We were sitting on the beach after just having touched down for a friend’s wedding.

I was spent from a season of a lot of production and travel. I was sick and just not getting better, despite main lining fluids, vitamins, silver, and prayers.

I looked at my friend Sarah Jenks and just burst into tears as I grabbed her hand.

“I’ve just been doing too much and I’m so embarrassed that I’ve found myself here again,” I confessed.
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Ugh.

I literally wrote a book called Do Less! How is it that I managed to do too much and get sick…again?

Like the most beautiful, loving friend that Sarah is, she reflected that this was not like years ago when I used to totally, unconsciously do too much for seasons on end.

This was but a minor blip of old patterning that was coming up to be noticed, loved, and healed.

It’s been nearly 2.5 weeks since that moment on the beach and I’d really like to be writing to say I emerged gloriously from my sickness and fatigue…but I can’t say that.

Nope. Life has had other plans for me and instead I’ve been canceling everything, waking my husband up at all hours with what he tells me is the loudest nose blowing on earth, and feeling like I’m hundreds of feet underwater because my right ear is totally clogged and my upper respiratory system has been slimed.

Not being able to hear out of one ear has been a great (totally unwelcome) opportunity to listen more closely inside myself, and it turns out that my inside had some things to tell me.

We’re a week out from the Winter Solstice which is the darkest day of the year where I live in the Northern Hemisphere.

It’s the time of year when we go within to find the light because it’s really dark outside.

So whether you’re navigating a season of illness like me and so many folks I know or are just needing a reminder to slow down and go within, I’m passing along some of what I’m hearing from inside myself in case it’s medicinal for you:

1. What needs to be loved instead of (or before) letting it go?

I’ve done a lot of releasing ceremonies in my life and while I love a good “write it down and burn it”, I was recently guided to have participants at a retreat ask themselves where they could let love go that they’d never let it go before instead of what they wanted to let go of.

I’m noticing that there are parts of me that fear the next ring of expansion that’s beckoning me. So instead of letting those parts go, I’m holding them close and giving them extra snuggles. Then they won’t feel the need to scream so loud to get my attention and I can let my courage lead instead.

2. Where and how are you being beckoned to grow?

In the third week of being sick, I messaged my friend Liz while I was lying on my hotel bathroom floor. While I didn’t know for sure what my body was trying to tell me, I was getting the message that it was saying, “Stop fucking around.”

Objectively speaking, I’m not playing small in my life. But I can feel there’s a new chapter on the horizon that will require a level of devotion I’ve not yet touched. And this will require me to no longer get distracted by small potatoes stuff like being the keeper of my company’s marketing calendar or paying attention to the IG algorithm.

I’m being asked to step into the land of big potatoes only and stop siphoning my energy into anything that’s not timeless. How about you?

3. What do you hear when you turn off the lights and turn off the sound outside yourself so you can see and hear inside more clearly?

Other than “stop fucking around”, I also keep hearing:

“Bloom where you’re planted.”

My inner world is directing me to double down on what’s right here, right now, and fertilize what’s already planted instead of planting new seeds.

I’m also receiving the guidance/reminder that the kinds of opportunities and invitations I receive are only going to keep getting more appealing and bigger. So, if I wait for things to “slow down” or for opportunities to dry up in order to have the spaciousness I need for my own creativity and wellbeing, I’ll be waiting forever.

So I gotta get better at saying no to better and better things.

What do you hear or see when you go inside?

So, that’s what’s happening in my corner of the world.

I hope my foibles and lessons are useful for you. ❤️

Love,
Kate