Commonly known as Sheree, with the scientific name being Nigtum Deam, found mostly within coastal areas, regularly at sea.
She is able to listen with attention and sometimes offers unwarranted advise. Her heart is in the right place.
She thrives in green humid spaces, on mountain sides in solitude, often retreating to Scottish glens to laugh at the moon.
She starts to pale and fade in monotonous, negative climates where light is limited and restricted.
She can be lured by white chocolate lattes and any variety of breads. At which point, she will shift into the pleasure zone, all petals opening to receive joys with a smile.
Every year for the past 6 or 7 years, I’m chosen a word to guide me through the year. A word that I can use almost as a beacon to lead me through the year ahead with purpose, focus and grace.
2021 saw we embracing the practice of ::SLOW:: after 2020 and pandemic forcing everyone to slow down. Once things started to open up again, to some degrees, I didn’t want to give up the space and creativity and peace I’d found in moving and being at a slower pace. So I purposely leant into slow in 2021, and it saw me well.
Each guiding word is not discarded at the end of each year but through practice they become incorporated, embedded really into my way of being moving forward. So 2022, will see me continue to practice ::SLOW:: because I have learned so much about myself and others through it’s adoption. It has changed the way I operate in this world and for the better.
So considering this, the natural progression for me, building on 2021, is to adopt {BE} OPEN as my word of 2022.
For me OPEN means being open to opportunities, vulnerabilities and ideas.
Using OPEN with {BE} is a reminder to go gently and with grace. Using {} around the word ‘be’ is giving me, my state of being a virtual hug. I’m hugging myself through this process of opening up more to opportunities, vulnerabilities and ideas.
{BE} is offering love to myself. {BE} OPEN is offering action to open, even though I know ‘being’ has nothing to do with ‘doing’. Being is just being, just being me. No need to produce or shine. Just be simply open to what is there right in front of me.
{BE} OPEN to opportunities is not to shut down straight away but to move out of my comfort zone if something is offered to me as a possibility.
{BE} OPEN to vulnerabilities is being more of an open book. Showing up more and more authentically me and not being afraid of sharing my emotions, feelings and thoughts. Having my honest heart on display and giving and accepting LOVE.
{BE} OPEN to ideas is continuing to be the life-long learner I’m accepted myself to be and to continue to play and experiment within my own practice. To remain open to new adventures and explorations and not be afraid to take leaps, even when I’m getting older and maybe stuck in my ways.
With 2022, I’m practicing how to keep an open mind, heart and soul to whatever comes next. Viewing being and developing myself not as a chore or battle but as a blessing.
Seeing in the end of the old year and into the new is a time I always take for reflection. Visioning and re-visioning my dreams and plans for the year to come is something I do to focus my energies for moving forward with purpose and grace.
As I mentioned in my last post, my guiding word for 2021 is SLOW. To support this process of living into my word with intention, I spend time working through Susannah Conway’s workbook Unravelling Your Year. This year, the pulling of a tarot card for each month of the year is missing from the workbook for some reason, but I’ve followed this ritual for so many years now, that I didn’t need anyone else’s guidance to do so except my own intuition.
So using Kim Krans’ The Wild Unknown Archetypes deck, I proceeded to pull a card for each month of 2021, and one final card as a guiding theme for the year. When I pulled the final card, there were two stuck together so I went with the two as my guiding principles. The Crone and The Hunter were the two cards that will become my over arching cards of 2021.
I intend to go into detail about what each of these cards signify and could mean for the year ahead in the following posts. I will also share about each card pulled for each month in a post within each month moving forward too. This is a good way to keep focused and coming back to the magic and potential that each card can offer as I journey through this coming year.
Living Wild Studios 