We can spend our lives chronicling the pain we experience, or we can sweep the landscape of the psyche for the moments that hold joy. In my world, I understand these two feelings to be opposite sides of one golden thread. The more deeply you know the lower expression, the more intimately you will come to know the higher. This is why so many light-bearers spend so much time in the dark. This is a rite of passage.

As we come to know ourselves and recognize these rights, we are offered a choice. We can choose to live in the shadow of the lower expression, or we can choose to lift our gaze and seek the higher vibration alive within our lives. I have often found the higher expression tucked neatly inside the costume of the lower—so much joy lives within pain.

Today, as we prepare to cross the threshold from this old season into the new, I want to pause and honor the pain I have experienced. To honor the beauty I found within it. To take full responsibility for the rite of passage I have walked—and am now leaving behind for the next.

In the end, you must decide that you have paid the price to enter the next gate by learning the lesson of the one before it. No one can do this for you. I do not have to live in pain in order to know joy. They are not enemies; they are expressions of the same truth. And now that I can practice this knowing, that rite is complete. I can live in joy while honoring that pain is part of the terrain.

As I pass into this new year, I carry nothing with me but gratitude for the journey itself. When I truly arrive at the heart of it, I see that the entire experience has been a gift beyond language—so full, so beautiful, so astonishingly rich with myth and truth. The intricacy of this life still takes my breath away.

This life is a treasure.
Not gold.
Not silver.
But the experience.

As we continue in the direction of our truth, may we learn to recognize the gift in all things. This is my wish for you, Collective—and therefore, for myself. Today and every day is a glorious offering, and you are still here to experience it.

Carry on with that knowing.
Enjoy yourselves a little.
We’re only getting started.

With love and gratitude, always,
EH