End of 2024
Well, this fucking year.
I'm so grateful to have people around me killin it right now, reminding me to take my turn in darkness, in carving out, in Winter, in humbling myself, in being broken down to the very foundational core of what I am, what I carry forward, and what has died honorably and messily within and around me.
I’m beyond grateful for the tribe I’ve built close to me that knows I’m unreliable when I’m going through it- to respond, show up, be “on”. I’m grateful that I know I have a lot to work on in this, and that they love me with a lot of grace and compassion through it.
I moved. AGAIN. The mountains have not fucked around. I’ve been so freaking initiated by the powerful force they are. Commanding respect and reverence, slowness, deep awareness, attention and intention. Colorado is one of my favorite places on planet Earth, and also one of the hardest places for me to live. I’ve been challenged- the strength of every tool I know (by way of stripping them ALL away), every boundary I’ve set, every lesson I’ve EARNED.
I started comfy and cozy, and really needed it for where I was meant to head.
This year sat me in places of friendship I’ve never experienced. Loving friends in new and old ways, showing me what I am made of, how deeply I love, and where I’m not meant to be up close-without it making any of us wrong or bad. I had the honor and privilege to show up as a nurse, a fellow woman, as courage and comfort in a way I’ll never forget, and always cherish in the deepest nooks of my heart. I witnessed the most powerful strength of one of my favorite women, and it deepened my respect for her in ways that can’t be shaken. I witnessed her stand up for, and choose, love in the face of everything life could throw at her to tell her to run and quit. This is something that is deeply inspiring my current season.
I had my heart broken in friendships in ways not meant to be personal, not meant to break us apart, just meant to show me more about letting the people I love be so sovereignly on their journey even as I love them more deeply than I ever have. No love lost, no disrespect- even in a storm of confusion none of us could’ve predicted. I’m so so grateful (after a LONG season of darkness and waiting) to finally be tasting the sweetness of clarity starting to peek through. A tatste of Love shining its way back into my life, showing me that it’s time to flip the script on everything I thought I knew about what brings meaning to my life through deep connection.
I’m so so so grateful for the steadfast friends that have been ride or die, constant in their support and love, sharing very directly through their lens in the spirit of perspective-sharing, and still honoring my time and space to choose how to make meaning and forward steps out of what is on my altar. I’m grateful to hear what I haven’t wanted to hear, to know they express through their own experiences of life, and that as we each choose, we are loved in our learning, even if it means we gotta take a beat from each other to make it through the season. Again, no love lost.
I was pushed out of things I thought for sure were for me-home, offerings, jobs, so confused about where the hell I was meant to be going, what I’m meant to be doing. I had to be sat down so hard, so deeply into the Earth by the craziest sequence of events I’ve ever personally journeyed. I needed to get quiet, to get in my own energy, literally on the mountain-top as a Manifestor in my environment- to start to hear the whispers of Life.
I’ve navigated opening more deeply and wondering what that means, what it can and cannot mean for me, my energy, my body, Love. I’ve navigated self-respect, anger, being more safely held than I’ve ever known and also being more dumped and projected onto than I have been in years. And I went so fucking deeply into these lessons-wondering if I’m going further than I need to in order to learn lessons I’ve already worked hard to learn and honor. Wondering if it’s my lesson, or the person I’m sharing with. Why am I STILL in this??? Getting truly lost in the hurricane of the mind trying to figure out life. And I’ve finally made it to my mountain, my respite. The wisdom deep within my body and the Earth finally becoming audible, palpable.
I gave my everything, and then I had nothing to give. I had to ask for SO FUCKING MUCH HELP. Anyone who knows me knows this is much to my chagrin, often. I love my resourcefulness, independence, and freedom. It damn near broke me. No, actually it shattered me by force. My soul chose so loudly my mind and ego could not possibly put up a fight. All of my armors and strength didn’t stand a chance- weren’t meant to- against my soul’s yearning to learn support, rest, interdependence.
The packages help came in challenged everything I idealized about help, about rest, about NEED. It wasn’t pretty, there was resentfulness all around and inside. And… there was still love. There was still a very outward demonstration that love wanted to live here. In me, between all the “us-es” I was navigating. There was an expression and even growth in doing it better. This is the newness of this season… more on that later.
