Greetings and Happy New Year!

I hope you all have landed back on your feet from all the holiday hullabaloo. Hopefully you were able to find some peace and quiet during the break and do some nesting and self-reflection as well.

For the record, I feel the real New Year begins when new baby sprouts push up from the earth, and the trees start to bud out with some green, and the ice breaks and the thaw begins. That feels like new beginnings much more so than the cold, stark darkness of winter.

However, I also recognize that we are marking time by the Gregorian calendar and therefore it means when you receive this it will be the 13th day of 2025-and it will be a full moon in the sign of Cancer-what some ancient traditions refer to as the Wolf Moon.

You can Google and find all kinds of answers for why it is called the Wolf Moon, but just on an intuitive level you can infer that these dark, quiet, lonely nights are perfect for howling and letting out your feels, as a wolf might do when they are out on patrol.

Every planet-including the sun and the moon- have an astrological “home sign”. This means that the energy of the planet is correlated and similar to the energy of its matching astrological sign. So for example, Mars is home in the sign of Aries…makes sense right-They are both fiery warriors? And the Sun is home in Leo, that also makes sense- a lion looks like the sun with its big golden mane and fiery temperament. Well, the moon is home in the sign of Cancer-which is a water sign, and arguably one of the most emotional of all the signs. The moon is symbolic of our inner emotions-which are constantly in flux and flow like water. We can have 108 feelings in a matter of a few minutes-and that is not just your teenager-we are all capable of having rolodex emotions (for those of you under the age of 25, a rolodex is what people use to keep their contacts in…pre cell phones-it spun around).

Our moods, feelings, and emotions are ever changing much like the phases of the moon.

And so this particular full moon has landed in its home sign of Cancer and its full on! So this means big emotions- No wonder its a howling moon.

The wolves are onto something. It is important to feel our feels and to give them a healthy and productive outlet. Otherwise, the unreconciled and unexpressed feelings begin to cause internal strife and struggle. Sometimes undealt with emotions manifest as dis-ease in our body. Sometimes it shows up as mental and emotional dis-function. Sometimes they hijack us and take us way off our dharmic path and into some unhealthy terrrain that makes us feel lost, depressed and fearful. And sometimes, when our unexamined feelings are really ignored, it can be the death of us.

The good news is that we humans are slowly unpacking the societal conditioning and limiting belief systems that have been imposed upon us for centuries upon centuries. Things like the new year must starts in the dark of winter…or being told to keep your inner feelings to yourself so not to burden society or draw attention to ourselves are being questioned and re-examined.

Banking, government, education, healthcare, housing, communication, energy, transportation, gender, social and cultural norms are all under scrutiny and review by the collective consciousness of our time. Since the dawn of “civilization” we have blindly accepted a lot of what we have been told, taught, and tendered. We have been entrained to many of our thoughts are either immoral, illegal, or irrelevant. And- if we want a life of security, health, and happiness we need to obey the directives we have been given by our religions, our governments, our society, and our parents-because they have our highest good in order.

Certainly you have encountered the millennials, and the Gen Z’s who are stepping up to the rebellion plate with cancelling, questioning, and calling out what they believe to be outdated and debilitating ideologies of society. I do appreciate their indignation, they are effectively a cog in the wheel-but one of the missing pieces in their tactic is a kindness. Now before some of you fire off and cancel me for my over-generalization of a group of people-let me qualify my statement by saying generally speaking, the younger generations lack a couth and grace to the delivery of their message. Of course there are exceptions, like Amanda Gorman and Greta Thunberg-both very kind and gracious-and neither of those young ladies mince words. We know exactly how they feel. They are forces of good.

But many in their generation, and also the one above them, and in truth, many people of any generation-have an edge of defiance and a disrespectful approach to demanding change. To me, that’s just a different side of the same destructive sword we have been wielding since the dawn of civilization. The war mentality of our world will continue if we keep attacking each other; the tongue is a sword as well as the blade. I would love to see the future movers and shakers of the world to have the “hutzpa” of these young truthseekers, combined with the gentleness and grace of say Mother Theresa or Thich Nhat Hahn-neither of which probably ever held a sword or said an unkind word, but were more effective in our society then most of us will be in our next four life times. And thats because they know that the way is through Love.

All the yogic philosophy and perennial wisdom of many ancient wisdom traditions point out that the way to peace and contentment is through lovingkindness and surrendering our ego to a greater force than ourselves. We must Trust in the power of Love, Truth, Faith, and Servitude; they are the keys to unlock the doors of our lost perceptions.

In our efforts to dismantle the old and unnecessary aspects of our lives, we must also remember to cultivate and carry on the attributes of compassion and lovingkindness, and deepen our spirituality or connection to Source. We can’t let these parts of ourselves become forgotten or foresaken…treated like they are old-fashioned things, kind of like my grandma’s embroidered hankies, ironed and folded neatly in a drawer somewhere-unused and forgotten-But still beautiful, and still necessary.

My mantra this year is “Love Everyone”. That might sound cliche or trite, but for me it is not easy, and it rubs up against my short comings of being overly critical or dismissive. I can easily put something or someone in a box I have labeled “bad”. And then I not only try to avoid that “box”, but then I judge it, and bad mouth it, and try to get other people to think its bad too.

A lot of my time and energy gets sucked up when I am loathing and hating. And it feels gross to be in that energy field of judgement, gossip, and complaining.

But if I take the “love everyone” approach, I can still have my feelings about it or them, but I don’t have to spend energy hating it, thinking about it, and complaining about it. I simply allow it to be. I allow myself to be an unaffected observer. I can honor it or them as a part of creation-and value it for what it is teaching me. But I don’t have to have lunch with them.

Just because I am trying to be kind and compassionate toward all beings, doesn’t mean I have to like everyone and everything. It just means I am not going to foster hatred for anything or anyone, even the ones who I completely disagree with in philosophy or behavior.

For example, I don’t like pork. I don’t eat it, I don’t cook it. I don’t like the taste of it. But I love little pigs. They are cute.

Apply that on a bigger issue-I don’t like bigots. I don’t hang out with them. I don’t socialize with them. I don’t like their philosophy and attitude.

But I don’t wish them ill. I don’t want to hurt them. I acknowledge that they have a story, and I see they have a spirit just like I do-and we come from the same original Source. So if I wish poison upon them, I am wishing poison to the whole well of humanity. We all pull from the same Source.

So back to this watery, emotional Wolf Moon-Its so very important to feel all your feels and give them an outlet. Otherwise they become festering wounds, and trigger points-that can potentially become volatile and destructive-either to ourselves or others. So let out a big howl, release some frustration, fear, and frenetic energy. Then use one of grandma’s sweet hankies to wipe your tears. Allow yourself to feel the eternalness of Love embedded into the fabric of our lives, sometimes forgotten, but ever present in the field all around us; its the one force that can transcend all our pettiness and heal our wounds.

Later this month, on the new moon, we will kick off the Chinese New Year-the Year of the Snake. This seems appropriate, as collectively we are shedding an old skin; we are letting go of old ways, old structures, and old beliefs, But don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Keep kindness as a main staple, and generosity as a mode of currency, and remember that all creation is connected through the unified field or web of life. So if we want to see more truth, love, and compassion in the world, then we must let that be the frequency in which we operate.

Happy howling,
Much love,
Katrina