Dear Soul on the Other Side of the Screen,
As I look over my computer screen, I see the fire dancing in my wood stove. When I look to the right, I see the courageously exposed branches of the trees. As my eyes travel across the living room, I notice the warm glow of the lights on the Christmas tree that Desmond and I will take down later today and the general sense of clean-up that I should do.
I thought of you on the Full Moon in Cancer. For anyone that was looking for the email and didn't receive it, I apologize for the delay and hope that this meets you in a place that nourishes you today. That night of the full moon and days before and after, I found myself needing to cocoon. I needed to put my phone down, my computer down. I needed to stare out the window and reference my experience away from computers and the internet, just for a few days. And then the tears came. And then the revelation of some of the tender places in my life that have gone untended.
Under that full moon, I looked up. I love observing how genuinely excited I get every time I see the moon. Memories of being a child and feeling the same way washed over me like when sitting on the shore when the ocean tide comes in. There were many clouds that night, alongside mist and fog, and so when the moon peeked through, I knew it might only be for a few moments or so. I opened myself up to listen and heard, "care and repair."
My mind expanded on this by adding, "bring care to what you are doing," which for me, is to bring heart. Bear the tension to see the places inside yourself and in relationship that are needing repair, and bring your care there.
I offer this as a prompt for reflection on the year that has passed: to bring a sense of compassionate reflection to the blessings and challenges you have experienced individually and collectively and to explore how you can make an offering of care and repair to the world that we share.
QOYA COMMUNITY LISTENING PARTY
For those who feel called, I invite you to create some spaciousness for reflection as we cross over from 2023 to 2024.
As a reminder, tomorrow we will be hosting space for a free Qoya Community Listening Party to my dear friend Carrie Firestone's album Deeper Than Bones. Gathering together in community to be guided by the alchemical journey her music takes the body and soul on could be a great gift to yourself.
Saturday, December 30th, 2023 11:00am-1:00pm EST
Click here to sign up and enjoy the feeling of being in community.
We will gather as a community beginning with an introduction by Carrie and Rochelle and then play the album straight through with an invitation for each person to receive in their own unique way through rest, intuitive moment, and the shared awareness of gathering together in the spirit of the songs as we honor the ending of the calendar year. And for all who are able, please also consider donating to the 501c3 Non-Profit Organization Carrie and her husband Ezra started called Love Runneth Over to support other families with young babies in the NICU.
In years past, I have drawn a calendar grid of the 12 months and gone through my photos to prompt memories and harvest the insights enough to have a sense of a theme or a feeling of each month. Then, I would make a nature offering, a prayer of gratitude, a prayer for resolution, a prayer for peace, a prayer for strength, a prayer for whatever was needed. One of the lessons I am still integrating from all these years with the Q'ero is the importance of making offerings to nature.
I have been so curious about why and how these nature offerings touch such a profound place in me. The place I have landed is that I believe that we deepen our personal relationship with nature, we also begin to interface with our blueprints around receiving unconditional love. When we make a prayer from our heart to the heart of Mother Earth, by giving we open up space inside ourselves to receive and to remember that we are woven together with life. The biggest challenge to the modern mindset is the struggle with feeling isolated and alone, separate. Again and again, nature offers us the reflection that whatever challenges arise, the living world all around us is there with us.
Like so many things that we practice in this community: movement, ritual, nature offerings, sharing from the heart, they are not ideas, but lived experiences. This can make them difficult to describe or quantify their value, and yet the hope is that each of them nourishes you and offers care and repair as we all continue the journey we are on.
I encourage you to explore which of these would most support you this weekend:
1) Movement: Join us for the free Qoya Community Listening Party. As a reminder, you can also visit our library of free videos here.
2) Reflection on 2023: After looking back over the events of your last year, ask yourself how you might make an offering of care and repair for yourself and others.
3) Make a Nature Offering. This can be as simple as offering a leaf to a nearby creek with a heartfelt prayer or gathering a beautiful bundle of flowers, herbs, and leaves and offering gratitude for the gifts in your life in a more ceremonial way. The most important thing is to always do this in a way that resonates with your heart. Trust your intuitive guidance.
May care and repair be something that you are able to give and receive during this turn of the year.
With love,
Rochelle
P.S. ONLY A FEW SPOTS LEFT on my new year retreat in Costa Rica this January 7 - 12, 2024, titled The Art of Attention. It's a 5-night immersive luxury retreat to reawaken your body with Qoya Inspired Movement. Enchant your spirit with nature's beauty, open your heart with ritual, ceremony and altar magic within kind compassionate community. If you are committed to shifting your life in the coming year, a Qoya retreat is the perfect way to set intentions and start profound shifts on an embodiment level, not just intellectually.
PLUS -- travel to the retreat is really easy! All you have to do is be at the SJO Domestic Terminal no later than 8:45am on January 7th, and Imiloa takes it from there.
Click here to learn more and register.