new decade, new orbit

As I start a new chapter with this seventh decade, I wonder what my prayer will be. What feels urgent?

Can we love ourselves enough to change? Can we love each other enough to change? Can we embrace change in all of its manifestations? That is my prayer for today. 

Manhattanhenge 11 July 2026 - Grand Central Station, NYC

Can we create the kind of changes necessary - together, to thrive on this planet? The only planet that we will ever call home. That's my prayer. ~ Terry Tempest Williams 

Beloved books of this author are often about what is easy to overlook – the holy ordinary as she calls it. Whether it's the beauty and plight of the natural world, or the silence and struggle of a loved one. 

In this session of Wild Card, she talks about why women with big ideas get labeled crazy and how her late mother influences her. 

In our native island home, we continue to have a matriarchal society that is the underlying backbone of our lives. Away from big city life, our mothers had to be more resourceful and resilient when raising their brood. 

Ritual tradition encouraged reciprocity and generosity - especially in challenging times. They cocooned us growing up - where typhoons and floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions were cyclic events. 

All our belief centers around these practices we were raised on. As women in a very macho time and place we quickly learned the importance and value of speaking the language women. 

To speak when there is no one there to correct us. To keep a record of our dreams and ambitions. To write about what scares and limits us. 

My daughter and I share a love of cloud gazing. We look up and outward and fly freely among the shape shifting clouds. Our thoughts unfurling and billowing away as our imagination set off. 

Later flying back and forth all those long hours to see each other. We watch them from above - looking down on far away landscapes. 

In her beloved book "When Women Were Birds" Terry Tempest Williams writes about how she lost her mother in death twice. First when her mother took ill and passed away. Then later when she discovered all the journals her mother left her were all empty. 

The loss had everything to do with voice. Bird song in the morning, evening vespers at the end of a day. How do we as women find our voice, use our voice, keep our voice. And when we lose it, how do we retrieve it? 

That is the giving gift I have from the long term practice of daily journaling. In doing so I live twice - I live in the world and then I record it. It is a daily glimpse into the mirror - what did I write about?

Going about gaining agency in life is a lifelong journey of discovery and revelation. May it lead us to the transformation and transmutation we seek and long for.