My 33rd spin around the sun blooms near.
I envision confetti sprinkled donuts and cortados in rosy pink glasses on twinkle-lit back-porch to Gemini celebrate.
I unabashedly have asked for gifts, because I believe in practicing the art of knowing my desires and asking for them -- frilly socks (the ones I wore to Sunday school as a little girl have made a fashion comeback), reiki-charged candles, journals with rose-patterned hardcovers, organic dark chocolate.
I circle close to my spirit-word from this past year, this year of B L O O M, because I experience my birthday in New Year Eve’s style.
I relish the reflection.
I receive the lessons.
I reap and renew.
I ready the inner soil for a new seed of a spirit-word, but before I launch into announcing my spirit-word for my 33rd year, I curate a spacious pause to see the light and the shadow of my year of bloom.
For every spirit-word holds the light and the dark, and journeying with the word, even and perhaps especially such a lovely word like bloom, asks for compassionate witnessing, and in the witnessing, there is subtle and steady integration.
So I open my palms, I blink open my third eye, I breathe into the rose-petalled knowing of my womb, I relax into my heart-space and I whole-body listen.
The year of bloom may be the darkest year of my life.
The year of bloom may be the lightest year of my life.
The two coexist as one.
The dark night of the soul rebirthed me to the truth of my lightness.
As my darling and dazzlingly wise friend Annie told me recently, “We can be messy and hurting, and still powerful.”
That is my year of bloom.
The year when the depression came in the glorious shine of summer and peacefully departed in the depths of a pine-scented winter.
The year when I fell for prey to the 3-D matrix illusion that I am separate and listened to an Eckhart Tolle podcast to prompt a re-remembering to transcend those narratives by simply softening into present moment embodied being.
The year when I cracked jokes in between getting attachments and bracket tightening at my orthodontist office, and dug deeper into German New Medicine and repeated the mantra, “You can show your teeth” so I could grant myself the permission to growl, to defend, to speak when boundaries needed tending.
The year when I confronted all the restrictive ways I hide myself away, how I scan my surroundings to see if it’s safe to be in my fullest expression of bloom, when I became aware of the narratives that tell me to wait for love … and … the year when I bloomed into a sacred flow of my embodied femininity, let myself be seen through my writings, my Body Writes courses, my heart-to-heart conversations with kindred-hearted friends.
The year of bloom is the lotus flower. I drop the story I am telling myself about being in the mud, about the muddiness, and let the experiences help me create that inner garden of complete acceptance, of embraced sensitivity.
I am mud, roots, and the flower petals. I enjoy living as a human being. I enjoy the cool kiss of air on my skin. I sense the warmth of aliveness swirling in my palms. I see the luminosity of others as I free myself to express the luminosity within me.
This is the year of bloom. The shadow and the light merge as one to nurture the real beauty of the whole.
I bite into a biscuit I packed into my “Friends Of The Marfa Public Library” tote bag, I sip my coffee which is now cooled … and I savor the taste of what is real in this bloom of a moment, right here and right now. On the hopeful edge of 33, and yet, still very much 32. Present and daydreamy, rooted and forward-focused, messy and feeling beautiful in that messiness, too.