Seasons | Keri Krieger

October 6, 2021 by keri

Death of self, healing and staying true to your own hearts path

I’ve shied away from sharing my journey too much this year because I am one of the lucky ones surrounded by generous humans and sunshine but there have been moments my loves where I have questioned all of it.

My writing and work has been very focused on the education side of my business and a number of project that are yet to see the light of day. Fingers crossed I have some news on these soon.

It’s been a strange year and not just because of the ongoing collective challenges occurring on the planet right now.

There are phases of your life where it’s necessary for a deep shedding of all you thought you were and what might happen in your life.

I feel like it’s important to share this as so often there is a focus on only the positive and a bypassing of the necessary discomfort of change and growth.

Maybe it’s midlife, maybe it’s the pandemic, maybe it’s simply being someone who feels and pays attention.

There are so many doing it so hard and I have felt like I should shut up with my deep feelings and just be grateful:) even when I know it’s not a hardship competition and both can exist in a place with compassion.

Maybe you can relate?

There is never a guarantee that the life you hope for or have been asking for is the one you are going to get, and we can get stuck hanging on to what is not meant for us believing so much bullshit about it being our fault for not trying hard enough, (or not manifesting it ugh!) when the truth might in fact just be that it’s simply not your path for the walking.

There are timelines of events and life paths that just simply are not yours.

How much more honouring and self loving is that statement in place of a lifetime of relentless striving and basing your enough-ness on achieving a particular outcome.

Grieving these tiny deaths of self and story has come hand in hand with so much external grief this year, the kind that can change you for better or worse. The kind that either cracks open your heart to the truth of being human on a rock hurtling through space or can see you shut down and armour up closing your eyes to the magic all around us.

And so I have focused furiously often with a tight chest and tears in my eyes on the magic around me.

And I’m lucky to have more than a few beautiful humans hold my hand while doing it. Whilst also dealing with more than their fair share of grief.

What I have observed is there is nothing fair in much of it, in good or the so called bad.

This thought can leave you bitter or in brutal harmony with the duality of life. I choose the latter.

I don’t feel like I’m a stranger to heartbreak but in the past it has been the kind of heartbreak that tells the story of self betrayal, of all the big and small ways we abandon ourselves to “get the thing” and the heartbreak that follows after such sacrifice when still even then “the thing” (love usually) is withheld from you.

Or should I say “me” because that has been my experience.

But this year it has just been good old fashioned loss that none of us escape in life and I have been deeply weighed down by the harshness of it. The loss of a dear companion, of not being chosen to be loved, of opportunity passing me by and of the grief of those I love knowing I can do nothing to make it easier for them.

Despite what all our new age and spiritual tropes would have us believe not everyone gets their happy ending and again the invitation here is to open our hearts even more bravely in the face of this truth.

I have had more compassion than ever before for letting myself feel my feelings.

And I have taken extra steps to drown out the often deafening desire for external approval and stayed true to a path covered in wild flowers and dust and self approval that might never make sense to anyone else.

I’m finding as I navigate my 40’s that the clamour of what we “should” have achieved by this age is somedays really hard to ignore. It’s taking all my life long practices in anchoring in my own unique path and truth to continue to trust the unfolding of how life wants to move through me.

For those of you reading this feeling that it’s quite a down or low ebb sharing please know it really is not.

Coming out of this cycle of shedding and letting go I feel a level of trust and contentment that whatever life has in store for me I will expand to receive it.

There is not holding back.

This season has been entraining me and expanding my capacity for ALL of life, through the presence that it takes to be with the hard.

In nature water carves its path to create the spaciousness required to carry all the fullness coming in the next downpour.

My heart is big enough for all of it

So is yours x

September 8, 2020April 5, 2023 by keri

Peri-menopause + Ovulation + Test results

At the beginning of the year I ran out of my T3 Thyroid medication, I do this every so often and think I’ll be fine and then two weeks later I’ve forgotten my own name so many times I realise that maybe I should go get the script re done. I also thought that it had been a while since I had my bloods done so it might be a good time to see how my hormone levels were.

My usual GP wasn’t there so I saw someone else. He seems nice enough and tell him that I was taking T3 and it was really helping, that I’m 44 and sometimes I don’t ovulate and I’m often tired, so I want to check oestrogen levels and make sure there is nothing obviously “wrong”. He asks me how I would know that I don’t and I reply “you know the usual, cervical fluid, energy levels, libido, body temp” He says nothing and offers me the script and the pathology form.

