I'm writing this in the early days of 2026, but these ideas will be applicable regardless of the time of year. 

Off and on over the last several weeks I've been struggling to write a "proper" new years post -- you know, something that would be useful and relevant and hopefully make a difference for someone reading it.

I say "struggling," because most attempts to work on it have been a tussle between the part of me that says "I want to write something worthwhile," and the part that says "You cant. Here, I'll show you why."

So, putting that aside for a moment and accepting that I might not succeed in writing anything "proper" for the new year before the new year becomes old, here's something that I hope will be easier to write.

It has to do with presence, reverence, connection, and gratitude, all of which I was thinking about recently while making and eating breakfast. 

Lets begin with breakfast

Right before I sat down to write this, I cooked a batch of one of my favorite breakfasts -- porridge made with whole oats and a variety of other things.

This is quite an involved process. The time consuming part is fermenting the oats for digestibility. The fun/fiddly part is adding in a variety of things for texture, taste, and added nutrition. (Depending on my mood and their availability they include things like rose-hips, sultanas, shredded coconut, fennel seeds, nettle seeds.)

So I do all that in a batch to make about 7 breakfasts worth, then I cook it all up and put it in a large jar in the fridge. After that, when I want porridge for breakfast I spoon some out and cook it again, adding an egg to it and sometimes some coconut oil.

None of that is unusual for me; what was different was that today I had the luxury of a morning all to myself -- so it was easier for me to pay full attention to what I was doing.

And that leads me to presence and reverence.

On presence and reverence

This morning before I came into the kitchen I had just been outside in the garden, also paying full attention to what I was doing. 

That had helped me get into a state of presence, even a state of reverence.

Reverence could be described as "a feeling or attitude of profound respect, usually reserved for the sacred or divine." (collinsdictionary.com)

I'm aware in an intellectual way (I imagine you are too) that life itself, to be alive on earth enacting this one precious lifetime, is something worthy of being present for. It's worthy of reverence.

But the hustle of modern life often makes us forget. Our conditioning makes us forget (more on that in a minute).

My focused, intentional time in the garden this morning had reminded me that my life is worthy of my presence and my reverence (regardless of whether I ever successfully write anything worthwhile again -- note to critic part of self).

Thankfully, I carried that awareness with me into my breakfast making and eating process.

Which is why, instead of reading or writing while eating as I often do when eating alone, I just...

... ate.

And I paid attention to what I was eating, which led to way more enjoyment and pleasure while eating than I normally experience.

On the conditioning that says "thou shalt not..."

The pleasure and enjoyment I experienced eating breakfast was a gift from myself to myself.

We are not typically conditioned to bestow such gifts upon ourselves. In our hurried modern culture we are much more likely to have been taught to hurry and get breakfast over with already so we can move on to the "important" things. Which is why we so often miss the real important things.

(And paying attention to the real important things is one of the reasons why this is called "A Real Green Life.")

There's a squirm factor for me in confessing that I derived pleasure from eating my breakfast and that I received that pleasure as a gift to myself -- which suggests that I have some seriously strong "not allowed" conditioning sitting around somewhere inside me.

"Thou shalt not experience pleasure. Pleasure is ESPECIALLY not allowed just for the sake of pleasure."

Anyway... Getting back to my story, all of that led on from there to an awareness of the connections represented in that bowl of porridge and a sense of gratitude.

On connection and gratitude

Somewhere, a farmer cared enough about their land and all the living things on it and in it, and the oats and the people who would eat them, to make the effort involved in growing these oats organically. Everyone involved in the supply chain between me and that farmer, including the lady who runs our local health-food store, cared enough to make these oats available to me.

Same with the rose-hips. And the coconut. And the nettle seeds -- oh boy, those are fiddly to harvest!!

And we raised the chicken that laid the egg, and in the process of raising chickens we're building soil and increasing eco-system health on our farm.

And for all these foods to grow the sun shone, the rain rained, the tides and the winds and the moon and the cosmos all ebbed and flowed, the myriads of critters in soil and water all did what they do, communities of living things all teeming and throbbing and pulsing with life... all so I could enjoy this bowl of porridge.

