To End Well

Journal prompts to integrate this year & a prayer for your ending & new beginning.

There are few things in this world as important and under-appreciated as endings.

Instead of sending out the third essay of this ‘psychodynamic body’ series I have found myself writing, I write to you today, the final day of a year I can only describe as a surrealist grindstone, a beast of becoming, with an invitation to turn inward. Because we need to give this year the ending it deserves. We need to end well.

To support your process, I offer these journal prompts:

• In what ways did I surprise myself this year? How can I allow this new growth to flourish in the coming year?

• Where did I stand my ground this year? What were the boundaries I named, asserted, & held, with myself and others? Conversely, where did I yield, allow, and let go that led to positive growth & transformation?

• How did I open my heart to the world? Where did I remain closed that I would like to open in the coming year?

• What new ideas truly inspired me? How can I be of service to those ideas in the coming year?

• Who are the people I want to thank, show love, and bow in reverence to?

• What are the things I want to acknowledge myself for this year? Where have I grown into deeper love of self in the past 12 months?

Personally, I have found a shocking amount of clarity this year. I feel like I see my patterns with a newfound crystal vision, my heart feels more open than it ever has, & I have spent more time in my body (as opposed to dissociated) than ever before. This is a product of choosing those things & absolutely nothing else. My commitment moving forward is to continue to root down into my dark places, step more fully into my power, & take ruthless responsibility for my one wild & precious life.

My prayer for you this coming year is this:

May you feel your feet fully on the earth & be resourced by the life-force therein. May you consciously suffer your pain that it may be alchemized into gold. May you remember that depth lies in the darkness & that your soul craves depth. May you befriend your shadow. May you touch the truth of your ancestors & feel the power, majesty, & clarity of your lineage. May you make yourself a priority, again & again & again. May you be sensitive to the world & possess the most badass boundaries in service to that sensitivity. May you make time to roam, remembering your wildness along the way. May you assimilate the lessons that are yours alone to assimilate. May you mature & take radical responsibility for your totality. May you love.

I have decided to continue my writing experiment. Not daily (obviously - let’s just say I perpetually suffer from my eyes being bigger than my stomach when it comes to creative projects ;-)), but semi-consistently. I will write somewhere between one to four essays a month in 2021, beginning with the third essay in the aforementioned psychodynamic body series—an essay about the mind, nondual perception, & how the central intelligence of the mind is to bridge the gap between unconscious & conscious selves. I intend to be a bit more conscious about making my essays palatable to the lay-person (thank you for the feedback, those of you who have shared your experiences with me!) & a bit less ejaculatory; that being said, writing is a workshopping of ideas, so I cannot promise there will not be some messy half-baking going on. Such is the process. Apologies & gratitude in advance.

In the meantime, I am going to end this year & begin the next one in the truest way I know how: walking the land, dancing, & being with loved ones. I hope each of you finds the space to unplug today & tomorrow, that you can celebrate in a way that reminds you of your wholeness & magic. I hope your communion is rich, your mind clear, & your heart full.

See you in the new year.

Madly,

Mac