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Hi Subscriber First Name, It is no surprise to me that I have found my way into the creative space where change, health, wellness, and arts-based coaching meet. Looking back, I see what feels like cosmic order. I firmly believe that in my life there are no coincidences. Opportunities, chance encounters, and synchronicities—especially numbers—are welcomed with open curiosity. Invitations to explore, experiment, expand, and manifest, with clarity, agency, and choice. To follow the breadcrumbs, or choose not to. For much of my life, I felt as though I were moving along a conveyor belt. A series of events appeared automagically, like chocolates in the famous 1952 episode of I Love Lucy, “Job Switching.” I stayed on the same career conveyor belt for nearly thirty years. For decades, it moved at a manageable speed. When it accelerated, which was often, I instinctively picked up the pace, and things would stabilize again. Until the pace became unmanageable. Unsustainable. So I decided to step off. To assess, reflect, explore, experiment, create, shift, and begin again. That decision changed everything: my life, my career, how I thought, and how I felt. And I have been thinking and feeling a lot these past few weeks, leading up to a recent milestone birthday. A lot. Ideas swirl through my head, accompanied by feelings and emotions coursing through my body, as I reflect on the past, the present, and the future—all at the same time. Where I’ve been. Where I am. Where I’m headed. I believe we are seasonal beings. I see rhythms of growth, activity, rest, and renewal in our bodies, our relationships, and the organizations we create. Ancient philosophies and the cycles of the natural world offer me ways to contemplate those rhythms. In Chinese philosophy, Wuxing describes five interconnected, interdependent phases: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. Often called the five elements, they express a dynamic understanding of a universe continuously changing. Wu means five. Xing conveys movement and transformation. In these phases, I recognize something of my own experience: We grow. We activate. We stabilize. We shift. We adapt. And we begin again. The Chinese zodiac offers another cycle. The Fire Horse—the pairing of an element and an animal—returns every sixty years. This is my pairing, and at 60, I imagine a great circle completed—through growth, activation, stability, transformation, and renewal. A circle large enough to hold a lifetime, which I gracefully own. For me, that return offers a striking image of movement, vitality, and change. An invitation to consider what I am carrying forward and what I am ready to transform. In accounts shared by the United Confederation of Taíno People, I find another connection to my ancestral lineage: seasonal and ceremonial cycles shaped by the sun, the rains, and, in some elders’ accounts, a thirteen-moon solar-lunar calendar following the Earth’s journey around the sun. Those connections also draw me toward questions about our relationship with the natural world. I find myself contemplating birth, growth, decay, and renewal—and the ways those rhythms live within me. A lot has happened since 1966. A lot remains the same in 2026. Sixty journeys around the sun. Six decades of becoming. I have grown, let parts of my life fall away, and begun again. More than once. Today, I feel I have reached a point of equilibrium. My zodiac sign is Libra, associated with justice, balance, and harmony, and ruled in astrology by Venus. The planet of love. And love is what I mean when I speak of the fifth dimension. The love that allows me to witness where I have been with compassion. To accompany myself through uncertainty. To make room for who I am becoming. Libra’s scales are linked with the figure of justice represented by neighboring Virgo, while its stars were once understood as the claws of Scorpius. Between these neighbors, I find my own image of the past, the present, and the future. Cosmic order. Libra is the only sign of the Western zodiac represented by an inanimate object, not a living organism: a pair of scales and a vehicle for hope and change. Libra invites me to consider what I carry, what I weigh, and where I find equilibrium as life continues moving. There is simplicity and complexity in my human makeup, much like the systems that shape all of us: our bodies, our organizations, our cultures, our political and economic structures, and the countless star systems scattered across the cosmos. We are stardust. Complex systems within systems, belonging to something larger. More from me on this, and the fifth dimension, as I continue unfurling this year. For now, whether a milestone birthday is approaching, has recently passed, or is being celebrated today, I invite you to pause: How many times have you journeyed around the sun? What season are you in? Where do you find yourself within the larger system—in the past, the present, the future, or everywhere all at once? A downloadable gift from me to accompany your reflection: What Season Are You In? A one-page introduction to Wuxing, with invitations to explore your present season and discover your birth-year animal and element in the Chinese zodiac. May it offer a little curiosity, a little clarity, and room for your own becoming. Peace, love and light, Yvette ♎️ 🧡 For further exploration: Wuxing: Five Phases — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy The Traditional Sixty-Year Cycle — Hong Kong Observatory Taíno New Year — United Confederation of Taíno People The Taíno and the Thirteen-Moon Calendar — UCTP Taíno News Libra: The Scales — Martz-Kohl Observatory “Job Switching,” 1952 — The Paley Center for Media
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