As I considered all this, I was able to receive a second gift that I very rarely bestow on myself -- the gift of feeling held, supported, provided for.

And that, I suppose, could make this into a "proper" new year post...

May this year be...

... a year in which we are able to free ourselves from the old conditioning that says things like "not allowed."

May it be a year in  which we are able to receive the gifts of presence, reverence, pleasure, connection, and gratitude more often, and thus live deeper, fuller lives with more of the "real" stuff, and less "shoulds" and "should nots."

Thank you for reading. I never underestimate the value of your time, attention, and presence, and I hope you don't either.

You know how the best ideas show up when we're relaxed?

When you're in the shower, or just as you wake up, or while you're walking the dog or playing with the kids... that's when the solutions to our problems often present themselves, as if out of no-where.

I believe that's because in those relaxed, unguarded moments we allow our hearts to open a little, which makes it possible for some kind of connection to open up between our individual selves and the World around us. 

For me, the experience of receiving needed inspiration in this way illustrates an important truth -- that when I manage to relax and reconnect, I find that the World has my back.

This post explores a related idea: that it's our responsibility to stay connected to the World (or to Source, whatever that means for you) and that when we take care of staying connected, Everything else takes care of itself.

Not that it necessarily takes care of itself the way we think it should... But I find that even (sometimes especially) when I feel HUGE resistance to the way things are turning out, I'm likely to look back with the benefit of hindsight and see why the way it turned out was ok after all. 

An Intelligent World

In giving World a capital w and Everything a capital E, I'm borrowing from Menstruality educator Alexandra Pope: 

The idea of an intelligent World, of Earth as relational, and of our sacred responsibility for maintaining our relationship with it, is as old as humanity. It's an idea I find deeply, reliably, comforting.

The emphasis in the quote above is mine. The only thing the World leaves up to us is our connection to it.

I'm not saying it's easy -- I know from painful personal experience that it's not. But the concept is simple, and I'll repeat it again: when we take responsibility for staying connected and open, Everything else takes care of itself.

When we forget and allow our hearts to close, when we break off the connection, everything falls apart, nothing works -- and that's when we find ourselves grappling with difficult emotional states like anxiety, overwhelm, frustration -- which are really just trying to prompt us to reconnect.

In my case, what happens when I lose the connection is that--like so, so many other midlife women and plenty of men too--I can't sleep.  

What happens when we lose the connection

Insomnia is a thing in my life. I know it so intimately, I can feel as I'm heading for bed whether my brain and nervous system are expressing "I feel afraid," or, "I feel safe" -- and that dictates how much sleep I'll get.

For me, fear expresses as insomnia. But insomnia (or insert your particular variation of fear-driven, dis-regulated, disconnected, emotional or psycho-spiritual discomfort) is only a symptom of a deeper malady.

We modern people are--as Stephen Jenkins² puts it--like orphans. We've lost our connections, forgotten how to stay connected, and come un-moored in the World. 

We've been displaced--and have displaced others--so often that we've lost touch with the earth, each other, our ancestors, where we came from, and how the World and the web of Life can (must) be renewed and restored with every act of giving and receiving.

Everything is fraying and coming undone, including--especially--our own inner worlds, which are mirrored by the outer world. 

Disconnection, fragmentation, and isolation are the fruits of a culture that values "me" over "we," economic growth over relationships. 

Two worldviews - a hostile vs a friendly Universe

In the trailer for the film The Eternal Song, activist and ceremonial leader Pat McCabe says,

What I understand her to be saying there is that the darker-skinned First Peoples³ of the World know themselves to be a part of, and in relationship to, the beauty that surrounds them. They understand themselves to be part of a friendly Universe. 

In contrast, the waves of lighter-skinned people who displaced the First Peoples (who were ourselves displaced earlier in a domino game of displacement that goes WAY back), understood themselves to be isolated, disconnected individuals, alone in a hostile Universe. 

According to Albert Einstein, that's an important distinction to understand... 

