New Year 2022

Happy New Year! Even though my personal “new year” starts on the Winter Solstice, I understand the calendar intention that goes back to Julius Caesar in Rome! Most meaningful on this first day of January is that I have two people close to me that share this day as their birthday… Both are women from Indonesia…One is 82 years old and the other is 23… The younger woman I met her through her father Wayan, a gentle and beautiful man who helped me organize my group Qigong trips in Bali for years… she was a girl at the time.  One day when she was about 14, she wrote me to say that her father passed in a freak moped accident… He was healthy and strong and a leader for his community.  This teen was shaken as you can imagine, the oldest girl in her family with a lot of responsibility now falling on her shoulders.  I did my best to write her and stay in touch over the years, to give her faith and send money as I could… and I would tell her about my other friend who shared her birthday, a powerful elder woman and leader in her own community from a young age, just like her father Wayan. The elder woman helped hundreds of Indonesians escape Jakarta and immigrate to the safety Canada in a time of government religious brutality back in the ’80s. This elder woman lost her son and her husband and faced these and other life tests while never backing down from her responsibilities for her community that came to depend on her… I shared this story with my young friend and reminded her that it was now time to call up her own power, just as her birthday-sharing elder had done… I know this touched her, embracing that she shared a birthday with another amazing woman she never met… She is now a mother of two beautiful children with a supportive husband and has grown to be a respected leader for her family and in her village on Bali…

Trust that you touch many souls in ways you don’t even realize in this life… and even though today might not be your birthday, you may share yours with someone, somewhere in the world, that is on a journey similar to yours. You are not alone, never were…

I wish you a wonderful year ahead… these are crazy times, but they simply deepen our faith and connection with spirit, with our truth, with the Creator. Peace…