Welcome to Meet Yourself Here - a gentle monthly invitation for you to pause and be with yourself in this moment, in beautiful, self-reflective and soulful ways. Sometimes a guided meditation, sometimes a simple ritual, sometimes a journaling process, a self-coaching tool or an experiment. Always looking through a seasonal lens, with a voice note to walk you in and the invitation to continue the conversation, share your thoughts and have access to me to ask questions in the comments.
Meet Yourself Here in January
In this first couple of weeks of the year, I’ve watched from a distance - metaphorically wrapped in blankets and with my hands over my eyes, peering through a little gap between my fingers - whilst it felt like the world at large loudly claimed the New Year with big goals, intentions and seemingly instant action.
This is not how I greet the turn of the year - and I’m ok with that.
If you do, I’m totally rooting for you and all that you’re ready to call in. I’m currently wholeheartedly supporting two of my coaching clients who feel that burst of energy when the new year dawns. I love to see it rising in them.
Meanwhile, I know myself.
I’m a cyclical being. Maybe it’s more pronounced since living in the countryside, but I’m deeply influenced by what’s going on outside my window. At this deepest point of winter, now that all the Christmas twinkle has been packed away and my magic-making duties completed for another year, I look out at the pinky-peach early morning winter sky, at the deep frost hardening the earth and the iced over puddles waiting to be cracked (fave pastime) and my body responds.
If I’m willing to listen, this is what I hear from the wise part of me who knows:
“Now is the time for rest. For slow. For tending. The tank got a little more empty than we like it to be through festive over-doing and now it’s time to re-fill. More than that, now is the time for turning inward. Winter is in full swing but soon it will shift again, so now is the time to do the wintering. To lean into the inner work and the dreaming we’ve been bookmarking for this quiet season. The quiet season is here. Now is the time to let it be quiet and still. Unhurried and deep-listening. Here is the pause before the emerging.”
If you’re feeling your own version of this desire for a slow and wintry start, I see you.
A bulb in the ground
There’s a little song that comes to me each year at this time. It’s one my sons would bring home from kindergarten:
The little brown bulb was asleep in the ground,
in her little brown nightie she slept very sound,
King Winter he roared and he raged overhead,
but the little brown bulb didn’t move in her bed.
When Springtime came tip-toeing over the lea,
finger to lips as soft as can be,
the little brown bulb lifted her head,
slipped off her nightie and JUMPED out of bed!
Author unknown
(For authenticity you have to say ‘jumped’ loudly with a clap or a jump!)
It captures the way I feel as the new year begins so well.
Just like the people who are claiming their own 2026 with big plans for where it will lead them, I have all of those hopes, dreams and intentions for my own year ahead too. Some of them clear. Some are still forming.
But it’s all happening quietly, inside.
I feel like that little bulb. Tucked up in the earth in my nightie, dreaming into my 2026 with a kind of tingly delight. Safe to rest in the dreaming, to be in the warm, soaking up what I need whilst Winter rages and roars overhead. Knowing that this time of re-filling and listening, of letting my intentions for the year form unhurriedly and from the core of me rather than from comparison, will make all the difference when I’m ready to emerge.
It doesn’t mean I’m spending lots of time in bed - though please do that if that’s what you need. I’m mostly letting the outside world be there doing it’s own thing whilst I do mine.
A soft start
Some of what I’m loving doing inside the bulb right now:
Reconnecting with the ways I know I feel really well - the simple, obvious ways I already know how to do, like: food as medicine, hydration, daily walks, giving myself the best chance for good sleep.
Holding everything softly - yes, I have work to do and jobs to tick off but can I float through it a little more, without urgency or berating myself for how long things take. Can I turn the lights down, light a candle and play some soft music whilst I work at my laptop, fold the laundry or cook the dinner.
Reading, listening to and watching only the things that feel delicious - indulgent, even. I have A Court of Thorns and Roses waiting on my TBR pile (I’m not a fantasy reader but a beloved friend tells me I’ll be too distracted by the shenanigans to notice the dragons), my kids and I have been singing to the Wicked soundtrack in the kitchen and I’m watching Traitors, Emily in Paris and Pottery Throwdown.
Letting myself dream into the year without rush. Beginning to name the things I know I’m wanting to call in and playing a game of how would I love this to look/be. Feeling into the feeling of my guiding word without pushing to know the actual word, asking ‘hmm is it this or is it more that’. Letting myself be deliciously open to the possibilities ahead without knowing all (or even any!) of the answers yet. The ‘how’ can wait for now.