In my family of origin, the Universe was most definitely viewed as hostile. There are tightly held and very limiting beliefs coded into my operating system that developed in a matrix of hostility, fear, and apathy.

Hence the insomnia (I'm obviously simplifying and abbreviating, but that's basically the gist of it). 

Luckily, we don't have to accept the operating systems we were given by our families or circumstances of origin. We can examine them and re-write them. I'm working on re-writing mine with my new belief that we live in a friendly Universe. 

I say "working on" because the idea that I'm an insignificant, fundamentally broken, isolated fragment adrift in a hostile environment is obviously still in place as far as the parts of me that govern sleep are concerned. It's a work in progress.

Here's Albert Einstein again, basically saying the same thing Pat McCabe said above...

All is well

Along with having come to the conclusion that ours is a friendly Universe, I also believe that the Intelligence that Orchestrates it does not make mistakes. 

Which can only mean that the experience I'm having is serving some purpose other than for me to be well-rested.

My reflections so far lead me to believe that I'm being invited, night after night, to pay attention, to turn inward, to look unflinchingly at what I see. To open my heart and practice compassion and courage -- towards and for myself.

Which in turn, progressively as I practice, allows me to move towards a little more openness and connection with the World around me. 

When I can stay open and honest, I feel safe and I sleep well.

When I'm unable to stay open or I continue to live a lie, I feel afraid and alone and...

Well, you know how that goes. Because you too know what it's like to lie awake while your mind runs around disconnected and unable to come home, unable to land in your body and sink into the ocean of peace that is openness and connection.

But every time I give those limiting, fear-based beliefs another re-run, I watch what's happening. I still can't stop myself from re-running that obsolete program (yet), but I can bring awareness to it.

Awareness -- the witnessing presence -- is the portal out of the prison that Einstein mentioned above, into the peace and freedom of relationship with the World. (That is, in my current understanding -- which is always up for review and further iteration.)

So. No matter how dark the night, sooner or later dawn comes and I look back with the power of hindsight and am reminded that the World has my back, that I am more than I was told I was, and that so long as I maintain a sincere intention to be open to what the World requires of me, Everything else will take care of itself in its own good time.

No one person can meet all of another person's needs. We need a village not just to raise a child but also to raise ourselves, be ourselves, heal ourselves, and see into the depths of ourselves.

(The closest one person does come to meeting all of another's needs is in the relationship between a mother and her new-born, the "mamatoto⁴.  But even a mama--especially a mama--needs the support of her family, and her family needs a village.)

So what is a "village," and why does every human being need one?

What is a village?

My definition of a healthy "village" in a modern context is a group of people who work together to meet each other's psychological needs.

Ideally, our village would consist of families -- parents and children, and also uncles, aunties, grandparents, and friends - all the diversity and treasure of the human experience. In various times and places, our village members would also work together to meet each other's needs for food, shelter, etc, in a reciprocal ways that build and cement relationships.

Sadly, a village now rarely includes of all these different age groups. And the growth economy has replaced the need for us to rely on one another for our practical needs. So, we just have to build our villages with what we have.

But a village is not a nuclear family.

A village is not a couple.

It is not two friends.

It is also not a small group of close friends, although that's a step in the right direction.

And why do we need one?

We're all familiar with the saying, "it takes a village to raise a child." We know that the needs of babies, children, and adolescents are beyond what parents alone can meet. That's all obvious, especially if you're a parent.

But I think there's a gap in our understanding that we--each of us as human beings--need a "village" whether or not we have children.

There's an assumption in our culture that a couple, or two close friends, can be everything for each other. In my opinion that simply is not true.

To begin to illustrate why, here's a personal story about my past tendency to put myself in situations that invariably led to what felt like a betrayal of trust. 

What happens when we try to make one person into a village

I said "felt like," because in the experiences I'm thinking of, my friends had no intention of betraying my trust. The situations I got myself into came about because without realizing I was doing it, I had tried to make a single friend into an entire village.

I had a pattern of doing what Kelly Brogan calls "looking for eggs at the hardware store" -- going looking for unconditional love and support where it isn't available.

I'm sure you can guess how that went.