I left my home, with nowhere to go clearly looming over me. I headed straight into another fire of friendship and love. Asking for help, bringing so much friction to another’s Sanctuary. Guilt, anger, pain, exhaustion. I left one heartbreak- still fresh and unclear- and dove headfirst into another dynamic that was unstable, unclear what was wanting to be unearthed or where it was heading. I was met with a completely open home, and frequent reminders that my presence was wanted. I was met with tea, arguments, gentle holding, tension, warm fire, questions about what I needed to feel okay and supported, fear, shitty coping, fatigue, and the deepest fucking unconditional love I have ever experienced. I was confused as fuck. And I can see very clearly why I was meant to be.
I took so many trips and was led to the most profoundly alive places, seeing so much of my new home state and the beauty it’s offering me.
I saw so many of my favorite artists right here in my new home in a matter of months.
I supported in one of my favorite ceremonial spaces leading into my birthday and was so beyond grateful to enjoy the gift of the Mother, the Ocean, The Grandmother, and the sweetest family gathering.
The mountain has shown me where I can stand stronger. Be more steadfast. Be quiet and patient. Get all the way to the ground in HUMBLE. Be so supported and loved, deeply connected to Spirt and all of life, if I just set the space.
I used to love snowy mountain driving finding it fun- I slid to avoid a mommy and baby deer and hit the guardrail; my car is still being loved back to life.
Days later I hit a patch of black ice under 4 inches of snow coming up the steepest sharpest switchback and experienced free-falling in my car for the first time ever. I came down, and went back up to try again- same thing. I was shaking so hard in my whole body I could barely hold my foot on the break. New experiences with fear and the sympathetic nervous system.
I had more challenges expressing myself and hearing another than I’ve had in over a decade. Doing things I haven’t done in that decade to protect myself, to be heard.
I got a second (probably third) degree burn on my dominant palm from my wood stove- body and soul screaming for me to pay attention to what’s obviously amiss in life, slowing me all the way down, forcing me to look, to listen, to feel myself, and what Life was trying to get my attention to.
I had my first bad UTI in years and took antibiotics for the first time since my early 20’s- apologizing to my body the whole time. Another sympathetic nervous system flag trying to get me to slow down and listen.
Somehow every single shit storm was taken care of. Mostly without any of me being part of it. I was on E, nothing left to throw at it all.
Somehow none of my patients were mad at me for letting them down when I couldn’t use my hand and work, somehow money came.
Somehow this very patient and loving man was never resentful for all the places I needed to be driven, all the help I needed to have a real Thanksgiving, for all the snot I cried onto his shirt. Somehow he learned to make room for all the screams that needed to clear the way. Somehow he kept loving me in the full expression of dark feminine, in the icky expression of my full-blown asshole.
Somehow one of my best friends manifested the most magical trip to Sedona, and I was the lucky partner invited to enjoy the medicine of this place, and of her incredible love. A rescue that came at the eleventh hour, right on time to start me back on the process of healing and restoration, as well as launching me forward into a drastically different experience of me.
Somehow one of the best women I’ve ever known still has space in her heart for me make another pass at being her friend and sister after a long break to fall apart, be completely de-constructed, and co-create how I piece this Life of ME back together.
I did not network- I rebuilt what home feels like to me inside. I constructed, de-constructed, and re-constructed it outside of me multiple times.
I was not consistent in my yoga practices- I witnessed what devotion means- returning again and again to something that will hold me unconditionally. Remembering my body holds memories of flow, strength, vitality no matter how many and how long the breaks between are. My whole being is joyful with every return to my Sadhana.
I fell off my practices for months for the first time ever- I was faced with debilitating fury and anger when I sat in silence- practicing staying with it and taking breaks from it. I’ve learned to let go of my demands on what they must bring me. I’ve learned to let them change, for new parts to come. I’ve learned how I am starved when I allow myself to sustain in disconnection. How the mind can fall into spirals of life-sucking stories. My body weakens, and feels dis-ease easily. My heart can’t be heard in the deafness of disconnect. There is no joy in the mundane OR the profound. I learned the profundity of the simplest, most basic practices when I finally returned. I re-appreciated from a deeper lens how deeply-reaching the slow and steady build of a foundation is.
I dishonored my boundaries BADLY- I returned to the dark feminine as she was called forth, very justifiably. I learned so much about the balance of being soft, indirect, patient with the Shadow in others, and the need to know and speak my capacity for certain expressions of pain, Shadow, and darkness. I learned more about my capacity (not just my ideal desires) in general and moment-to-moment contexts- often the hard way by remaining silent and soft, as I navigated trying to incorporate this more into my life by request of others and by my own desire to foster it. I learned so much more about the gift of my directness and boldness. I had my faith in this gift tested harder than ever trying to understand how to lovingly confront what is not of service, what is ready to be transformed and elevated. How do I meet myself and others in this gift in balance and harmony?
