BEGIN AGAIN

Dear beloved you,

It’s a couple weeks into 2025 now, and I hope the year is treating you well so far.  For me, the new year is two things.  I’m very aware it is a day chosen long ago as part of a very human designed construct and therefore part of me thinks it shouldn’t matter as much as say, the solstice.  And on the other hand, I’m always up for any chance to begin again so that’s how I’m choosing to see it - as an opportunity to take stock and focus on what I’d like to spend the next twelve months doing.

The word I’ve chosen for the year is “sovereign”, which has everything to do with what I’ll be putting out in the world, for sure.  And I hope it will be an ongoing reminder to continue to develop my own sovereignty. It’s not something I was taught growing up and it has taken me a lifetime to embrace.  Most of us of the female persuasion weren’t introduced to the concept, were we? Quite the opposite.

So, this year I’ll be focusing on all the elements I’ve discovered along the way to embracing myself as a fully worthy, whole and sovereign human being. It’s been a long and extraordinary journey.

I’ll talk about self-compassion.  A lot. 

I’ve come to see that we cannot truly be compassionate with others if we are not capable of showing it to ourselves.  And most of us can’t – or could certainly expand our capacity.  The last few years especially, with lockdowns, natural disasters, apartheid and everything in between being made so visible on media, has highlighted the lack of empathy we have for each other and the enormous amount of “othering” that happens in our world - and the incredible crevasses it creates between us.  The rates of people who report being lonely have skyrocketed, and I suspect that begins with feeling of being separated from ourselves, and therefore each other. 

I’ll also be saying a lot about redefining the word “selfish”.  

Being selfish has come to taken very negatively. But if you travel much by air, you’ll be familiar with the instructions from flight attendants to, in an emergency, put your own oxygen mask on first before assisting others.  Life is like that too, isn’t it?  

If we don’t fill our own cup, how do we do anything for others? So many women I know have literally made themselves quite ill – myself included – as they do exactly what they’ve been taught to do.  To ignore the screams of our own bodies in order to tend to the needs of others.  To walk around in a perpetually exhausted state so that our lives “look good” and we are seen as good girls, good wives, good mothers, good women. 

We literally withhold all we need – rest, contemplation, creativity, often even food and water – so that we make sure those we love and often those we don’t are okay. I know women who even cross their legs and wait to use the bathroom for hours, so as not to appear weak or needy.

Or selfish.

Let’s see what we can do to redefine that particular seven letter word into a far more positive one, shall we?

The third leg of the sovereign stool, for me, has been learning to live my life at a humane pace. Our world moves at a speed we frankly can’t keep up anymore – and when we try, we create dis-ease, dis-order and dis-content.  That’s a lot of “dis”, isn’t it? No wonder things are such a mess. 

So I’ll be sharing the simple, straightforward practices I’ve found helpful in my years of unraveling the “good life” I’d so painstakingly pursued for decades – and the ones I continue to fall back on in my much slower life now.  The one that allows me to be me, to be a far better mother and partner, to put light out into the world in so many ways.  

The one that allows me to be sovereign. 

Over this year, you’ll find (mostly) weekly blog posts here, several short videos each week on Tiktok (if you have access to it) and YouTube.  Likely less on the metaverse but we’ll see. 

I’ll be offering a sovereign circle starting next month as well as little gifts to my email subscribers so sign up for that – it’s free – if you don’t want to miss anything. 

I’m looking forward to all this year brings, and to walking through it with you.

Love and thanks,

Christa

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