Welcome to 2022!

I’m not sure how your year has started, but I hope you had some time to rest and recharge over the holiday season.

I had a wonderful break doing not much at all, and I am ready for the year ahead.

Every year I take a whole week to myself, my husband, and the children go off to a family camp run by my mother-law Cheryl, and I stay at home and take myself through a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual solo retreat.

For the first three days, I slept a lot. This is not what usually happens, but I think I was trying to sleep off the last two years!

After those three days of deep rest, my intuition guided me to re-read The Artist Way by Julia Cameron. As a creative, I believe it is one of the best non-fiction books ever written. Going through the book, a 12- week program to honour and nurture creativity (and the many blocks that get in the way), led me to write to you at 8 am every Friday for the last eight years. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

And every two years, I re-read The Alchemist by Paul Coelho. A tale of Santiago, the Andalusian shepherd who builds the courage to follow his personal legend. A magical and affirming story.

In re-reading these books, I discovered was that my connection to magic and flow and excitement had been lost during the last two years.

No matter our circumstances and privileges, there was an element of survival for many of us during 2020 and 2021. When you are taking one day at a time, when connections to loved ones are restricted or in some cases taken away, and plans are constantly being cancelled, and you are confined to your home, there is not much room for excitement, magic and flow.

But this is 2022.

By day five of my solo retreat, I knew that what I wanted to bring into 2022 was my connection to magic and flow, and I intend to be excited about EVERTYHING. If it gets taken away, I will deal with that as it comes, but I am choosing to live 2022, like a child in a sweet shop, without the sugar comedown.

This year, I intend to embody wonder and awe, curiosity and gratitude, fun and adventure.

I look forward to sharing 2022 with you, and I look forward to playing in the sweet shop with you.

Wishing you a weekend of lemon sherbets, cola bottles, toffee, lollypops, jelly snakes and Curly Wurly’s.

Kemi xxx