2022 Reflections: Journal Prompts
What I wish to keep. Yellow Brick Road.
I watched the series finale of Insecure (thank you to Issa Rae for years of joy, laughter, secondhand embarrassment, and utter frustration) and during the closing sequence of the show, she goes on a drive and reflects on the memories of the past and hope she has for the future. This song plays in the background, and I thought “Ah, that’s 2022.”
Promise I made was to love myself
Sometimes I lie to myself
Where're you going?
No one knows
It was perfect in my headThings are changing, but I'm still here
Wrote down these words
And it seems so clear
You was the one who said, "Believe in love"
We get closer, but not close enoughWhy'd you have to leave?
Why'd you have to go?
Why'd you have to go?
Oh, I can't do this anymoreWhy'd you have to leave?
Why'd you have to go?
Tell me that I meant something to you
Oh, I can't do this anymoreI wrote a letter to myself and it was full of promises
One for you and one for me
Love is not our enemy
I wrote a letter to myself and it was full of promises
One for you and one for me
Love is not our enemy
15 Reflections for 2022 - answer any, all, or none <3
Using your intuition, what are some themes, lessons, and energies you’re calling into your life this year?
Three feelings you wish to experience most this year?
One way you have the opportunity to shock yourself in 2022?
One dedicated practice and habit you would like to create this year?
Opportunities to show yourself more grace?
Relationships you’d like to improve/build, and ways you can own your part in fostering more fruitful connections?
How can you promote your mental and emotional well-being this year?
What is ready to be released?
What is one childhood dream you can challenge yourself to bring to life this year (even in small, unconventional, or private ways)?
Who are the most integral people in your life? Your support system. What is your favorite part about being loved and supported by them?
How do you wish to spend the majority of your time this year? What are you doing? What are you listening to? What do you smell and taste? How do you feel?
How can you become more involved in your community, and include service to others in a regular routine?
How do you define love and care in 2022? What influences and experiences do you think impacted this definition? How can you leave room for expansion over the next 12 months?
What are your most resilient traits carrying you into and through a new year and how have they served you in the past?
What do I want more of in your life? How do you define abundance now?
I’ve been diving into numerology recently - yet another language to make sense of the tiny mysteries waiting to meet us here on Earth. The numbers 2022 reduce to 6, giving the year ahead the western numerological vibration of 6. The honey comb is 6-sided. Tomatoes, their shape resembling the human heart, have 6 chambers. Snowflakes are formed by water freezing into 6-pointed crystals as they descend from the sky.
The number 6, without question, is the vibration of love and the heart’s desire. It is beauty and harmony. It is stability and reciprocity in connection. It represents relationships, and speaks to the way nature assumes alignment with what helps it flourish without force.
The sixth card in the tarot is The Lovers. I expounded its meaning in the second edition of this newsletter, but will refresh now. The Lovers card was formerly known as The Choice. It may show up in a reading when you are facing a head and heart dilemma, feel tugged between a “higher” and “lower” choice (doesn’t exist but we certainly experience this in all of its delusion), or when you are considering whether a person, place, or thing is truly for your greatest and most healing good. The Choice and its consequences are perhaps less important than the reasons you made it, and what you believe your choice implies about you.
For me, the card calls forward a memory of standing in a funhouse mirror room. It is a jarring experience as you spin round and round in the same motion, circle after circle, trying to remember which mirror is your exit, facing distortion after distortion of your own reflection - your untainted truth. The only way to exit the funhouse is to find the mirror which best reflects your reality. Who you “really” are. That’s your way out of spinning in circles.
Through our connections - our choices to enter cycles and roles and habits again - we are faced with mirrors of dynamics we grew up watching and believing was love, but actually most closely resembled care at best or abuse at worst. These mirrors - these precious and delicate brushes with fate and divinity we call relationships - reveal our distorted beliefs about what we look like, how we feel about ourselves, what we believe lies at the center of our being.
With love, duality is always present. We witness our gifts and our opportunities for growth play out in one microcosmic connection between us and another person. These mirrored reflections elicit confusion, agony, euphoria, hope, delusion, and challenge, but we choose. We always choose what is most like “us” at the time of decision, or how we want to feel or how we want to be seen even if it isn’t honest. Above all else, we choose the best we can with the information we have.
The beauty of tomorrow is that with the first flicker of our eyelids as the morning of the next day breaks, we have the chance to choose a mirror that looks closer to us than the one we attempted to see ourselves in yesterday. The pursuit of love for ourselves and reciprocity with those who reflect that love is never, ever, ever lost - just a bit wobbly and uncertain at times.
I hope 2022 brings you the clearest reflection you’ve ever known. And I hope you choose clarity.
reading this a bit later than i'd anticipated but nourished by it nonetheless <3