The Birth of 2022

As the collective focus on new beginnings emerges this week, you can hear the audible sighs and see the eyes drop to the floor. What did I fail to accomplish last year?, is my first thought. Followed by, What will I fail to accomplish this year? And with domino-falling predictability, my third thought is, Why do I feel like roadkill at this time of the year?

With a beginner’s mind, I slough off the emotional dross and ponder the cosmic question: Who is being born in 2022? 

Today, I’ve given birth to the new me, the one who gestated in 2021, the one who brought home a freshman son from college with long-Covid and depression; who moved her daughter’s best friends, twins, out of their house and away from an abusive alcoholic mother; who moved her business away from an alcoholic business partner; who rebranded her business from medical massage to shamanic life coaching in the second year of a global pandemic; and who found solace in an intuitive writing class and the success of being published in three #1 bestselling books with three more published by April 2022.

Is that all?

The womb of 2021 also held me as I took a trip to St. Thomas with my sister-friends; a belated birthday trip to Chicago with my daughter and the twins who have never been to a big city; a visit to reconnect with my high school best friend in Vermont so my second daughter could meet her secret, online boyfriend in person (and so could we) at his dad’s house in nearby New Hampshire; a two-week trip to the Caribbean with my first two kids and the twins (my second two kids) so we could sit with each others wounds, triggers, and fears and galvanize our family ties.

And love?

While my life-story continues, in the growing belly of 2021 my beloved cat, Mozart, an FIV+ kitten found under a dumpster at my cousin’s apartment building 13 years ago, meowing for her life, moved onward in spirit. She arrived as a constant companion the year I divorced, licking my face every night before snuggling her fluffy, 12 pound, queenly body into the cradle of my open armpit, her paw extended and draped over my hand. She passed peacefully, with medical assistance, next to me in my bed. I miss her comfort.

I arrive today, birthed at the new moon in Capricorn, bloodied and wet, crying out a prayer for what was lost and left in the placenta of 2021, swaddling myself in a heavy winter blanket as I rest and dream of the seeds I will plant in spring, the ones I am pulling down from the spirit world, from thought into form as I slumber under the night sky of early 2022.

​Whatever you are dreaming, my prayer is that you start where you are, leaving the old dreams behind you. New dreams are waiting, smiling on you, like stars.

Art Credit: Amanda Jane Clark, Earth Angel's Art, Ostara.