I don’t mention the word Peri-Menopause as I’m not really sure I want to get into that conversation.

I know I need to get these done on day 21 (this is when Progesterone levels should be rising for the final week of our cycle.)

Feb rolls around and I’m at my sisters in Canberra, then March, and well we all remember March right?!

So I find myself in May, on a Monday afternoon after clinic, it was a full morning and I feel myself crashing, I’m exhausted and emotional and I sit there in the car on the way home crying and inhaling a whole packet of m&m’s.

I’m not even sure what I’m upset about and I go home to run a bath and crawl into bed exhausted before the sun sets.

I wake up the next morning and DING light bulb moment I realise it’s now day 22 and I think I know what’s happening.

I can already feel the energy in my pelvis dropping like my period is going to arrive and I remember the pathology test so off I go. This is the perfect time to catch what is really going on. My period turned up on day 23 this month, that feeling never lies.

How was your 2019? – I think it’s time for a recap

This has been the most extraordinary year, looking back I cannot believe just how much has occurred and just how LARGE everything was. Nothing was done by halves this year.

At the end of 2018 I had come home from a truly soul nourishing overseas journey I wrote about here

I started my new acupuncture clinic in Kirra at Raw Beauty and ended a relationship that whilst it had been entered into with the best of intentions had highlighted the final ways that I continued to be willing to abandon myself.

So the year started with a house move in February. Yes really, it continues to baffle me but evidently staying settled and anchored in the one place is not something I have been gifted with experiencing. Yet!

As such my word for the year was Anchored. The magical Alex from Violet Gray gifted me with this necklace before 2018 was out. It was also Alex that said, when I moved to Kirra, “that this place will heal your heart” . She knows her stuff that woman.

No-one enjoys a house move but this one really undid me. This was going to be the year where I got to re write my guiding narrative, and understand just how environments and locations get woven into our stories. As we walk past that house and this cafe we subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) remind ourselves of who we are, our place in the world and what we believe is going to happen in the future. Maybe this is not always an ideal thing. And there is power in relocating ourselves to access another thread in our stories.

I had been living in the same suburb for 11 years and SO much of my story had been woven into the surrounding streets, beaches and cafes. It felt like I was being forcibly ripped from the story of who I believed I was, told in no uncertain terms that the future I had been dreaming of there was not on the cards and plonked quite indelicately into a beachside apartment three suburbs south.

Yes, please don’t feel sorry for me, I landed in a very quirky but delightful ocean front apartment.

The story of how I ended up there is dripping in serendipity and quite frankly magic.

Five days before I had to be out of my house and still without a place to go to I went to my hairdresser. Ironically I had been putting off getting my hair done because of course there were ‘more important’ things happening right?

Let me be the first to remind you that some of the most powerful and life changing moments will occur in the everyday mundane and only be recognisable with the gift of hindsight.

I find this heartening to recall because there were times of such overwhelming confusion and struggle this year. But deep down I knew I needed to trust and so trust I did.

So with colour piled on my head Courtney promptly sent me to check out the empty apartment upstairs, by the time I had come back down the owner of the apartment was somehow in the salon and she was wrangling me a deal. Two days later Ruben and I were moving in. Yup. That’s how it can happen.

And whilst I had to contend with noisy neighbours a commercial kitchen literally at my back door and a coffee roaster outside my kitchen window (who else can tell these kinds of stories friends?) I woke up every day to the magic of this ocean view.

It was the most divine way to spend the winter with direct sunlight beaming into my bedroom every morning.

The first book of the year was Women Who Run With the Wolves on my balcony in the sunshine and boy oh boy did it rock my world. It touched me deeply on so many levels but primarily it reminded me of the importance of a supportive female network, especially for the new mothers I was seeing in clinic. Clarrissa Pinkola Estes writes about The Goddess Mothers and inspired my article of the same name .

This article came straight from my heart to yours.

As I worked my way through the unravelling of house moving / life changing grief I shared my health journey covering Adrenal Fatigue ,Under-methylation and so much more. It is so far is the most read article on the site. So many women have sent me emails in response to this piece.

If you’re nodding your head reading it maybe it’s time to book some acupuncture with me or organise a time for a Skype consult and see if health coaching is something I could assist you with.

The rocky start to the year had me re-assessing my relationship with pleasure and fun and had me asking myself what were my metrics for the year going to be? This is such a common thread for the women I treat and coach.

Slowly our collective beliefs are changing. Pleasure and relaxation and a nervous system in ‘rest and digest’ CAN co-exist with productivity and success.

