REFLECT - CONNECT - Explore Your Book of 2023
An Online Reflective Writing Workshop
Every year between Christmas and New Year, I begin my end-of-year ritual. I open a new page of my A3 sketchbook where I write, draw images, and make collage about everything I can remember about the year about to close. That includes the people who were most prominently in my life this year, the places I went, memorable dinners and moments, books I've read; you name it, if I can remember it, it goes in there, the micro and the macro moments.
I call it my ‘book of {Insert Year about to end}.’
It could be easy to let it pass by, to not take a moment to acknowledge all that we come through in a year, especially if that particular year feels like a blur of nothingness. A lot still happens. And that 'LOT' includes subtle changes that eventually transform us.
It includes all the feelings and emotions processed and all the relational interactions. It includes moments watching tiny birds flit from branch to fence post and the joy of laughing at dogs playing and interacting in the park; it includes the dinners you've made for friends, recipes shared and the awkward words you wished you hadn't spoken. It includes the grief of love apparently lost, the disappointment of not getting what you thought you wanted, the thoughtful gifts you did receive and hope for the dreams that live in your heart. Maybe you learnt something new? How to crochet, how to spatchcock a chicken or grow vegetables for the first time?
Our yearly 'LOT' is rich with life lived.
But it can be easy to forget all the details as we rush headlong into a new year with promises of change and a clean slate. These details, moments, experiences and stories may disappear as we transition from one year to the next before we have fully appreciated or gleaned learning from them. Or sometimes, significant events that happen (like death, break-ups, birth or trauma) blot out or blur the finer, subtle or still moments that existed among the ‘big stuff’.
And often, unless there was a solid outcome to something, it can feel like we haven't 'done' much. This stems from an over-focus and bias towards productivity, goals and outcomes in our culture (which aligns with the inner spring and inner summer phases of our menstrual cycles. In the ‘fertile’ phases, we’re seen to be stronger, shinier and more attractive, more desirable to people, opportunities and other things - we are celebrated far more than when we are in the inner autumn or inner winter phases when many of us naturally draw inward, rest, and feel less able to give).
So! You may or may not have published a book, got married, had a child, started a business or got a puppy in 2023, but, if you take the time to REFLECT & CONNECT with the many moments of 2023, you'll discover that your year was rich in details and filled with ordinary, simple and magical things.
When we pause to look more closely, like looking through a microscope at an ant hill, we can see it teeming with activity and life - when from a distance, it just looks like a giant pile of pine needles.
HUMAN LIBRARIES
We are each a Human Library filled with stories and moments. Each story lives within a book that is filled with the experiences of a year.
Each experience, each moment is a story that has contributed to our own book of 2023 and to our personal library of life and learning. We can then add each book to our LIFE LIBRARY which is already filled with books from each year of our lives.
What does your book of 2023 look like? What stories live in it?
I'm offering the reflective creative ritual I do each year in the form of REFLECT – CONNECT, an online reflective and creative writing workshop, so you can capture those moments before a new year begins.
What would it be like to honour your journey in 2023? To accept and make peace with the choices you did and didn’t make? To realise that the ‘tiny’ moments were just as impactful as the sweepingly huge ones? And to discover interesting and unexpected threads to expand your creative writing?
In REFLECT-CONNECT, we’re going to take a deliberate moment to pause, reflect, take in, and connect with our personal experiences of 2023 and discover how this can inspire our creative writing as well as appreciate, accept and come to peace with what 2023 brought to our doors.
It’s taking place on Thursday, 28th of December from 6.30-8.30pm UK time. If this sounds good to you, I invite you to learn more here, and register right here.
You are warmly invited to end your year together with a creative group of women.
with love
Jane x
First up, before REFLECT-CONNECT, is HYDRATE, the next monthly creative writing workshop to rehydrate your writing life on Tuesday, December 19th at 7pm. This one is donation-based. Register here to join us.