Every single year for the last three years, I’ve had a planning party in the space between Christmas and New Year’s, and even into the month of January.

There is NOTHING that will change the route of your life and business more than sitting down, getting clear on your intentions and what you want to make happen, and writing it all down.

This shit is life-changing and miracle inducing. It will bring more joy, creativity, life and your dreams to you.

Consider this:

Right now, you are standing before a huge white canvas. The year that is ahead of you.

What picture do you want to emerge from it over the next year?

What unseen miracles inside you do you want to pull out and make seen and real and true?

This is the work of crafting, dreaming forth and calling to you the miracles, the life, the business that is awaiting you.

So… here’s a round up of all the planning parties I’ve had over the years!

2010

Our little courtyard backyard after one dry December summer, when the only things that were blooming were our cacti.

Six month full moon pregnant belly. Hanging out with my favourite puppy.

This is what it was like planning with a pregnant belly.

I remember when I was writing that workbook how I felt.

We were going through some uncomfortable life stuff at the time (horrid tenants in our newly-purchased investment house).

And I knew that with the birth of my daughter, something big was about to happen. That I was going to undergo an immense initiation, and that it wouldn’t be easy.

So most of the things I wrote in there were love reminders to myself.

What to do when things got hard. How to give myself good self care.

Because, yes indeedy, my intuition was in tune. It was hard. A sensitive wee babe that needed a lot of my energy in order to feel right in the world. Moving across the countryside, quitting jobs. Family divorces and conflict. Post-natal depression and anxiety (or as I like to call it: a legitimate response to everything that was happening.) It was absolutely a dark night of the soul for me, one that held powerful medicine, lessons and wisdom for me and was also difficult to experience.

My 2010 workbook ended up being a touchstone over the next year, the thing I could turn to again and again to reorientate myself.

And much later in the year, when I felt like I’d lost my joy de vrie, I went back to my workbook. To remember what it was my soul wanted to call forth. To remember that I had a beautiful life once before and I could make it good and true and peaceful and beautiful again.

So that’s what was scribed into my 2010 book of dreams. The medicine and the love letters that would get me through. That would help me through the initiation and emerge out the other side even more of myself.

(Also: I’ve always put my workbooks into a two-ring binder.)

I like that these photos always have my love around or in the edges. I’m very grateful for the fact that he’s always been by my side. Through thick and thin. Through dark nights of the soul and so many dreams come true too.

We planted some seeds that day too. The perfect thing for a New Year.

One of my main 2010 wishes was to get through the next year, and to remember I was Leonie.

And that’s just what I did.

2011

BAM! Look at that!

A year later, we had a baby!

And we’d moved across the countryside, and were living in my hometown in tropical paradise.

By this time, I was starting to slowly come back to myself, and I was pretty damn insistent that 2011 would be better, much much better.

I’d worked out by this stage that I needed to give myself a break, and stop beating myself up as a mama, and start accepting that I am a Creative Rainbow Mama. I was already underway on a massive healing journey to help me overcome the physical and emotional toll that a huge year that 2010 had been, with personal counselling, relationship counselling, eastern medicine (intuitive healing, naturopathy, bushflower essences) and western medicine.

I have to laugh at these photos. Because I know how it felt going through this time, and how it seems at odds with the joy in these photos.

And it isn’t. It’s not incongruency, and I wasn’t being fake when I smiled.

I was still a happy, laughing, optimistic Leonie even through my own personal dark night.

I adored my daughter beyond the world. I knew whole of heart she was the daughter I always knew I’d have. That I would sacrifice anything to have her. I knew I was blessed for an extraordinary range of reasons. My business brought me great joy. I knew I was living my soul’s purpose.

And at the same time,

I just knew that things could be better. That I wasn’t feeling as radiant as I could be. That I wasn’t as happy as I wanted to be.

It’s like holding heaviness in one hand, lightness in the other.

That something was out of wack.

And so I’d do the things that needed to be done to make it good again.

So we had a picnic in the backyard and I wrote about my 2011 dreams.

Filled it up with goodness. Inspiration and ideas of what we hoped and longed for.

Promised myself over and over that we’d make 2011 really, really good for us.

And so we did.

This time, I put my workbook in a binder I called “The Book of Leonie” – it was filled with not just the workbook, but emails and oracle card readings and foolscap paper. It became my mobile office!

I included pictures that made me feel supported and headed in the right direction. I took that book with me EVERYWHERE that year!

