It’s January 1, 2023, and I find myself in bed, smiling, finishing the last few bites of a chocolate chip cookie I ate on my way back to bed after taking my dog out.
It’s raining in Southern California. The air feels fresh yet warm, and the rain? It feels refreshing, magical, and healing. The pool is gently rippling as the atmospheric river continues to push through my neighborhood, and the plants and grasses are popping off in the brightest shades of green.
I am grateful for this moment, this day, this new calendar year. And it’s the last part of that sentence that brings me the most joy.
I have done enough healing and soul searching to know that my body, heart, mind and soul do not view January 1 as the start of the New Year, therefore any pressure to be a “new me” is non-existent.
How did I come to this conclusion?
The New Year that begins on January 1 is based on the Gregorian calendar created in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. The motivation to change the calendar year was based on the church wanting Easter to occur around a specific time of the year.
In other words, before Christianity changed things so dramatically from our matriarchal society where we celebrated witches, midwives, healers, and wizards, the pressure to start something new on January 1, which is the dead of winter in the Northern Hemisphere, was pretty much non-existent.
When we lived in connection with Mother Earth, and followed the rhythms and seasons of nature, winter, January 1, was considered a time of rest and contemplation. Like the animals who hibernate, we too once allowed ourselves to slow down, rest, and integrate lessons we’ve learned during winter.
It wasn’t until the Spring Equinox, the start of the astrological New Year, when we would begin to take action on the new things we wanted to create, feel and experience in life.
And when I look at the astrology of today’s date, January 1, 2023, I see even more evidence that Mother Gaia is begging us to slow down, rest, and remember our beauty, our worth, our lovability just from existing.
Mars, the planet of action, drive, passion, is retrograde currently. So is Mercury, the planet of communication, technology, writing, speaking.
In other words, following through on a New Years resolution that you kick off on January 1 may be more difficult than it would be if you started something new at the end of January when both planets go direct.
I’m not sharing this with you to dissuade you from accomplishing your own goals, I just realized in my own life that if I failed at something in January, specifically a New Year’s resolution I had just set – I tended to be incredibly hard on myself and I don’t think I’m the only one.
So this year, 2023, I’m honoring the rest of winter by continuing to be gentle and slow with myself. I’m not creating a New Years resolution, nor am I even thinking about what kinds of goals I want to accomplish this year quite yet.
I’m honoring the rhythms of nature. I’m honoring my soul’s connection to the Earth. I’m enjoying this time of integrating everything I’ve learned in the last year or so, so that when the astrological New Year begins with Aries season, I will not only know what I want, I’ll have the hungry, spring-time appetite to go after my goals.