Welcoming the Year of the Snake
and sheʻs back!
Aloha! Happy New Year! Kung hei fat choy! Wishing you blessings of love and abundance in all their expressions in the coming months!
Welcome back to my readers who have been patient with my six weeks of silence. An especially warm welcome to those who subscribed during this pause and have yet to hear from me. Hope some of you dipped or dipped again into the archive of memoir and essay, over two years of writing. The writing has evolved from strict, sequential memoir (the years 1992 - 1997, a time of huge transitions and learning in my life), to mainly reflections on lessons learned from horses. With random or not so random essays from time to time.
Iʻm back with another pivot. Maybe you will want to accompany me. Maybe it will no longer be your cup of tea. At least read on to hear what falling taught me this time around. I hope you also honored, in whatever way, this period from Gregorian to Lunar Newy Year, “this time of relaxation, this time of gathering with those we love, this time of turning inward, this time of setting New Directions and New Beginnings.”
The evening of December 16th - late evening Hawaiʻi time, which means it was likely already December 17th for many of my readers, I broke my right wrist. By the middle of the following day I was in the emergency room listening to an orthopedic surgeon scold me for not coming in immediately, as he cranked my hand the “wrong way” then slammed it down to set the fracture before locking me into a fiberglass split of a cast from which typing was impossible. Hence my post of December 22nd, Falling in the Home Stretch, in which I announced that I heard the message loud and clear: it was time (pun intended) for a break.
Six weeks later I am emerging into the light. Not like a caterpillar from its cocoon or a hibernating bear from its cave, or even a groundhog from its burrow (did Punxsutawney Phil see his shadow today?) As we begin a Year of the Wood Snake, I feel myself shedding an outgrown skin, just as my arm emerged somewhat scaly and shrunken from the confinement of its cast. Just as during these weeks I sometimes felt the surging rise of kundalini energy, that divine feminine power that is rooted in the real world yet rising gracefully into fiery awakened expression.
See my new wrist brace? Almost invisible. Enjoying Lion Dancers in Honoluluʻs Chinatown.
What are we, kākou, the collective, told to expect in 2025, a year of Wood Snake?
The Economic Times (English edition)1 claims it is a time for “growth, renewal, adaptability, encouraging people to reflect on their paths, embrace change, and seek personal growth” - which is exactly what my hopes have been and continue to be for this Substack.
Then, searching for the meaning of “snake,” I discovered Atmos - a media venture whose mission is “to re-enchant people with nature and our shared humanity.” Thatʻs pretty much become my mission as well. After much reflection these past six weeks, it became clear that I am completely lit up by the thought of spending the next decade leaning in to the intersections between my passion projects: my service as Director of Conservation and Legacy Lands for Hawaiʻi Life Real Estate (stop thinking of that as an oxymoron!); on the Board of Hawaiʻi Land Trust; as a commissioner for the State of Hawaiʻi Legacy Land Conservation Program (funded by conveyance tax on real estate transactions); and now as a founding Board member for Kohala Community Land Trust - caring for land and people with housing, meaningful work, and ʻāina protection because those are inseparable for the health and perpetuation of our community.
What surprised me the most when I threw out my business and personal plans after my fall, certain I was meant to take a completely fresh look, was that I ran straight into a wall. A block. A total inability to do something that normally comes naturally, something that I actually teach to others. Plan. Dream. Envision. Set goals.
I sat with it. I tried all my usual tricks, walking and meditating and listening to music. Reading “sideways” freeing up my thoughts with random novels and essays. I reached out to a friend, intuitively feeling he might have answers as sometimes he functions like a missing part of my own brain when Iʻm stuck figuring something out. He was, perhaps unsurprisingly, experiencing a parallel block.
At the end of the day, the end of the dark night, the answers became clearer. I no longer have personal, professional aspirations. I have already “achieved.” Much of what I wrote each year for goals was scarcity-based, fear-based, based in the dominant narrative that we as individuals or nuclear family units have to create our own security. That is the skin I shed with a sigh of relief. I have fervent aloha for the collective, a grounded knowing that nurturing the weaving of relationships and care and community is my own personal best “social security” plan, and that the deepest wish of my heart is a literally painful aspiration for the beloved community.
I ended up with this as my 2025 Plan:
When I go as deep as I can on what I really want in 10-20 years, it is not personal. The only answer that feels real is that I want things to be different – at least here in Hawaiʻi if not globally. Different in that the vulnerable are safe – and we are all well nourished - housed with dignity – learning and contributing meaningfully.
There IS a magical, wildly exciting future for me.
Maybe my only goal for the coming year is to be open to the wildest possibilities.
Year of the Snake. Have you ever seen an image of the “Naga Buddha”? The Buddha meditates under the protection of a Serpent King. I want to rise like a Naga offering the protection of my privilege over all who are vulnerable. If that means speaking “politically” after years of keeping my deepest beliefs quiet on social media out of fear of offending, of losing potential business - then so be it.
I want to be a healer, to see that the snake is a symbol of treachery and venom, and also a symbol of healing.
Do you know the only species of snake that exists legally in Hawaiʻi? If you saw one, which you might do digging in a garden, you would probably think it was an earthworm. Six inches long, about the diameter of a worm, the Brahminy Blind Snake is venom-less and eats pests like ants and termites. The species is parthenogenic and all of these snakes, at least all so far collected and tested, are female. And produce female offspring.
Maybe The Year of the Snake is a time for a different kind of leadership. Leadership that nurtures and protects and heals, that is capable of changing its mind and shedding its skin when it outgrows old forms. Leadership that embraces these “feminine” qualities at a time when womenʻs agency is at risk.
I know from writing this Substack that all of the experiences recorded here as memoir are embodied knowledge from which new forms can emerge. See you back here in a week. If we dare.
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I Love It!