Goodbye 2024

Learning to say goodbye over and over and over

It’s hard for me to believe it’s been a year more or less since my last post. It’s been a year of change, grief, facing shadows, losing and gaining hope over and over…..we are indeed living in interesting times.

Possibly my biggest loss was my sister Rose. In 2021 she began to experience pain in her body that got worse by the month. After many misdiagnosis, it was discovered she had multiple myeloma cancer. Thus began an intense couple of years for the two us, of research, trips south to a former Mayo physician doctor now practicing integrative medicine , struggling to make sense of mountains of information-both medical and alternative - and always with the fear of loss underneath. By mid-2024, she was cancer free. It was a huge victory for her, and we began making plans to catch up on all the fun she had missed.

In October, she somehow got Legionnaires pneumonia, and overnight she was gone. It was a crushing blow after all she had done to beat cancer. One month later, my daughter’s dad died of turbo cancer. While we never married, in the past decade the 3 of us regularly went to brunch together and considered ourselves good friends. So I have had to dance with grief, succumbing to bouts of despair and having to face the question, what happens when we die? I have never quite found an answer to that, yet I know it is perhaps one of the strongest unconscious drivers throughout our lives.

I used to make up stories about what would happen after leaving this plane, but for the past few years I never really got a good story that resonated. I saw that stories were the fuel that drove my actions. Without them, there was nothing to guide my energy into any specific direction. It scared me for a good part of the year but now I’m learning to be at peace with this. And yet this year as I’ve watch people dying, not having a story has proved to be a challenge. I do believe we are all one spirit having many different experiences, but that’s all I can hold on to without giving myself a more detailed story.

Not having a story early this year brought about some weird pressure. Everytime I put something on my calendar my body had a reaction. I decided to see what would happen if I made no commitments at all. I spent 2024 practicing leaving my calendar blank, greeting each day with a wide open block of time of which nothing was expected of me. (Hence no newsletters lol) Triggers galore revealed themselves. I found each morning as soon as I was awake, the to-do list floated over the bed. Then the expectation that for every hour I was awake I should be working showed up. Those two things were relentless and I had to face them every day over and over. “I’m not doing anything today” I would say to my daughter and she would say, “Good! You don’t have to!” But secretly I would be thinking, “Then what is my value? What is the point of being alive if I’m not productive in some way?” And while there WERE days I just read or lay in a hammock, I continued to tackle my list of things to do because I did not know how else to live. I am still trying to find my way through this last chapter of my life, looking for new dreams, for new pleasures, for a way to relax into what I have created. Because I now know viscerally that tomorrow it could all change, for me and/or those around me. And that is the human condition - joy and loss and fear and despair and hope and laughter and love… I am reminded daily that what is real and true is felt in my heart.

Throughout all this, the synchronicity of teaching a retreat appeared. I wasn’t really planning on one but chess pieces began moving across the board and when I was first contacted about possibly teaching one, I went to the ancestor altar and asked for advice. They said, “take everything you’ve learned, condense it down into a week, and share it in a beautiful package.” So Retreat 2025 was born. Located in the jungle south of Isla Holbox, Mexico, it will be a juicy and tantalizing experience. It was the first thing all year that brought excitement into my body, and I have been working hard with the retreat owner to offer something amazing. Here’s the link to the retreat page. I hope you feel inclined to join us.

I was asked to speak about finding inspiration at the Lake Harriet Spiritual Community. I said yes before I found out the subject, otherwise I might have hesitated. The past year it has been difficult for me to feel inspired, or to find inspiration in my normal daily life. So it was good for me to have to spend a week or so researching and writing and digging deep to see what I could find. You can watch the video here. One of my favorite sources of inspiration is Joel Salatin, the Lunatic Farmer. His common sense and straight talk always inspires me to be more proactive about the things I feel strongly about. Mary Reynolds, reformed landscape artist and author of “We Are The Ark” is another of my inspirations. Her perspective on working with Nature mirrors my own and she has started a global movement of giving Nature back her power in small ways.

If you have special ways of finding inspiration, please share them. One of the best things about social media for me is seeing the incredible diversity of ideas. I love falling into rabbit holes that can inspire and inform. There are infinite timelines to jump into, I am searching for the most exciting, mysterious and beautiful!

AND, I finally got the second edition of The Secret Language of Emotion: Decoding the Mystery of Feelings on Amazon with a Kindle version as well. My publisher friend told me 2 years ago, “Just get on KDP and put your book on Kindle. It will be easy.” LOL! It took me almost a year, and 2 additional editors to get the formats for both that were acceptable to Amazon. Normally I love to learn new skills so I can repeat them, but if I publish another book I will simply hire someone who can do it quickly and professionally!!

So as we watch a new year approaching, I wish you all the best visions humanity has to offer, and that we can realize a global community of beauty, maturity, responsibility, and above all, compassion and love. May all of our imaginations be sparked, on fire, shared and become a movement! May the chaos of a crumbling world reveal the breathtaking awe and beauty that awaits us.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite artists, Gilbert Williams, and his beautiful, mysterious and inviting landscapes.

Blessings!

Cat