The Year of the wood snake
A Year of Shedding, Transformation and Evolution
2025 — the Year of the Wood Snake. A time of transformation, growth, and sometimes painful shedding. I didn’t realise how deeply those energies would ripple through my life until the year unfolded like a snake shedding its skin…
I can’t believe my last blog was at the end of 2022! What has happened?
Pretty much nothing, everything and all the shades in between…
I’m not going to even attempt to sum up these last few years as it would take much more than a blog, even as a short summary.
And I don’t believe it is necessary…
But this year… 2025… lots of talk about or, in this case, write about.
Where do I start? I guess from the beginning… 2025 started in New-Zealand with my beloved, just the two of us in a van touring around the North Island.. bliss.. People often refer to the calm before the storm - little did I know, I was getting ready for a tsunami! On our last day in Auckland, the wave started to grow… A dear friend of mine back in my home country called me and it was the last time we were going to talk… She decided to euthanise as she had been in way too much pain to remain in this human body much longer. I started bringing on a bit of sadness, even though I knew it was coming, it’s never fun saying goodbye to a dear friend whom I had known for decades. She was a spiritual sister and I’m not surprised she waited for the year of the Snake to start for her to shed her own skin…
Back home, my beloved flew to Europe to reunite with his children who had been taken away there to live a year before. It was his fourth trip in a year and the tension started to rise… I had never met a man like him. We fell in love so naturally three years before and our soul connection was beyond explanations with words. But the situation we were in was getting too much and his constant back and forth to his children (and ex!) was starting to get the better of us. It was school holidays, I went camping with the boys and a few friends and once again, the tension went off the roof. My boys were clearly unhappy to be there and voiced it way too loud for this camping trip to be enjoyable to anyone.
One morning, towards to the end of the school holidays, the phone call I had dread all my life occurred… My dad had passed away.
The same day, I was on a flight to organise funerals, paperwork and dealing with a huge amount of grief within my family. Seeing my dad on his death bed was something that no one can prepare you for. Once the soul of one of your parents has left their human envelope, there isn’t much left.. a peaceful face, growing paler each day… a sense of in between that only the death portal can bring. And all the emotions that come to the surface. I sat there, day after day, holding his hand, crying, talking, telling him stories… Until it was the day of the funerals and it was time to close the coffin once and for all. I would never his face again. Sharing a few words that day felt like a duty but it was also one of the hardest thing I ever to do in my life. The only positive side was that my brother and I were finally in the same country - first time in eight years.
The day I return to Australia was a day before my beloved was coming back from Europe himself. It took him two days to decide to tell him that it was also the end of us… Don’t get me wrong, I knew the tension was rising and our situation wasn’t easy, but never, did I imagine that we would actually go separate ways… Never. To me, I had finally found my person and had one of the major exhale in my life when we found each other. But he had already left the ship - done his process and was ready to move on, his skin had already been shed whilst mine was still very much attached to my being. Once again, words can not describe the shock and grief I felt that day. It was like life was doing an experiment on me to see how much grief I could handle and I didn’t feel ready for this challenge. Then again, are we ever ready for life crisis?
The following weeks are just a blur… I just remember crying and being inconsolable. All I wanted to do was to crawl in a hole and never come out again. But life doesn’t work like that. I had to keep working, I had to look after my boys, and even most importantly, I had to find a new place to live. In a lot of places in the world, this isn’t such a big deal, but in the Northern Rivers NSW Australia, it is one of the hardest thing to do. Finding a long term rental with two children who argue most of the time is pretty much mission impossible. Luckily, I found a beautiful place near the beach and the river as a temporary accommodation and a healing sanctuary, but the search continues… I’ve literally spent half of this year looking for a suitable home that would help me rebuild myself and move on. Dealing with this amount of grief and not having a stable home is simply inhuman, I don’t wish that to my worst enemy. It is a recipe for insanity and depression. I find myself crying most days and I just don’t know if I will feel normal ever again. My roots were being uprooted, and I prayed to the element of wood to bring me grounding and anchoring in this unstable moment of search and sorrow. My gratitude practises, meditation and all the tools that I have accumulated the last decades were being put to the test in a massive way. And I know that writing this blog is also part of the healing that I need at this point in time. It’s a vulnerable share, but it is needed. It is allowing myself the space to feel the depth of it and as much as it uncomfortable, there is no other way than the way through…
I also know that it is through life crisis that we learn, we grow and we become stronger. I know that this won’t last forever and that a deep transformation is taking place in my being, and that it will be followed by a rebirth. The pain and sorrow that come with it will hopefully equal the miracles waiting for me at the other end. But for the time being, I am not trying to distract myself, the pain or the grief that is tearing through me. It has been six months and I am still hoping to wake up each day with lightness in my heart and a head full of dreams. This day hasn’t happened yet but I know it will… It just has to. One day, I will wake up in my bed, with my furniture, look around the room and think: “Oh! That is why all of this happened on the Year of the Snake!”
People think of the Year of the Snake as the symbol of wealth, wisdom and the pursuit of love and happiness… But all I see around me is a lot of challenges for everyone. Is it just my filter that created a biased reality? Maybe… But people around me seem to be pushed to their absolute edges and being forced to let go in order to grow. This process comes through a lot of shedding and painful letting go. Is the outcome wealth, wisdom, love and happiness? I’d like to believe so! And I’m not even going into the state of the world, the wars, the famine and the corruption that is taking place.
Shedding is an obvious symbol that come with this mysterious animal, but we also need to add the element of Wood. Yin Wood, which implies also growth, endurance, innovation, compassion and new beginnings. These two can work really well together and I can see how it can lead to insightful renewal but it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey… So how can we enjoy this process that can be so painful and still remain confident that everything is unfolding just as it’s meant to be? Daily affirmations? Check. Gratitude diary? Check. Time in nature and alone? Also check. The list goes on… I think the only thing that remains is trust and patience. Trusting that life isn’t against me and that they’re only lessons that will leave me more powerful and wise. And thank Goodness for my beautiful friends, I don’t know where I’d be without you! You know who you are!
We’re only half way through the year, so who knows what this mysterious creature and energy have in store for us but I’m praying that the worst is behind, so the energies of renewal will start taking place. We just had Imbolc, the midpoint between winter solstice and spring equinox, Lion’s Gate and a powerful full moon in Aquarius. Things are bound to get easier, right? The snake never sheds without growing. The wood never sprouts without first surviving winter. This year is testing me, shaping me, and — I trust — preparing me for the next chapter. May we all emerge lighter, wiser, and ready to rise and unite together as one!
With love,
Mu