It was lovely to gather with so many of you yesterday to reflect on this last year and the year ahead. In case you missed it, here’s the full video (we stayed for 2.5 hours again!) and all the links and resources I mentioned in the workshop (scroll down for those).
As I wrote during our journaling time, I knew I was very much scratching the surface of my experience of 2024. It was a wildly textured year for me. Deeply felt and leading to some significant shifts. When I inquired with The I Ching during our workshop about the past year, I received Hexagram 37, which I tend to think of as “Family” (resonant enough already), but which Stephen Karcher translates as “Dwelling People,” emphasizing the home and ancestors.
Dwelling People is all things inside or wei: protection, being among one’s own people, concord and safety. It is the fundamental unit of noble life, a family grouped around the ancestors, and emphasizes the de or power and virtue of the woman as centre. The progression with the figure suggests founding a dwelling: establishing boundaries, the hearth fire and the woman, settling relations, and the influx of spirit blessings from the ancestors and the mothers.
In countless ways, most of them unexpected, this last year was all about the ancestors and the mothers for me, those living, and those long past. I’ll return to Hexagram 37 for reflection with more quiet time in the final days of this calendar year. I’m craving the quiet time.
When I began writing about the coming year, without memories and events to guide me, I found less urgency pouring out of my pen but plenty of anticipation in my body. There is so much sociopolitical uncertainty; so many problems to solve, short- and long-term. Meanwhile, my creative energies have returned after a significant lull, and I feel like I’m trying to wrangle a crowd of eager children, all raising their hands with something to say. All in good time. All in good time.
When it comes to this space, this community, let’s make some dates to get together at the start of 2025 — mark your calendars!
Sunday, February 2nd, 10am PST | Balancing Stability + Meaning in Life — a return to Quarterlife themes for people of all ages. How does this tug between structure and wildness, the known and the unknown show up in your life?
Sunday, March 2nd, 10am PST | Dreamwork — bring all your questions!
Sunday, April 6th, 10am PST | (tbd)
I’ll share registration links for those gatherings in my next missive. As always, all paid subscribers can join live and watch the recording afterward (along with all videos past). Those who cannot afford a paid subscription are always welcome to drop me a short note, no questions asked.
But there’s more!
In addition to these first monthly Sunday gatherings, I’d really like to also lead a book group or two, or three.
The first book that’s calling is: Dancing in the Flames by Marion Woodman and Elinor Dickson. There’s a lot of backstory about why and why now, which I’ll get to soon. (See the nod to the mothers above.)
We might also need to do a deep dive back into Jung’s Red Book at some point next year, too.
So stay tuned, and also…
Happy New Year!!
May 2025 bring love and peace in far greater abundance than last year. May it bring the needed revolutions of consciousness and action that so many of us crave. May it bring sweetness and clarity to your own lives and the lives of those around you. May it bring some healing to our planet and all the creatures with whom we share this space.
All workshop resources and links are below to follow along with the year-end ritual.
The I Ching does not offer itself with proofs and results; it does not vaunt itself, nor is it easy to approach. Like a part of nature, it waits until it is discovered. It offers neither facts nor power, but for lovers of self-knowledge, of wisdom—if there be such—it seems to be the right book. …Let it go forth into the world for the benefit of those who can discern its meaning.
– Carl Jung, 1949