I did not grow my business- I allowed myself to rest in my nursing skills, to be with the insanity of life. As my mind, body, and life imploded, I took my foot off the gas to explore the edges of hopelessness, fear, isolation, sequential mini-disasters, and what it feels like when my tools don’t shift my circumstance visibly. I asked for help when I didn’t trust myself in my despair. I asked for those who love me to keep watch over me while we both practice trusting me in my edges of darkness- to come back, to remember. I’ve said thank you for the Path teaching me about witnessing without identifying as these seasons, feelings, experiences, illnesses so that I can hope for, be patient for, and trust that I am co-creating my return to an even more Alive Kaitlyn. In service, in enjoyment of what life wants me to experience here on Earth home.
I did not speak, act, move from any kind of Higher place A TON- I was very swiftly, loudly reminded of the very HUMAN aspects of me. My judge, my Negative Nancy, my complainer, my victim rising to be seen, heard, again and again as the hope and the resiliency was being sapped from me. The tantrums, the screams, the giving up, the sheer exhaustion, the numbing. In conversations, at work, in my practices that disappeared, in relationships. I became so deeply confronted with my need for radical selfishness and retreat so I could see that EVERYTHING needs to change for me in the coming season. To sit in the funeral and grief and gratitude this winter. I need this proper winter to be ready, to listen, to clean myself up, pick myself up, connect the dots. To be whittled down to what I am. I am still in the process of asking what all these parts and voices are here to teach me, what’s ready to heal and be more deeply loved- in me, and in the ones I love so dearly.
Love has surprised me with new invitations. I see the patterns of culture: throw-away, cancel love when darkness finds its way to the surface for healing. We are stuck this way. We are not growing. I’m grateful for this season and the counter-culture that allows darkness to come. A new culture that invites it to speak of what needs healing and change without letting darkness burn it all down in its surfacing-unless it needs to. I see the patterns of my father and mother- seemingly polar opposite living in me, screaming for protection, to stay as we are in case we may be hurt. God do I love them, and all the people they lived in before me waiting for the patterns to break. I’m so grateful for the work they all did to get me right where I am to make bold changes in Love, in work, in the world.
Love has grown me- voluntarily and with lots of kicking and screaming. It has revealed the Woman inside of me who journaled 3 years ago that she was ready for the Truth of Love and the healing it will demand by its very presence. Love that points out every place I have not grown, opened, surrendered to let love touch me, fill me, be me. This woman is steadfast when it’s hurting and turning away, running away, and quitting won’t heal it. This woman is strong enough to choose Love again and again, no matter how many times it seems impossible. This woman is valuing sovereignty in new, fierce, powerful, connective ways. This woman is sweetly loving of the Little Girl’s fear, the fear her family has been carrying for generations.
I have learned so many lessons about where relationships, business, and Life have chosen decay and death. I have learned a lot in discernment about where to invest my energy where Life has chosen to greet itself to Live, Create, Love. In people, places, my business. I feel grateful for that wisdom in my body. I stand in a space where there isn’t a clear answer. Where I am quiet, open to love, ready to pour the energy I’m gaining into it. I am now surrounded by people who are choosing growth and Life- often in ways that make my mind question if it’s good for me. And I have a chance to see what it’s like to not run, to not cut off something that has chosen death and decay. To choose to let people around me grow through some of the hardest shit life can throw us. To let myself be hurt by them, to hurt them myself, and to sit still and quiet in a season of grace to see what can be born here. To see what Love wants to create when we sit still from the “doing” and let healing be. Let Love grow itself. When we stop forcing and feeding fear’s pile of evidence and start feeding Love’s overwhelming promise of possibility. I have no way of knowing if or when a relationship, a creative project, or something I love will choose to die. But I have learned to feel it in my body, honor it, and keep stepping when that makes itself known to me. And I trust that. I trust I’ll be okay if I don’t get that right too. I trust I’ll have who, what, where, when I’ll need.
Wherever you are in your inner season, however you celebrate or don’t, I hope you know warmth, and that people you’ve never met are praying you feel, taste, experience being so loved, wanted, and in your gifts and purpose. There are so many people working to build a world where we ALL get to know this.
Happy Winter, (for me)
I love you alls
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