In today’s blog, I’ll share some of things I learnt from choosing a blessing to guide me through 2020 – and I’ll talk you through choosing a blessing for 2021.
At the start of the year, I always choose a Sea Soul Blessings card to guide me through the year to come. Much like some people choose a ‘word of the year’. Once I’ve chosen my blessing, I use its message as a simple focus or touchpoint for the year ahead.
While I’ll use many more cards over the course of the year, this one is the card I’ll reflect on most often. My understanding of it will evolve as the year progresses. It’ll become a friend – even if it doesn’t seem that way at first…!
When I’m stuck, I’ll come back to read its words and see what new wisdom it might have for me in that moment. And when I draw other cards – for the day or the month, I’ll sometimes pause to reflect on how the two messages might work together.
Last year my card of the year was ‘may you feel alive’. You can read about my experience of choosing my card for 2020 here.
May you feel ALIVE
The sea is all-encompassing sensation, exuberant vitality, constant movement. It is stepping consciously over edges. To walk into a cold sea is to know the limits of your physical and mental capacity, and to choose to live a little of your life right there.
May you delight in vitality. May you pursue adventure. May you test your limitations. May you feel all the feelings. May you love and leap. May you tingle.
Well, 2020 certainly took me to my edges – as it did so many of us.
At times in 2020, when so many were suffering, when life felt overwhelming, I rooted my aching sea soul in the baldest essence of this card.
I used it to seek out simple appreciation of being alive. Of breathing. Of living into discomfort and my limits, and finding a way to feel alive there.
It reminded me of all I have in my life – people, possessions, experiences, opportunities – and my life itself.
This blessing reminded me to explore the full width of my emotional capacity. To allow all of the feelings to come up, without judgement. As evidence of being fully alive.
It called me to be present with all the grief, disappointment, anger, frustration, powerlessness… and also the joy, love, pleasure and hope when that came too. It reminded me to witness and accept all of these diverse emotional experiences as part of the experience of being a living human, letting them move through and around me in waves.
In more resilient times, I used this card as a call to keep testing my limits, stretching into the discomfort of new things, being brave enough to ‘put myself out there’. Not just by getting into the sea, but by risking failure, or embarrassment. By pitching new ideas, asking for what I needed – or launching a project like ‘a year of sea and kindness’ into the unknown…
I also reminded myself that the blessing suggested living “a little of my life” at my limits, not all of it. Being alive wasn’t about constantly pushing myself to stretch further, and further again. It also meant pausing to take good care of myself.
That appreciation of being alive, and of the need to tend to my own vitality, led me into trying my first ever ‘cleanse’. Having never tried anything like that at all, I wanted to explore whether making changes to my diet might help me to manage the peri-menopause. That experience changed my diet dramatically, for the long term, and deeply improved my sense of health. While I still dabble in dark chocolate (how could I not?!), I’ve also come to understand the joys of eating well as another way to care deeply for myself. Instead of seeking out the more short-term boost of ‘treats’ like sugar, coffee and alcohol – I ask myself what I’m really hungry for, and seek that out.
(You can read more about my dietary journey in Yours Magazine, issue 367, out on 12 January 2021)
Pursuing the edges of my physical capacity, I set myself a gentle challenge of overcoming my fear of front crawl this year. One that was all about speaking to myself kindly, giving myself permission to stop any time the discomfort became too much.
As I stretched into this new challenge, I learnt more about my edges – when it’s OK to stretch a little further, and when it’s time to stop. There is kindness in both, but as an historic ‘over-achiever,’ sometimes it can be hard to judge – I guess it’s something we learn with practice.
I went from swimming a few strokes before panicking about my breathing, to swimming comfortably further than I ever have before. I loved the feeling of vitality that came with getting physically stronger.
And I loved – with all of my heart. And all of my sea soul. Because that’s a vital part of being alive too.
Choosing a new guiding card doesn’t mean I’ll stop doing any of those things – they’ve become part of me now.
