What are we moving toward?
For the last four years, I've been running a year-end review and intention setting workshop, which often gives me a read on the collective energy as we close up a year and step into a new one. In case it's useful to anyone, I thought I'd share a couple of things I noticed during the 2025-to-2026 transition.
Everyone seemed extra exhausted from this year. Which is not surprising considering the increased levels of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity most of us are dealing with. This meant a lot more people took two full weeks off at the end of the year and seemed committed to truly resting through the holidays. As someone who, because I own my own business, has had the luxury of taking a full two weeks at the end of the year for the last decade, I see this as a silver lining: I hope more people continue to listen to the seasonal call to hibernate, rest, and reflect at this time of year (at least in the Northern Hemisphere).
Likely related to number one, I’ve talked to a lot of people about health and changing our relationship to our bodies to nurture and sustain us for the work ahead. I know this is a common focus of new year’s resolutions, and it’s probably also a function of my age, but beyond that I sense a growing awareness of our mortality, the incredible toxicity of our industrialized world, and the connection between our chronic illnesses and the depletion and mistreatment of our Mother Earth. Personally, this led me (and several friends) to sign up for a 3-week whole food cleanse with Ellen Kittredge starting on Monday (I've worked with her in several capacities over the past few years).
I've heard from several people who feel unusually resistant to the idea of setting “goals.” What I connect that to collectively is the incredible amount of uncertainty that we all feel about what our day-to-day might look like going forward. How do we plan when we feel like our reality could change completely at any moment? This is a big part of why I'm such a fan of setting intentions as well as, or instead of, setting goals. As I was taught by Staci Boden, an intention is not so much where we want to get to, in the way a goal might be; instead it's how we are committed to showing up as we journey towards our dreams and desires. It’s more a quality or an energy we want to cultivate inside of ourselves that we believe will help us live in alignment with our values, even if our goals or daily reality shifts in unforeseen ways.
On a more personal level, several big themes emerged for me in 2025, which are guiding where I put my energy in 2026. If any of these resonate with you, or you’re curious to hear more, I’d love to find a time to talk.
A Commitment to Collaboration
A highlight of the last year was creating and running a new group program with my dear friend Velma Gentzsch. We brought together my work helping people move from co-dependency to co-commitment (thanks, again, Staci) and her pleasure coaching to create Martyr-Free Mothering, a 4-month group journey to help moms move from overgiving and people-pleasing into pleasure, power, and purpose. It was powerful and fun and I’ll eventually be writing more about what we learned here. But one huge “aha” from our final session was hearing how Velma and I leading together—from our deep relationship, with mutual respect, honoring our differing perspectives, needs, and intuitions—was possibly the most powerful lesson of all.
I’d been noticing my desire to co-facilitate and collaborate for a while, and this cemented it into a commitment. So while my one-on-one coaching and thought partnership will remain one-on-one, I’ve decided I’m only pursuing group work this year where I can collaborate with a co-facilitator. At the moment, that looks like year two of Martyr-Free Mothering, and co-developing a community of practice for leaders who want to build their coaching habit to drive excellence, empower teams, and avoid burnout.
Local & Civic Reweaving
The combination of living in my hometown again, rebuilding a friend network in my 40s, and having young kids we are co-parenting with our parents has increased my interest in reweaving the fabric of our local communities. Lucky for me I stumbled on the Connective Tissue Substack over a year ago (by way of Supernuclear and Culture Study—also recommended). Sam Pressler started out “surfac[ing] ideas and practices to inspire and deepen action in local civic life,” and then this summer he and a small team launched the Connective Tissue Membership. I joined as soon as I learned about it and have been impressed by the way they are facilitating connection, driving action (not just discussion), and how every person I’ve met is thoughtful, generous, and non-dogmatic. A lot of people have jobs that relate to civic life, community engagement, belonging, etc. but many are simply practicing and sharing their experiences being “better neighbors.” It inspired Jackson and I to host a few “deep casual” neighbor dinners and, prompted by a microgrant, I also helped host a Dia De Los Muertos neighborhood party (in collaboration with a neighbor, who we had over for dinner!).
Spiritual & Ritual Innovation
If we had a chance to connect in 2025, you likely heard me mention rites of passage, especially the transition to adulthood, especially for boys, and especially as one important place to look if we want to address male isolation and loneliness (which, in turn, feeds many downstream challenges for our society, IMO). This is one of those focuses that coalesced from so many points over so many years that it’s hard for me to say why it feels so important to me right now. But/and/also, here’s a few places it tracks back to: Joseph Campbell’s Myths to Live By; a Michael Meade course called “The Arc of Transformation: The Healing Power of Myth and Ritual”; the work of Josh Schrei at The Emerald Podcast; finally reading The Anxious Generation, which unexpectedly (to me, anyway) brought up loss of rites of passage as a compounding factor to the dangers of the current phone-based childhood paradigm; getting to know Casper ter Kuile’s work (and meeting him 💜), especially The Power of Ritual; listing to When We All Get to Heaven, an incredible podcast drawn from recordings of services at San Francisco’s LGBT-affirming Metropolitan Community Church during the height of the AIDS epidemic (h/t Casper); and, of course, my own decade-plus relationship with 7Directions Dance Ceremony.
Knowing It’s All OK
I’d been working with Ellen on rebuilding my gut microbiome for a while when I started to sense that there was a missing a piece related to my nervous system. Many of my symptoms had improved except for one mysterious and sometimes crippling pain in my side. I’d also noticed that my body seemed to rev up when I ate, instead of entering the important “rest and digest” state. So when she offered her Wisdom of the Body, Wisdom of Nature course, as a next step, I said yes.
This program is a combined offering (more collaboration!) between Ellen’s training with the Q’ero people, indigenous healers from the Andes, and Dr. Cynthia Bergh, who has a Doctorate in Chiropractic and full certification in Network Spinal Analysis. Daily somatic practices were paired with devotional practices to help us recognize our connection to many nature beings, in particular our nature mother and father. These helped create a grounding thread that tied together much of my own training in somatic and ritual practices, and that helped me know, at an unshakeable level, that I’m taken care of and safe. The mysterious pain has been gone for months and Jackson reflected back to me in our year-end appreciation practice that I seemed to flow with challenges much more easily in 2025, riding the waves instead of fighting against them.
What were your big themes in 2025? Where are you putting your energy for 2026? What’s your intention? Drop me a line. I’d love to hear about all of that or anything else.