A healthy village can meet most needs

I've come to the conclusion that it's neither possible nor desirable for one person to love another unconditionally and without boundaries (duh)⁵.

But a village full of people is another matter entirely. A healthy village can nourish the hungriest of hearts⁶.

In simple terms, this is possible because different members of the village can be available unconditionally by turns. When one person is offline or needy or temporarily dysfunctional because their own shadow material--their own unmet needs--have been triggered, somewhere else in the village there is another person who is fully present in this moment and able to step into the gap. 

When there are enough stable and resourced adults in a community to meet the practical needs (childcare, logistics, etc) and the mental/emotional/spiritual support that people need from each other, everything gets so much easier.

Good villages are hard to find

I read Jean Liedloff's The Continuum Concept when my first child was a baby. That's when I first began to understand what a village is and why I needed one. I spent the next 7 years searching for my "tribe," and you probably don't need me to tell you that good tribes can be very hard to find. 

Eventually I found the homeschooling community that my family and I have now been part of for around 10 years, but even then I continued to struggle with feeling lonely and unsupported for many more years.

The reason for that had to do with my assumption that once I found a village -- tadah!! all my problems would be solved.

Alas, it doesn't work like that. The reason that good tribes (or villages) are hard to find is because actually you don't find them, so much as build them. And you build them from the inside out.

Because the thing is that even if a village already exists for you to find it (and that's rare enough), you still bring yourself--your patterns and burdens--along with you. And that affects your experience of a village, whether it existed before you came along or not.

What we, as adults, receive from the village reflects what we bring to it

The function of a village in caring for babies and children is to meet their needs, no strings attached and no debt accrued. 

But adults both receive from and give to the village. We need a village in order to experience the connection that all humans need to thrive, and, as adults, we are the village. 

There's a paradox here: we are the village for each other, and for ourselves. The better we are at showing up for ourselves, being our own internal village, the better equipped we are to find/build and participate in/help maintain an external village.

The more we can give to ourselves, the more we'll have to give to others

Dr Kristin Neff, researcher and author on the topic of Self-Compassion, says

What do you need, right now? Can you give yourself a small dose, even a micro-dose, of what you need?

I know. You can't drop everything and go on holidays. But you can (for example) put your hands on your heart (or one on your belly and the other on your heart) and take 30, 60, or 90 seconds to just. be. with. whatever you find inside there.

If, while you're doing that, you find yourself wanting to sigh, yawn, fidget, lash out, numb out, cry, or hurry to do something else -- you'll know that that micro-dose of care and attention was sorely needed.

This is how you build a village.

Or perhaps it's how you lay the foundation for a village.

Whatever. 

The point is that a village is made up of people who can behave like adults at least some of the time -- and you can't do that (at least, not consistently) unless you're pretty good at putting your own oxygen mask on first before trying to help others.

Putting on your own oxygen mask means being able to turn inwards to be with your child parts when they need you. It means giving the same unconditional love, acceptance, and support that you would give to a child in your village, to the child inside you. Even (especially) when s/he is face down on the floor, kicking and screaming.

Learning how to identify and meet your own internal needs does not feel natural at first to anyone who has grown up in our culture. It's hard. But it's worth it. YOU are worth it.

And self-compassion practices gradually work to stabilize you internally⁷. so that as time goes by you'll have more to give externally.

***

So much for the unseen, inner work. What about the practical, external stuff?

Three practical village building tips

In "Finding Your Tribe," Teresa Pitman says that once you've found at least one other adult with whom to begin building your tribe (or village) there are three rules of thumb that will help:

• spend a good deal of time together
• work together 
• try not to be too picky

Here's some of what she had to say about each of these (edited for brevity):

Sometimes it just feels SO HARD

Things like time constraints, geographic isolation, lack of resources, or cultural barriers are all really good reasons why it might just feel impossible to build or access a village.

I know firsthand some of the barriers to meaningful connection that can seem utterly impassible. My childhood was so isolating, on so many levels, that loneliness was the air I breathed until long after my children were born. It was only when I looked at their childhoods and realized I wanted something different for them, that I recognized how lonely I was.

