Sleep/ water/ nourishing food. – I’ve been eating no sugar for the past 2.5 months and I feel 100% clearer and gentler on myself. It has been life-changing. (I’ll post about that later this week.)
• For me I also need an element of the sacred in my life. It’s the bit I didn’t realize/ didn’t allow/ didn’t embrace for years and years, so I am stretching myself and letting that really growl and stretch and grow within me. I don’t have a template or a mentor to show me my way – nobody I know of is doing what feels right for me – so I am trying to embrace and integrate what is showing up for me and let it come out.

Here at the beginning of my 38^th year, I have finally accepted that flourishing is such a personal state that it isn’t until we allow ourselves to embrace all of ourselves and accept it and let our freak flag fly that we can move into that flow. The only resistance we have to it is our own.

What do you need to flourish?

(Can anybody tell me who to give credit for this picture?)

“I’ll tell you how the sun rose, A ribbon at a time.” - Emily Dickinson

“Don’t write today from your experience of writing yesterday.” – Laraine Herring – The Writing Warrior

When I stand in a bookstore and wonder whether or not a book belongs to me, I take a breath, open the book and let it tell me something.  I love this moment of possible connection so much that to me it feels like a prayer.

Mark and I went to Glastonbury last week (if you’ve never been, come visit me and we’ll go together!) In The Speaking Tree, I absently ran my fingers over the spines of all of the gentle, spiritual supportive titles, not feeling a great pull to any of them until: “Me,” The Writing Warrior whispered. ”I am who you are looking for.”

I pulled it off off the shelf, feeling a bit uncomfortable. The word warrior felt scary but energetic. Pause. Breathe. Open. Read.

“Don’t write today from your experience of writing yesterday.”

Reading that sent electric sparks through my body.

Everything I do seems to be tethered to the past.  Nostalgia and history are my mode of operation in so many ways.  I don’t write how I want to write because of reactions I have had in the past.  I do things because they have always been done that way before. I haven’t followed the whisperings of my heart because they do not relate to anything I have seen someone else do.

I worry about committing to my path because of the way other people have walked theirs.

Honestly?  I have been afraid of who I could become.  What if you don’t like me anymore? What if what is in my heart clamouring to come out makes me so weird that there is no coming back to normal life?  Writing about the sacred as I feel it is so much easier than letting the sacred out.

And who am I to write it anyway?

I am going to try to put all of that down and show up at the page.

“Don’t write today from your experience of writing yesterday.”

Deep breath. Pause. Write.

Here goes nothing.

xo