A love letter to 2024

Dear 2024

Looking back, I was still a child when I met you. You stepped into my life right before I fell asleep after a fire with my friend Sarah a few hours after midnight on January 1st. I saw you with my own eyes in the first sunlight of your golden dawn. I thought that you had appeared to fulfil all my dreams. I met you like a starry eyed teenager.

I thought that I knew what I wanted, and I believed that I had set my tracks and all that had to happen now was for the gift train to arrive.

I thought that you would turn back time and make everything be alright that 2023 fucked up.

As we began this journey together, I kept my eyes on the horizon for healing, firmly believing that you would make up for where your predecessor had clearly failed me.

Instead, you gently led me to a fork in the road. Right before my trip to Ibiza, and I remember looking up into the Milky Way knowing that something indescribably amazing was about to happen.

I’d had that same feeling the other way round in summer of 2023, when I looked at the statue of a lion in Munich and heard a voice in my head say: “You are going to go through a painful time of separation and suffering, but all of you will acome back together again and be alright in the end.”

So when you and I looked up into the night sky before I left for Spain, I knew it was time to look forward to something. And then it slowly creeped up to me that your greatest gift to me was not the rectification of wrong or the mending of a tear, but something entirely new. You asked me if I wanted to stay the way I was, following the footprints of elders and keeping my goal in front of me, or if I wanted to break free.

I didn’t hesitate a single moment before choosing freedom. Breaking free always implies breaking rules. Somebody’s or something’s rules somewhere, and sometimes even my own.

I blew it all up immediately. I burned contracts to myself in the fires that summer, blew every restriction into stones and threw them into the ocean. I told fear to step away and chose love.

When you pushed me to choose between following the tracks and sacrificing or finding my own path, I didn’t give up a single thing. I gave in. I surrendered to my heart above all else, and that made the choice happen by itself.

In Vedic philosophy the word for heart is “Anahata” which means unbeatable. It is also our central chakra, where the feminine and the masculine unite and create a portal for peace.

Choosing to walk, talk and serve from the heart requires us to pull every thought through that unbeatable core which is profoundly discerning and inevitably leads to peace.

Surrendering to our own hearts can lead to a lot of friction among friends and family, because the heart doesn’t operate in a linear way. It does, however, always operate out of love. Our fear of heartache and heartbreak can stop us from living by our own hearts. The spiritual, political and economical programming never sends us through the heart, because if it did, we wouldn’t tolerate the brutality that is placed onto us. This is only the tip of the iceberg of revelations that came from me from that choice. Maybe one day I will write not just a love letter, but a novel for you.

What you gave me after that was total liberation and abundance in so many ways. You sent me on a path that would forever define my work as a shaman, mentor and healer. You gifted me the wisdom that I needed to stand on my own feet.

You have pushed me to my edge in many ways, but it was more than worth it. It was never your job to make up for anything that had come in 2023 and I underestimated the potency of your unique magic.

I will never forget the ecstasy of the liberating chaos that we created, and I will always remember the profound peace and stillness that followed.

We spent our last nights together by the fireplace in my mountain house, all the lights turned off, diving into the beautiful dance of shadows around the 12 days of Christmas. We always knew that we wouldn’t grow old together, that we only had 365 days and nights. But for that I’d say we made the most of it. We lived the highs and lows, the rain and the sunsets, the festivals and the silence, and I don’t regret a single part of it.

I will always remember you with gratitude and wonder, and I will forever be grateful for all the unbelievable beauty we created together.

With love,

Daniela