A New Year at 70

I turned 70 in 2025 and although it’s only a number, so they say, it still marks time and carries some expectation I suppose. It brings up moments of reflection and efforts to gather insights, maybe even nuggets of wisdom to pass on.

I’ve learned a lot of late. For one, that grief from loss can show up in many forms. The passing of my brother this year was a double loss, as we were stuck in an entanglement of estrangement that could not be penetrated without losing boundaries of self preservation. In recognizing the limits of his capacity to acknowledge how deeply he hurt loved ones, my forgiveness and compassion for his pain could not be reciprocated in any reachable way. So there was the grief of the loss of opportunity to try to find a way back to each other.

The stark and growing distance between my daughter and myself is a similar loss in the sense that for different reasons, careful loving boundaries need to be shored up. My experience of motherhood has evolved to one of recognizing the limits of what serves the highest good of us both, even if that means giving each other more space than I ever dreamed would arise. I practice holding positive visions of her soul contract and life purpose in my heart and fill them with light. And at the same time surrendering, accepting, finding ways to obliterate fears to help ease the way to plugging into the true Source of Love. One that transcends the kind I’ve looked for at times while roaming the aisle of Hallmark cards.

I now know that it’s possible to fall in love relatively late in life, and that it’s worth believing anything you truly desire is within reach. And that it can be attained through a slow and steady wiring of what I have learned through my shamanic teachings, is called the luminous energy field. The L.E.F. is an open circuity that is powered by the truest essence of all levels of love. Of a heart that more than believes, actually knows.

And this is perhaps what I consider the greatest wisdom teaching of all. To be able to discern what I know, from what I believe in, hope for or what I want. And what is possible in this lifetime.
I have bonded with a step-granddaughter with such joyful abandon that I can see how much pent up mother love I have had to hold in reserve of late. And how pure that love is. How easily my heart opens to her with an eagerness I’m learning to check without losing the genuine enthusiasm of being part of her innocence and unbridled energy.

I see how critical it is for us to continue to build and fortify our inner worlds, as the outer world gradually crumbles from a growing lack of integrity and the ravages of a harmful narcissism that grows unchecked with a nightmarish quality of unhinged menace. It’s more than politics, it’s recognizing how the ship is being steered toward bigger Icebergs in a sea that cries for refuge. It’s learning to find our way while holding a space for what we see happening beyond our foreseeable control.
I hope that perhaps some of my honest reflections as the year winds down can help ignite an awareness, a opening of light, anything that can help lift spirits toward our highest possibilities. I know that writing does that for me, and I have always known that what is written on the personal level, intrinsically becomes more available universally.

This year I intend to complete my first novel which is a fictional version of a story I have wanted to tell. One that unwinds a past packed with lessons, illuminations, magic, suffering, healing, insight, forgiveness, compassion, all told in a story that begs to be told from my heart to any of yours that resonates with that kind of Truth.

May 2026 bring healing, comfort, expansion and joy. May all sentient beings grow in peace.
Written with love,