From the time I realized I needed one, it took me nearly 7 years to find a village. We moved across the world and then from one end of Queensland (Australia) to the other end, to set up house in an area that had a large, long-running homeschooling and LETS⁸ community. The only reason we moved to where we live today was to avail ourselves of the support we knew would be available in those two groups. 

So, we "found a ready made village." Tadah!

Well.

As a parent, the homeschooling community certainly helped me give my kids a better deal from the first time I attended one of the get-togethers.

But for me personally it took many more years to begin to feel that the hungriest inner parts of me were being nourished by the group -- and that didn't begin to happen until after I began to learn ways of effectively tending to my inner needs myself, first.

Don't wait to be rescued before you begin giving yourself the care and attention you need from others 

The moral of the story is this: don't make dramatic life changes or wait years before (or instead of) beginning to give yourself the care, attention, and support that you're longing to receive from others.

We made our big moves for a variety of reasons. The location we ended up choosing had to do with finding community, and I have no regrets at all about the choice we made. But it's still a work in progress.

Finding a community is one thing. Learning both how to serve, and also how to receive support from, a community is another. This is the work of adults--to serve and to receive--and it's ongoing. 

For me, in spite of finding a large, long running, like minded community "ready made" for our family, it didn't look like working out until after I finally began to learn to address what was going on inside of me rather than fruitlessly hoping for someone from outside of me to come along and rescue me. 

Only you can know if you need to pursue dramatic life changes in order to find your village, but I do have a suggestion: before you do anything drastic, think long and hard about the probability that if you take your inner dynamics with you, unchanged, you'll likely find the same external dynamics recurring in your new location or relationships as you were experiencing in the previous ones. 

The paradox of the village-building process

This is the paradox of the village-building process. The better we are at building our internal village, the more we can contribute to an external village that in turn helps us raise our children and ourselves.

I remember at least three occasions while my children were young, of being approached by other mothers of young children who were as lonely and needy as I was. My heart went out to them because I knew what they were going through, but I was unable to help them. A drowning person cannot help another drowning person.

So by all means reach out for the help you need. But don't wait any longer to begin your village building internally with self-care and self-compassion, in micro-doses if necessary, and to seek help if you need to.

In my experience, when the Universe (or God, or whatever you want to call It) sees you building a village internally, your prayer for an external village will then be taken seriously. After the internal village building is underway you'll begin to experience the synchronicities and opportunities that can to lead you toward your external village.

Related reading here on A Real Green Life

Where Am I Locating Power – Inside or Outside of Me?

Reconnecting Can Change Everything

The Power of Hindsight

Resources

Self-compassion for parents - PeacefulParentHappyKids.com

Self-compassion for everyone - Self-Compassion.org

Self-help for everyone using energy psychology (also sometimes called "Tapping" or "EFT"⁹)  - EnergyTapping.com 

Basic/beginner EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) instructions and resources - EFTUniverse.com ¹⁰

Tapping: Self-Healing with the Transformative Power of Energy Psychology, a book by David Feinstein PhD and Donna Eden

Support for adults impacted by crappy childhoods - CrappyChildhoodFairy.com (she has lots of great YouTube videos, webinars, and a book, with another book on the way)

Finding Your Tribe, an article by Teresa Pitman

In the Absence of the Village, Mothers Struggle Most, an article by Beth Berry

Most of us pay far more attention to our outer lives than we do to our inner lives, taking care of all the day to day activities that make our outer world go ‘round.

Meanwhile, our inner world is growing wild and out of control in some areas and wilting from neglect in other areas.

As in a literal garden, unless we're present, paying attention, and pro-actively taking action, the weeds will out-compete the things we want to grow in there.

Our fears, disappointments, doubts, regrets, and old ingrained patterns—the “weeds”—compete for available resources with the things we’re hopeful, excited, purposeful or passionate about – the useful and beautiful things we want to grow in our inner gardens.

The seasons - a framework for tending to our inner gardens

Luckily, there is a guiding framework for tending to our inner gardens. It’s the same framework we use for tending to our literal veggie patches: the seasons.