But a new card gives me a chance to learn more – to explore a new way of being alive.
Choosing a blessing for 2021
There are many different ways of choosing a blessing for 2021. You could choose your blessing consciously, or select one at random. You could start by doing an activity that helps you to clear your mind, to get in touch with your instincts and inner voice, or connect to the sea. Perhaps you’ll head to the sea or a favourite spot in nature, create a little altar or ceremony, pause to breathe or meditate. You could combine it with creating a vision board as I did this year…
On New Year’s Eve, I usually make myself a vision board for the year ahead – I love snipping random bits out of magazines with no clear idea of what I’m creating, just trusting that something will come, shuffling it all together on a huge piece of paper, and slipping into a state of creative flow.
This year, when I’d finished, I laid all my Sea Soul Blessings cards out on top of my vision board, and waited to see which card I was drawn to for 2021. I turned it over, and oof… It felt like a big one.
May you RELEASE
May you relent. May you lay down your burdens. May you release all that no longer serves you. May you be cleansed. May you rise.
My first reaction was resistance. I felt anxious, and scared of what I might have to let go of in 2021. At the same time, with all that we’ve experienced in 2020, I knew there was so much I needed to release.
I remembered that “may you release” is my favourite postcard print of all those I’ve made this year too… so maybe, at some level, I knew a time for deeper releasing was coming. Nonetheless, on New Year’s Day, I drew myself a second card. I wanted to know how I might approach whatever needs to be released.
I drew ‘may you find lightness’. Which felt like a sweet relief. And a beautiful shift of perspective.
May you find LIGHTNESS
Floating on the surface of the sea, your heart can perceive the whole luminous sky. In releasing your dread of each incoming swell, you find weightlessness: your soul lifted by gentle waves of grace and laughter.
May you delight in finding peace on the surface, even as the waters shift beneath. May you change perspective. May joy fuel you, to soar beyond and above.
I’m still slowly releasing feelings and thoughts and experiences from 2020, and I’m sure there will be more to release in 2021. But this second card reminded me that releasing doesn’t have to be heavy. I can release any sense of dread and find grace. Knowing that leaving some unnecessary ballast behind is what ultimately allows us to soar.
So I’m starting with releasing some of the anger and sadness I’m still holding onto from 2020. Little by little.
For me, 2021 will be a year of releasing – lightly.
“May you release” is also one of the blessings we’ll be looking at more deeply together later in “a year of sea and kindness…” so I’m also looking forward to sharing what I learn along the way.
Need some help choosing a blessing for 2021?
If you have your own set of Sea Soul Blessings cards, or even just the book to flip through, you can choose your own card as a guide – and explore the messages it might hold for you in the year ahead.
Or I can suggest another lovely way to choose one…
This month, I’ve launched a year of sea and kindness, a subscription for sea souls designed to bring you more peace, compassion and sea this year. Our theme for January is guiding cards… and as part of our first package of ocean-inspired treats to inspire us forward, I’ve been heading to the sea to choose Sea Soul Blessings cards for the year ahead – one for every participant. If you’d like me to do that for you, I’d love you to join us.
I’m posting each guiding card out in an “Inspiration for Sea Souls” keepsake tin – somewhere to gather all your “a year of sea and kindness” goodies, sea treasures, and compassionate inspiration in one place. Inside, you’ll find a handwritten message revealing the card I’ve chosen.
In a year of sea and kindness, I’ll talk more about the process of connecting with your guiding card, with creative journal prompts and ideas for exploring what your card might mean to you right now. As we go on that journey together, there are meditations to soothe you, self compassion prompts to remind you to be kind to yourself, inspiration to pause, reflect and focus on what you want and need in 2021 – and of course, lots of sea.
Come join me and some other amazing sea souls in a year of sea and kindness for a month, a few months, or a whole year.
Let’s release what we don’t want to carry forward from 2020, and step into 2021 with kindness and the sea in our hearts, a guiding card to inspire us – and hope on the horizon.