Paying attention to my inner world and the stories and beliefs I’m carrying. Asking: ‘ok, if I want to call in this thing, how do I need to let myself expand or which of my stories do I need to change so I don’t get bogged down in self-doubt. How do I need to see myself?’. I do this work with my coaching clients all the time and through this work and my own experience I know that whenever you are looking to call in something new or more there will likely be inner shifts you need to make so that self-doubt doesn’t derail you. It’s how expansion works.
In quiet ways that perhaps only I can see or feel, I get the sense that I’m preparing myself for upgrade when my energy rises and Spring beckons me out of hibernation.
Talking of hibernation…
You may have joined me for Hibernate last year. I’m adding to and tweaking this self-guided audio retreat that lots of you told me you loved and which you can weave in amongst your ordinary days this Winter. It begins on Friday 23rd January and you can find it over here for just £9. Paid subscribers can access last year’s version for free in the paid post archive.
Endings and beginnings
I don’t know about you but I can already feel the energy that’s coming when the lunar new year turns to the Year of the Horse in mid-February. The energy of new beginnings and life upgrades, of strong and steady, of movement and motion.
Though not explicitly named, I’m hearing it in my client work. Seeing people beginning to lift up their sight line and see something of the way ahead even if it’s not crystal clear yet.
But the horse hasn’t arrived yet.
In it’s symbolism, the year of the Horse is the beginning of a whole new cycle, being the first of the 12 animals in the Chinese Astrology rotation. Looking more broadly at astrology (and this is something I’m learning from reading because I’m no astrologer) there are planetary shifts over the next month or so that mean other new cycles are beginning.
For something to begin it tends to be that something else is ending.
So just as astrology looks ahead to this year of the Horse as the beginning of the beginning of the beginning, here we are for now in the tail end of the year of the Snake. The ending of the ending of the ending.
The year of the Snake has been about shedding what no longer serves you and I read last week that when a snake sheds it’s skin, the tail end is the part that is trickiest to detach. The tip of the old skin can end up staying attached and not being a ‘complete shed’ - a completed shed being healthier for the animal.
The metaphor in this is astonishing.
So if you are feeling any of that stickiness, stuckness or struggle as this year of the Snake cycle reaches completion, maybe it makes complete sense and it’s even more of a reason to tend to what you need at this point of the Winter.
There’s no rush
The world would have you believe there are boats that can be missed in 2026 and in life in general. Right now, social media may be delivering up content of people on their boats, inviting you into comparison, making you feeling you’ve definitely already missed 5 boats and time is ticking onwards.
I want you to know, it’s all made up.
There never have been any boats to miss.
If you haven’t pinned down your word of the year by now, you can still choose one if and when you want to. If you haven’t worked through all those Goodbye 2025 / Hello 2026 questions, your life is not going to be any the worse for it. You can do it when you feel like it or not at all, both options are neutral. If you don’t have clear goals or intentions yet, if you haven’t planted your flag in 2026 and placed your order for exactly what you want this year, that is completely and wonderfully ok.
There is no rush, love.
You can know you want something different or more for yourself this year (or this decade) and still be in the gathering phase. Gathering you inner knowing to form that clearer sense of what you’re calling in. Gathering your energy so you can begin when you’re ready with a fuller tank. Gathering your sense of yourself so you can trust the moves or the choices you make. Gathering knowledge, gathering resources, gathering confidence, gathering self-belief.
There’s so much to be said for the times in our year (and in our lives) when you pause and gather.
What if you let yourself be unhurried in your gathering. There’s so much time.
Meet yourself here
For this month’s invitation I wanted to echo the feeling of January in my world and make it both nourishing and simple, whilst perhaps helping you find a few more layers of understanding around where you’re at as the year quietly begins and what you need here.
So I have for you a re-orienting journaling practice and I’m imagining a scene something like this delight whilst we each dive into it, cosily tucked away from the Winter cold whilst dreaming into what wants to emerge.
If you’re feeling like your current hibernation* might want to at some point give way to a quest for feeling more yourself this year, I have a free workshop for just that coming up after Imbolc and you’re invited.
*(Remember also, Hibernate is over here if you want my softly permission-giving dulcit tones in your ears)
Journaling to softly locate yourself
Softness comes from the way we hold ourselves and set ourselves up for comfort. So can I lovingly ask you, dear one, to create yourself some nice roomy space to sit with these - if that’s possible in your world just now.
Go to bed early, find a quiet moment before your household wakes or set up a cosy nest in the middle of the day. Let anyone around know you’re taking some quiet time and would love to not be interrupted. Keep it simple if you need to or lavish some loving care on yourself with tea, a hot water bottle, blankets, a candle or fairy lights - whatever helps this feel sacred and nourishing for you.
And when you’re feeling it, grab your journal and begin:
