Artwork: Piero Dorazio
Good morning beautiful people,
I do hope that you are safe and healthy, wherever you are in the world.
Last newsletter before I turn 43, and I feel so grateful for the changes and teachings of the past year. Life feels better, and lighter, most days. I started my journey of self discovery as life didn’t use to feel pleasant, so for me, sanity is wealth, as you can have it all, and feel poorly when that element is missing.
So I am a devoted student to the mystery of aligning personality with soul, what a challenge.
Writing to you, most weeks honours my soul so I thank you for contributing to my journey.
Today, I would like to share some wonderful quotes from author and Jungian analyst James Hollis. His work spoke to me the most this year. In his book, What Matters Most: living a more considered life, he writes the following:
“You must be successful, affluent, powerful, married to the right person,” and so on. Each child is thus launched in service to the parent’s neurosis, and gets further and further from his or her own soul. “
“We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves. And, learning to live with ambiguity is learning to live with how life really is, full of complexities and strange surprises.”
“Death is only one way of dying; living partially, living fearfully, is our more common, daily collusion with death.”
So, then, now you know your task: to become what the gods want, not what your parents want, not what your tribe wants, but what the gods want, and what your psyche will support if consciousness so directs.”
Amen to that.
May we all become who we came here to be.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any comments or questions, it is my pleasure to read you.
With love and deep respect
Vanessa
