Gently Reconnecting

Here's my new year's greeting for you: I'm wishing you many moments of joy and love in 2026 and beyond!  I stand for joy and love even in, especially in, the midst of the horrors of the world.  Joy and love can give us at least some of the strength we need. 

I wanted to share a short message today to reconnect after the holidays and to share one drop of inspiration I received recently. The inspiration has caused me to have an intention to "reconnect gently" with home and work life since returning a few days ago from a fascinating and moving (really a "dream come true") trip to Malta followed by a short stint in London UK. (Image above is me at one of the many megalithic temples in Malta on the Island of Gozo, called Ggantija. I'll share more about the trip soon.)

As you may recall, last fall Barbara and I facilitated a Salon called the Wisdom of Gentle.  I seem to have been experiencing ripple effects since, noticing gentleness in so many places including in my reading. One of the novels I took with me on holiday was The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell (who also wrote Hamnet, among other books).  

The quote (inspiration) I want to share with you is from a scene near the end of the book. (I've tried not to spoil the read for you with this share - highly recommend the book!)

The experience being described is that of 16 yr old Lucretia, a Duchess in Italy in the 1560s. At this moment she's being touched by a young man "at the place where the neckline of her bodice ends and her shoulder begins".   Reading these words gave me a visceral sense of the power of gentle and I hope they may offer something resonant to you too:  

"But the feel of his fingertips—stained today, she has noticed, with a green, irregular in size and shape, as if his hand is the open ocean, studded by an archipelago of unmapped islands—against her skin produces a sensation the likes of which she has never felt before. It is the opposite of the convulsions that shook her in the night: it is light, fluttering, and causes concentric circles of heat to expand down her arm and up her neck. It is gentleness, it is care. It is far from anything she has felt in the bed at the delizia or in the castello or here in the fortezza. It is a touch that topples a wall built somewhere within her, that crashes through a thorned thicket that has grown and spread about her heart, through necessity and neglect. It is contact that removes obstacles, sweeps them away, hurls them into the air."

Gentleness being so powerful it hurls obstacles into the air. WOW. Can you feel that? (LMK In the comments section of the Blog version of this message here.) It's not exactly the way I might have described "gentle" a few decades ago. I would have seen it as much weaker. But no longer. And sharing this with you here is making me marvel at the power of gentle again, even more deeply.

So, I'm gently reconnecting with life and work at home, and with you here. I'm re-emerging slowly... I'll be in touch again soon as I'm excited to share more about the upcoming workshop on the cutting-edge systems of Human Design and Gene Keys here in Toronto on January 29.

Again, wishing you many moments of joy and love in 2026 and beyond!

Warmly, Milisa