I wrote about my most recent journey with this topic here. Success and Pleasure

I shared how I was learning to value the investment required of my acupuncture treatments in my clinic and confronting those often experienced beliefs that health practitioners should be giving their skills away for free.

Whilst diving into my new clinic I realised that I hadn’t shared the story of how I started studying acupuncture in the first place.

I love this story so much, it was fun to share.

✩

In the same week as I moved house (I do not recommend this!) there were trips to Melbourne to collaborate with Dr Abbie and her Zhong Centre team and later in the year a girls road trip weekend with my bestie to Scotts Head on the NSW north coast. There was so many lady love sleep overs and new friendships this year. And as I reflect on my year I know it was a very big one for so many of you too.

Serendipity was working her secret magic through most of this year as in June I also met a very special man with blue eyes who had been under my feet the entire time. If anyone tells you you won’t meet anyone sitting in your own home alone minding your own business I have the perfect story for you …. but I wont share that here yet! 🙂

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In July I hosted my first Womens Emotional Wellbeing Event.

I’ll be taking this on the road in 2020 and I cannot wait! See how the first one went here.

There was a wild (literally) trip to South Africa that happened in August to celebrate my youngest sisters wedding. It was a once in a life time trip and I am still marvelling at the fact that it even occurred. I travelled with my family for the first time in 20 years and survived. If you’re wondering how you too might stay sane and actually thrive pop in and follow my 7 key practices here.

I was home for a very busy 24 days before the passport was once again out and I headed off for a working holiday to Fiji that came out of nowhere. I think we can thank Jupiter in Sagittarius for that one.

And while I was there I wrote about the one thing I believe that stands in the way of women asking for and investing in the help they need. We need to find a pathway to choosing ourselves and I think I may just have the beginnings of an answer here.

When I came home and was trying to catch my breath I had the extreme delight in having a conversation with two women I adore and haven’t had nearly enough time to catch up with.

You can hear the chat with Jema on her Well Woman Podcast and with Lindsey on Her Return here.

The year has begun drawing to a close with a second house move.

Against all odd and certainly against anything that 2018 Keri would have ever believed was possible, I moved in with said Mr Blue Eyes.

Ruben, (my dog) having lived here for most of the year while I was travelling, was delighted that I joined him finally!

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November and that deeply challenging Mercury Retrograde in Scorpio saw some very deep healing occur. Sometimes I refer to the astrological patterns the same way I might refer to the days of the week, so take it or leave it if you’re not across (or aren’t interested in) these astro phenomenon.

I have had some of the hardest and most transformative conversations of my life in the last few weeks. It’s seen me step back from hanging out on the socials, downsize my work load and take some much needed time to rest and reflect.

Moving into 2020 I will be leaving so many trauma informed beliefs and behaviours behind.

I know I will write about this soon, there is so many important things to say.

It’s been an extraordinarily healing year. Hard on so many fronts but I am gently excited at how life is going to look as I establish a new fresh and healthy foundation. I look forward to sharing more with you as this unfolds.

✩

And while there is still a few weeks to go and I have no doubt that 2019 has more up her sparkly sleeve yet I will let that be a surprise to share in the new year.

Your end of year Alchemical Ritual can be found here. I’ve updated it this year I would love for you to share your journey through it on instagram @kerikrieger.

You can also listen to most of these articles on my soundcloud if that feels easier for you.

However you’re spending this season, know that as I write this I am sending love and care out in all directions and I’m sure I’m not the only one. Take it gently as you move into the New Year .

I’ll see you there

Keri

in 5 elements / Biz magic / Coaching / Elemental living / Health / Life magic / Seasons 0 comments

December 1, 2019 by keri

Womens Emotional Wellbeing Event July 2019

I know I am not alone in feeling that maybe July this year was perhaps actually about 3 years ago.

Better late than never, here is a recap of my first WEW event.

There are plenty more planned for 2020 I’m taking this baby on the road around the country. Yes I am!

It was an incredible day. I was so grateful for how it turned out and am looking forward to taking all I learnt on the day and making it even better for the future women attending.

Not only was it the first but it was an intimate size with 9 women attending and what turned out to be a magical “Beta Testing” experience. There is always a wealth of knowledge in any room but the attendees in July were all leaders and teachers in their fields and included journalists, medical practitioners, psychologists, a chiropractor, occupational therapists just to name a few. This provided such a valuable experience for everyone there but also for me to really hone the day for the future.