The energies of the seasons are the energies of the cycle of life: birth/emergence, growth, full bloom, harvest, decay, death/dormancy, and rebirth.

With the seasons as our guide, we know that spring time is for new beginnings, summer is for tending and guiding the rampant growth, autumn is for harvesting, pruning, and composting, and winter is for resting, integrating the lessons we learned in our previous efforts, and choosing what seeds we want to plant when spring comes again.

The same principles apply in our inner world.

The “seeds” of spring are the intentions you set. The visioning you do, the creative work of choosing how you want to design and orchestrate your inner life. 

The focus of summer is judging where to concentrate your efforts so that you can give time and energy to the beautiful, useful things you are growing, rather than letting the “weeds” take over all the resources. 

In autumn you gather the "harvest," tidy up, prune and cut back, and put what's no longer needed into the compost.

And in winter you rest and reflect, to integrate the lessons of the previous seasons and so be a little wiser when spring brings new opportunities for fresh starts.

Serious gardeners wouldn't dream of neglecting this seasonal work in a physical garden, but have you thought about how your inner garden needs just the same care and tending?

One way to tend your inner garden is with a journaling or free-writing practice that you align with the seasons (there'll be lots more on this, below). And you can think of the seasons as phases in the cycle of life. 

Micro and macro expressions of the cycle of life

Gardeners know that the life cycle expresses itself everywhere, all the time, zoomed in and zoomed out, endlessly repeating in micro and macro forms.

We find it in the short life cycle of an insect: emerging, growing, blooming, leaving fertile eggs, declining and dying all within a few days. 

It's also there in the waxing and waning energies of the 24 hour diurnal cycle, in menstrual cycles, in the lunar cycle, in the solar cycle (the solar cycle is the annual round of the seasons, which take 13 lunar cycles to complete), and it's there in the relatively long life cycle of human beings, repeating down the generations.

(There are even larger manifestations of the cycle, too, which astrologers and philosophers know about, but I’m only vaguely aware of them so I wont try to describe them here.)

In the next section I'll touch briefly on the topic of "weeds," then in the rest of this article I'll concentrate mainly on how you can align your journaling practice with the seasons of the year (the solar cycle) and with the lunar cycle.

When weeds crop up

One of the things that happens when you dedicate yourself to any kind of introspective journaling practice is that you get to look at your problems--the weeds in your inner garden--from different angles.

If you're a student of Permaculture or any other method/s of regenerative gardening or farming, you know that weeds are actually allies in disguise. They come to heal the soil and to support resilience and biodiversity in our systems. The trick is learning how to work with them rather than struggling against them. 

The same principle applies to the "weeds" in our inner gardens. Our problems, I believe without exception, hold  gifts for us.

The reason we so rarely get glimpses of those gifts is because  we usually try to shoot the messenger rather than paying attention to what it has to say.

So when you see "weeds" growing in your inner garden don't be so hard on yourself, or on the weeds.

In your outside garden, you probably ask yourself why the weeds are here, why these particular weeds, what they might be indicating. You can do the same for your inner garden, by asking questions like these in your journal:

With that said, let's get onto some specific ideas for how to tend your inner garden using a season-based journal.

Keeping a season-based journal for tending your inner garden

When you choose a cycle to align your journaling with, you need a cycle whose time frame is easy to work with -- not too short and not too long.

The solar cycle takes a year and could be as small a commitment as sitting down at the beginning of each season, and perhaps midway through the season, to do a journaling practice aligning with the energies of that season.

(As I wrote in this post, not all places and cultures mark "four seasons." But the archetypal energies of birth, growth and expansion, full bloom, contraction, death, decay, and re-growth are universal. Referring to them as spring, summer, autumn and winter gives us a useful handle with which to get a grasp on them.)

Let's begin with the season of Spring.

Spring, and the Spring Equinox

Around the beginning of spring, everything in nature is brimming with the energy of new beginnings. In your inner garden journal, you can ask and answer questions like, 

 A few days ago in the Southern Hemisphere (September 23rd) we marked the Spring Equinox. This is the mid-point of spring, one of two moments in the solar year when the daylight hours are equal to the hours of darkness. 

