It has been a profound time of stripping, of radical deconstruction, of slow, care-full reforming, this year, the apex (for me, or so it feels) of a long process unfolding over the past few, crucial years, personally, globally, and in the realms of Soul.

I have appeared quiet on this page but in fact been incubating at unimagined levels, as this time has required of me. The stirrings, then, have brought to surface a cylce of huge movement, new projects, new forming bonds, finding community. Alongside more loss, sliding ever so close to the crumbly edge of radical change, of unanchored territory.

Alongside again, deepening into what I have at last recognised as my true calling, this work of embodied imagination, creation, contemplation, that ignites the soul alive through the immense knowing of our moving, living body. A recognition distilled over the course of a lifetime. Gratitude. Relief. A quiet arrival, one that has awakened dormant knowledge, and memory (and dares me to more change).

I was writing a new year post – three years ago – that was never published, falling silent on the loss of a life time friend.  In this time the crossing of human paths, the heart wrenching exprience of being let into the mystery of a life turning to its essence, the strangers who become family, the opening of the collective heart of groups of people sharing their ways to spirit,  have filled me with the kind of awe that humbles every bone of mine, stops me in my track and has me cry over a slice of shared pizza.

Never more than now I know how easy it is to isolate and miss each other, that the loneliness of being ‘missed’ is a place the most confident of us can trip into. Never more than now I hold dear the blessing of ‘Anam Cara’, our soul friends, the life witnesses walking alongside us, whether or not we are conscious of the thread they hold for us, of what they affirm and sustain in us, the difference they make to our sense of ‘existing’, the anchoring that they provide for a necessary sense of safety in ourselvs, in our being in the world.

So, at the turning of the year, tonight, I wish you all to treasure, nourish and be blessed by the presence of Anam Cara;
for your visions and intents and your hearts and souls calling to birth fully and rise courageously in the times to come, however big and glowy or quietly weaving their being away from sight.

EVERY single voice counts, in its own signature and nature, anywhere it works away inside the fabric of life.
I appreciate all and each who are in my life and around it in any role, immensely.
Be well, dear people, travelers of this plane, of this world that needs the light you are here to shine. Stay loyal to your truth, hold together, sing your own song.

I leave you with the words by John O’Donohue that many of you know, from his beautiful Book of Blessings.
Love to one and all

Filomena

~ A Friendship Blessing ~

May you be blessed with good friends.
May you learn to be a good friend to yourself.
May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where
there is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness.
May this change you.
May it transfigure that which is negative, distant, or cold in you.
May you be brought in to the real passion, kinship, and affinity of belonging.
May you treasure your friends.
May you be good to them and may you be there for them;
may they bring you all the blessing, challenges, truth,
and light that you need for your journey.
May you never be isolated.
May you always be in the gentle nest of belonging with your anam ċara. 

(John O’Donohue, Anam Cara, 1997)