One of the things that is always essential when women come together is to allow plenty of time for sharing as while I am there to facilitate the flow of the day, I trust that everyone attending is there to connect and share a little something of themselves that will be meaningful for others on the day.

I’m grateful for the intimate size of this first gathering as at bigger events next year the flow of the day will be managed a little differently.

We set up at the amazing space Pragmatic Thinking HQ on the Gold coast

Creating Holiday Rituals that Nourish

The end of year can be so tricky to navigate.

And I know I’m not alone in observing this. Obligation, unrealistic expectations, clashes of values and needs, it can all seem too hard. It doesn’t need to be this way though.

In my ongoing sorting and repacking of my storage unit, I found a photo of my sister and I somewhere around 1995. It’s a hilarious photo because for some reason we felt the need to kneel down beside my big kitchen table next the spread of food we had prepared. It’s this weird but festive photo with our almost disembodied heads next to plates of food! Let me remind you that there was no digital photography at this point!

I wish I had’ve taken a photo of it before packing it back away. This photo reminded me that for a number of years while we were still living in the same country we would celebrate our ‘Holiday Festival’ on the Solstice on the 21st Dec. This is when we gave each other presents and shared the highlight real of our year and our wishes for the next. *

This felt meaningful and connected as I didn’t align with the commercialism of the season (I still don’t) or the Christian one on offer. I made up my own rituals, borrowed a few from my pagan leanings to honor the summer season and I was on my way! Just add people I love, great food and music. In our childhood my sister played ‘The Muppets Christmas Album’ version of the 12 days of Xmas so much that regardless of whether we are together I hear Miss Piggy screeching 5 Golden Rings until the 2nd of Jan.

*(This was also a time in my life when I left a slice of birthday cake out for the ‘elementals’. True stories. Now I just eat all the cake myself! I figure I’m an elemental too!)

As the years have passed and my baby brother and sister were born, I adored celebrating with them. Their excitement at the Xmas tree, all squishing into the same bed as they couldn’t agree with who was going to sleep in the big bed with their sister! There was even Mass in the melting North Queensland heat with my quasi Catholic parents. I found my feminist alignment with this by ‘hanging out with Mary’ and feeling into the genuine reverence present. Which was undeniable.

My ex-husband was a huge xmas fan. The decorations were epic, the carols continuous and I’m ok with never having to clean up that much tinsel again! The holiday season in the norther hemisphere it has to be said feels so much more authentic to me. At that time of year it can be really nourishing to celebrate and raise your spirits. The gift of a white winter solstice is something I enjoyed so much.

My siblings are now 20 and 22 but my nieces have since been born and I have once again loved creating rituals with them and my sister. No longer two disembodied heads at a table but trying to keep the presents a secret and grab a minute of quiet time together.

This year I find myself at another ritual crossroads. My younger siblings are all grown up, my sister and my nieces living overseas and my parents having parties with friends of their own. (That of course I could join).

I am finding myself leaning toward the ways I naturally love to celebrate and looking forward to creating space in my life for these thing for the first time in a long time. Simple, natural and homespun fun. And honestly while I don’t want to make a huge deal about this one day, after an enormous year I do want to soak up the spaciousness of having a week off and connect with my loves in a way that feels meaningful and not contrived.

I’m feeling into what 23 year old Keri would want to do because whilst we often search into the future to see what our older wiser self might think, there is wisdom to be found in the simple honestly of our younger selves too.

I want you to know that if the season ahead is hard for you, that you can create your own meaningful rituals.

Some ideas you could play with are;

Volunteer for your local charity.

Celebrate an ‘orphans xmas’ with your besties.

Even solo, create and plan ahead for a beautiful day; food, candles, activities that you love doing.

A day in a hammock with a book sounds just divine to me, or curled up by the fire if your Xmas is a chilly one. Making a big gratitude list of all the things you’re thankful for this year is a heart lead way to keep your focus on all that is abundant in your life.

Some other resources you might find helpful-

You can reflect and unravel your year with my Alchemical Year Play book

Alexandra Franzen has this ritual here I think I might try.

And my gorgeous friend Kris has these cards that inspire wonderful connection between people, pop them out if you’re in a group of people that might not know each other well.

I’d love to hear how your approaching the holiday season.

What spiritual practices or festivities do you align with?

And know too that if you’re really struggling don’t go it alone, there are support services you can connect with.

It needs to be included that as I’m writing this my neighbours child has launched into a sing- a -long version of Jingle Bells on the keyboard. It’s official. The seasons is ON!

in Elemental living / Life magic / Seasons 0 comments