Jane Hardwicke Collings teaches that this moment of balance between light and dark is a good time to invite balance into our lives by contemplating the growth that has taken hold in your life and asking questions like these:

Summer

During summer, when you can hardly keep up with all the watering, weeding, mulching, you can ask questions like,

The summer solstice (the middle of summer, around December 21st in the Southern Hemisphere and June 21st in the Northern Hemisphere) is the moment in the solar cycle when the days are longest and the nights shortest. In the glaring light, all is revealed. You can ask,

Autumn, and the Autumn Equinox

Autumn is the season of harvest, reckoning, and then decline. You could ask,

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you have just marked the Autumn Equinox on September 23rd, the mirror opposite of the Spring Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere.

This is the mid-point of Autumn, and it’s the other moment in the solar year when the daylight hours are equal to the hours of darkness.

Jane Hardwicke Collings teaches that this moment of balance between light and dark is a good time to invite balance into our lives by contemplating what you need to let go of, what you need to  prune away or put on the compost heap.

Winter 

In the winter, you get to rest. Winter invites you to sink down, down, down. Into the deep, dark stillness. Into the earth. Into the dormancy and potentiality that lies between the ending of one cycle and the beginning of the next.

In winter, you can ask questions like these:

The lunar cycle 

The lunar expression of the cycle of life takes around 29 days, rather than a full year. So if you choose to track the lunar cycle and use it to prompt your inner gardening practices, the opportunities for growth, learning, consolidating and then taking a fresh start come around more quickly. 

The dark moon and the new moon

September 26th marked what modern astrology calls a New Moon – the moment when the moon passes between the earth and sun so that no light reflects from it to the earth.

Older systems of astrology name this the Dark Moon, and recognize its energy as still, dormant, but full of potential – some of the same qualities we recognize in the deep, dark, quietness of mid-winter. 

In the days after the Dark Moon, if you're looking into the morning sky before the rising sun obscures it, you may glimpse the first thin sliver of moon reappearing in the morning sky. 

This can be more appropriately called the New Moon, and its energy, like the very beginning of spring, is the energy of germination/birth. Delicate, vulnerable new beginnings are stirring.

Same cycle, same energies, zoomed in or out

Journaling by the phases of the moon is very similar to journaling by the seasons of the year.

The new moon and the waxing phases are the ending of winter, the spring, and the early summer of the lunar cycle.

The full moon is equivalent to the Summer Solstice.

The waning phases of the moon are to equivalent late summer, autumn, and early winter, and the dark moon equates to the Winter Solstice. 

Same cycle, same energies. Just zoomed in a little closer.

You may choose to pay attention to several cycles to guide your inner gardening practices, for example the seasons of the year and the phases of the moon. 

If you do that, you'll find that sometimes the same seasons of the different cycles overlay each other. Other times, they line up across from each other. Cosmic energies expressing sometimes opposite each other, sometimes together, always changing, never static, in the endless dance of earth, sun, moon, and your own inner garden. 

Your "seed bank," and new beginnings every spring

Not all seeds germinate in their first spring. Gardeners and farmers talk about a "seed bank," the accumulated seeds from seasons past, waiting for just the right conditions to bring them to life. Some seeds lie waiting for years, and some for lifetimes, before they germinate. And some types of seed are so very prolific that there are thousands of them in the seed bank at any given time. 

There is a seed bank in the soil of your inner garden, too. All the seeds that have fallen in all the autumn seasons of your life are there, and all the seeds your ancestors let fall, and perhaps also many newer seeds from more recent cycles since you started paying more attention.

***

In the Southern Hemisphere right now, two cycles are aligning in their spring seasons.  We're a few days on from the Spring Equinox and we're experiencing a New Moon.

(If you're a menstruating woman in the first few days or week of your menstrual cycle, you get a triple whammy: three spring seasons are aligning in your life.)

During the season of spring in any expression of the cycle of life, and especially when two or more spring seasons line up together, whatever you are doing and thinking is in effect germinating new “seeds” from the seed bank in the soil of your inner garden. 

