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Hey Reader,

We just entered into Leo season, a time of year devoted to the power of the sun, expressing your truth, creativity, and vitality. It also happens to be my birthday season, and I'm a big fan of celebrating birthdays. What a glorious, built-in moment to bask in being alive!

At the same time, this year has been hard hitting. Personally, in my community, in the collective - like we can joke about lettuce diarrhea all we want, but the realities that got us here and what continues to unfold from the decisions of our supposed leaders often feels bleak (to put it lightly).

So many of my client conversations lately have been around a desire to feel reconnected to life, to feel something powerful, to access possibility and magic - and also wondering how the hell to do that given *gestures around*.

When you are a values-first, deeply caring person, it can be tricky to access those experiences and feelings while watching the world literally burn around you. It can feel like abandoning things that matter, or like you don't care about what's happening if you also want joy, awe, and inspiration.

I myself shared in a group chat earlier this week that in the next year of my life (my birthday is in a few weeks) I want to reconnect with enchantment, mystery, and deep reverence for creative possibility - and that that has been a little trickier than usual lately.

Wonder and awe often get filed under "positive emotions," but that's not really what they are. They're somatic experiences - specific things that happen in your body when you touch on something vital or bigger than you.

When you tap into wonder you might notice your chest expanding and goosebumps on your arms. You might breathe deeply and feel alert and aware from your hair to your toes.

The scale of your attention shifts, from the tight loop of your own worries to something bigger than you. You get dropped radically and fully into the present - even if just for a moment. That shift is medicine for your whole system. It doesn't require the moment to be beautiful or good. It simply asks you to be present enough to feel it.

Which means you don't need a stunning mountaintop or a gorgeous sunset to access it, although those are always excellent. There are many ways to access wonder and reverence for life throughout your day.

It might be turning on a song you love to dance to and letting the music take over.
It might be the way your dog gets SO happy AGAIN to go on a walk, and allowing their enthusiasm into your body.
Looking into the eyes of a loved one and seeing their soul.
Or witnessing the same tree in your yard each day, casually turning sunlight into oxygen so we can breathe and live.

Transcendent, once-in-a-lifetime moments are lovely and profound, but they aren't the only way. These small moments, repeated over time, build capacity for presence, for wonder, for aliveness. And I would argue that building that capacity now is more important than ever, because so much of what's pulling at our attention these days is doing the opposite.

The way we are sharing information on social feeds and through algorithms flattens so much nuance. It feels like you can either protect your peace and float above it all, or you can spiral into doom and despair.

There are, of course, more than two choices available, and accessing moments of wonder, feeling the aliveness in your body, is a capacity you can build to give you access to those choices and to strengthen your ability to stay radically connected to the world around you. It's a practice to keep hoping, dreaming, and creating even now. Not in spite of what's happening, but alongside it and through it.

This kind of presence and connection doesn't let you skip your grief, your anger, your fear. If anything, it puts you in closer contact with it. When you're actually here, in your body, awake to the world - you feel the losses, the injustices, the uncertainty too. When we try to shield too much from those, we dull our connection to anything else - including what makes life worth living.

Wonder isn't a way out of what's real; it's a way to be more inside it. It's a way to get out of binary thinking and into a grittier, more honest form of aliveness that makes space for all of your mess and contradiction. Wonder, awe, reverence - they all ask for a fierce commitment to your own humanity, your own complexity, and to everyone else's. To remember that more is possible, and we all play a part in creating what comes next.

This is the practice I'm devoting the next year of my life to - to increase my capacity for wonder and to stay in touch with the mystery, the awe, the wild unknown that comes with being fiercely and fully alive.

If that strikes something in you, I would love to have you join me.

Begin today with one small moment of wonder. A song, a sunset, a dog, a tree, a face you love. Notice everything. Let yourself feel, for even ten seconds, that you're alive and part of something bigger.

Bonus? Reply and let me know what brought you wonder, joy, or a moment of awe today. I'll write back with mine 💜

Love,
Kate

You're Invited:

In Person, September 17th-20th in Minnesota: I'm hosting an autumn equinox retreat and would love to have you there! We'll gather in the heart of Minnesota next to a beautiful lake and spend our days immersed in nature, practicing yoga, making art, and traversing the portal of the equinox together - integrating what has been and making space for the season ahead. There are 2 spots left - is one of them yours?

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