I don’t know about you, but it has been a hell of a year for me and I’m glad to still be standing! This past Spring, I planted “Healthy Body,” “Healthy Mind,” “Healthy Spirit,” and “Healthy Relationships” for my goals to harvest in the Fall. Now that it actually IS Fall, I’m working on an analysis of how the harvest is unfolding.
This reminds me of many years ago when, in my hubris, I planted “Self-actualization” and had one of the worst years of my life. I think maybe I overshot this year as well but it is much to late to the toothpaste back into that particular tube.
“Healthy Relationships” means that any relationship I had that was tenuous and imbalanced either strengthened or went away. It forced me to set cumbersome boundaries and sometimes give more than I thought I could give.
“Healthy Body” means that seemingly minor physical issues worsened, but also means that I found solid solutions for managing those situations.
“Healthy Mind” means that I had to finally admit that I have some intense trauma reactions from things that happened all through my life; toxicities that I duplicated because they felt familiar and normal to me. I had to examine the symptoms I have that are consistent with OCD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, depression, and PTSD. Some is hereditary, some is generational trauma, and some is situational.
“Healthy Spirit” means I had to experience a crisis of faith that ultimately galvanized my beliefs.
That all sounds positive and ultimately a good outcome, but it was a mess to wade through and I will confess, there were times when I didn’t think I would make it. Little did I realize when I invoked those wonderful concepts into my life that they each came with their own healing crisis in tow.
I should have seen that coming from ten miles away. Believe me, next year, I will not be nearly as ambitious and will likely plant something like “great eyebrows.”
The healing crises I experienced seem to mirror that paranoid trope that “all magic comes at a price,” and I have never believed that to be true, nor do I believe it now. I do believe in balance and that the “giving” side of our scale should be relatively even with our “receiving” side. I also know that sometimes, the treatment for an undesirable condition is often more painful than the condition itself, even if the overall result is a net positive.
Mostly, this year left me tired, feeling like I am a fighter getting pushed back into the ring when I don’t have any power left in me. What I crave most right now is rest and solitude, but historically, harvest is a sweaty, back-breaking time and the resting comes with Winter when the fields are empty, the larders are full, and the work is done. So, we are almost there.
Despite the trauma it caused, I am grateful for how my harvest manifested. In Numerology, this is an 8 year for the world, which is about establishing balance, growth and expansion, and about using all your strength and will to achieve the results you want to see. The number 8 is almost to the number 10, which is completion, endings, and new beginnings. Seeing how hard people are working toward and investing in the outcome of the upcoming presidential election, this energy certainly holds true.
For myself, this is a 4 year, which is about balance, stability, and creating a foundation for the adjustments of a 5 year. The 4 year is when things get real and solidify after the energetic upsurge of a 3 year. It is like a mini resolution that creates a solid foundation for the rest of the cycle to the culmination of the 9 year. I can see how my year created that.
When I look back over my past year and the long series of hardships and traumas that formed it, I simultaneously wonder how I made it through and at the same time, I am grateful that life continues to move on. The Wheel turns and sometimes, we’re up and other times, we’re down. Sometimes, it’s just our turn for the Universe to clean house for us and sometimes, we have to wait for the world to turn a time or two before things start to fall into place once more.
My experience is that the Universe lets us coast for a while until it needs us to step up to the next level. When that next level is coming up, all of a sudden, the Universe starts to rearrange the chess pieces of your life. Some pieces overpower situations that are adversarial to us. Some get taken off the board. If we are fortunate, some win the game for us.
But of course, the chess pieces only do what they are told and, in this case, either we move them or the Universe does. We will lose some. We will win some. We may know how to play the game perfectly and still make dumb mistakes that leave our King vulnerable. At other times, we might find ourselves blocked into a hopeless situation with no moves when all of a sudden, we close our eyes, then open them again and see the perfect way out.
The Universe is a much better player than we are, but it also helps to know that the game is rigged. While our moves to get there are unknown, the outcome of each game is assured. The Universe can course correct a game where we have made so many wrong moves that the board looks irredeemable. Meanwhile, it will be a tense game and the board will be a mess until suddenly, everything becomes clear again. Anytime our chess pieces are all in the worst spots, we are usually the ones who got them there.
I wish you that clarity and the rest and peace of mind that comes after winning a great game.
In the midst of all of this, I had the pleasure of retooling an old favorite of mine. I wrote Goddess in the Kitchen originally in 2013 as a way of compiling my favorite recipes for my kids to have as they went into the world as adults.
It gained some popularity and now, eleven years later, I added in all of the recipes I have amassed since then, plus I expounded on the chapters on the energy we put into the foods we make and serve. The book now has color photos, more than 10,000 additional words, and over 100 recipes.
Earlier in the year, I published Warm Hands: A Comprehensive Guide to Bio-Universal Healing which is my one year course of classes translated into book form. This book shares more than you ever wanted to know about the kind of folk healing I have done in my practice for more than ten years, cleansing thousands of people during that time. We go through chapters on the egg cleanse, cleansing with herbs, holding space for spiritually vulnerable people, and how to launch a folk healing business of your own if you are so inclined.
I still offer classes and readings on my Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/KatrinaRasbold
…and you can still order all of your favorite Crossroads products and services on our store website: https://crossroadsoccult.com/
The new issue of “Green Egg Magazine” just released on September 21st and is available for only $3.50 at www.greeneggmagazine.com. In addition to writing several articles for this issue, I also post three blog posts each week at the Green Egg Blog on that same link.
That is what we have been up to! Eric and I wish you the happiest of harvests and a cozy, comfortable descent into the dark of the year.