Ideas, ways, habits, patterns, interpretations – all have moved through the deep, dark, still winter portal of potentiality and are now stirring with newness. 

The newness may express itself as a repeat of previous patterns – well established things that keep popping up in your life over and over again. Or it may express in ways that you choose deliberately, by making careful choices about the seeds you activate. 

As early spring ripens toward summer, the newly germinated “seeds,” establish themselves more strongly. If you bring them to fruition, they in turn will drop seeds that will wait dormant through the winter and may then germinate next spring, gifting their promise and their teachings to the inner garden of your life.

Can you begin to see the power you have to influence the way your life will unfold? You, and only you, are in charge of how your inner garden is cared for, or even if it's cared for.

You get to influence what seeds will germinate in your own inner garden, what you will nurture through the growing season, what you will discard in the fall, and what you will hold onto during the dormant winter, to carry on into the following spring. 

As within, so without

It's never too late to bring conscious awareness to your inner garden and to begin to tend it just as you would any other garden.

We have very little control over what happens in our outer worlds, but our inner gardens are ours to tend.

In here, if we approach the task with sincere dedication, we can develop the capacity to grow truly beautiful, productive, useful gardens. 

As within, so without. The attitude of uncaring neglect we so often see in our other world, toward each other, toward other life-forms, and toward our only Earth, is a mirror. It reflects to us how our culture has taught us to treat our internal selves. 

Repairing the damage we see in the world outside ourselves, paradoxically, begins as an inside job. 

Mother Nature's healing touch 

One last tip is this: remember that you are working with your inner garden here.

It may not respond at all to material things like changes in diet or schedules or working harder at something. It may respond much more to something as simple and subtle as a softening and opening in your attitude towards it.

If you're trying to make inner shifts, or to shift problems in your life that feel stuck and perhaps have been there for a long time, be gentle. Make space for a sense of possibility, rather than hardening and trying to force things.

Welcome your "weeds;" ask them what gifts they bring. Don't shoot the messenger.

Let the tears flow, if they need to, while you're doing this inner work. As you tend to the garden of you with gentleness and compassion, letting emotions move through you as water moves through soil, you're bringing Mother Nature's healing touch into your innermost self. 

Invite Mother Nature in, through the portal of the seasons. Let her help. She's been waiting to be asked. And as she helps you heal your inner garden, you'll be empowered to work more effectively in the gardens of your outer life. 

References and resources

None of what I wrote above originated with me. Here are a few of the sources I can think of to share with you right now. There are many more. 

May this starting point lead you on towards exactly the right teachers for you. And don't forget the best teacher of all: Mother Nature, who speaks directly to you through your own inner guidance.

Equinoxes and Solstices:

• Jane Hardwicke Collings "Ostara: Spring Equinox",  "Mabon: Autumn Equinox", "Winter Solstice, "Summer Solstice"
  
  

Lunar phases (the cycle of the moon):

• Jane Hardwicke Collings "Moon Phases and Corresponding Energy"
  
• The Moon School "Mysteries and Meaning of the Dark Moon Lunar Phase"
  
• The Moon School "Spiritual Meaning of the New Moon Phase"

Resources for women:

• Jane Hardwicke Collings "Spinning Wheels", a tool for women to track your inner and outer cycles and see how they all influence you at any given point in time.
  
• Jane Hardwicke Collings "Spiritual Practice of Menstruation," an eye-opening article if you have never thought of your cycle, your "inner seasons" as anything other than a nuiscance. Give it to your male partner to read, too, and your sons and daughter as they come of age. Everyone needs to know this information. 
• Jane Hardwicke Collings Blood Rites – The Spiritual Practice of Menstruation, a book. If you're ready for more after reading the article above, this is a deep dive. 
• Alexandra Pope The Woman's Quest Workbook. A 13 moon cyclical awareness course. I absolutely loved it. 
• Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer"Menstrual Cycle Awareness"
• Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer Wild Power. A deeply empowering read for spiritually-minded women who want to align more truly with their inner seasons and reap the rewards on offer.