That’s the thing with the workbooks, and with having an incredible life. It’s not about everything being perfect. It’s not about ignoring the fact that sometimes, things happen. Things that cause us a great and deep amount of pain and grief. As they say – the moments that are AFGO (Another Fuc*ing Growth Opportunity).

I’m not about eradicating AFGO’s and difficult times, or ignoring their very existence. They happen to us to enable us to evolve, and learn deep medicine and lessons. We emerge out the other side even more of who we are, as long as we can stay faithful to our path and our spirits. It takes shitloads of work, effort, self-responsibility and dedication to growth, but it’s worth it.

So just like that, devoted to my healing path and to making 2011 good and fun and beautiful, that’s what we did.

I healed, and got back to inner balance again.

And it felt like all the times I’d risen to meet the challenge – I was met back with so much goodness and joy.

One of my big wishes in my 2011 workbook was to have a posse of women friends again.

I scribed it over and over in that book of mine…

Make more women friends

Connect with a women’s circle

Have more fun times with women

And they came rushing in… a posse of women who met with a cataclysmic bang of goodness, and who were inseparable.

I smile when I think of what is to come for this Leonie, sitting out in the garden with her baby and her love, writing down her earnest wishes.

Just wait and see, Leonie…

There’s this bunch of women who are smart and funny and creative and kind

and they’ll lift you up and you’ll spend impossible hours running in to each other at cafe’s,

holding spontaneous circles in the dirt, just glee-ing in the essence of happiness.

It was good. It was better than good.

They made 2011 shine like the shiniest of sparks.

And they emerged from my pen.

2012

A year later, a baby grows into a long-limbed toddler.

And we sit in the garden, with plants we’d planted just starting to grow strong.

That day tropical storms brewed over us.

My hair was gone, my initiation complete.

I was light of heart.

At the beginning of 2012, my goals and dreams were really about solidifying a good, happy, wonderful life for me and my family. I had no idea what was ahead of us, but it didn’t matter.

I knew my dreams would come true.

And they did. I just had no idea that it would take two moves in order to emerge out the other side, into the house and life of our dreams. Sometimes, that’s just what dreams take.

(Can I tell you it’s worth it? How I look back at these photos and see how I’ve been changed by this year? And that it’s all been for good?)

It’s been a ridiculously momentous and glorious kind of year. One with so many dreams come true that I feel a little bit breathless and a big amount grateful.

My tiny little business is soaring into a half million dollar a year company that serves so many wonderful women around the world. My love and I have celebrated 11 years in love, and we have a stronger, happier, more intimate, soulmate relationship than ever before. My daughter is happy and really resonates with her Steiner playgroups (where she’ll eventually go to school). We all have a balanced, gentle, peaceful, joyful life together.

And every day, I become even more of myself.

I guess this is the thing. I am so grateful that every year I write down my dreams, what is inside me that wishes to be born.

It means I don’t forget myself.

That even when the waves grow big and threaten to crash overboard, I can still set my own course.

I don’t forget who I am. I remember what makes me happy. I remember what I need to do to be joyful and fulfilled. I make my blessed, beautiful dreams come true, and go out into the world to help the souls who need to be helped.

And it always works out. Always.

2013 will be the fourth workbook I’ve filled out, the fourth workbook I’ve created.

This year it feels different.

It feels like I’ve ended a cycle.

That cycle being:

2010: When Everything Ended + Needed To Be Healed (When Joy Escaped Me)

2011: When Healing Happened + Spring Blossoms Took Hold In My Life (When Joy Re-Entered)

2012: When I Made Big Changes To Give Us A Wonderful Life + Joy Became A Strong, Sturdy Tree In My Life Once More.

This next year is starting everything anew.

I’m so grateful for these workbooks

They’ve made my life and my business bigger, deeper, richer and more wonderful.

Even during the hard times. Even during the good times.

I’m so deeply grateful they flew down out of the sky one Christmas four years ago, and told me:

Pick up your pen, start writing and painting. Now. We’ll tell you what to write.

And so I did.

They’ve gone on to help so many beautiful souls to navigate difficult paths in their life, and also to navigate their easy paths too, to make their lives and businesses rejoice with dreams come true.

They’ve helped me remain true to my spirit and my soul and my biggest, deepest, dearest vision.

And sitting here, in this land that feels like one big glorious dream come true, I can’t tell you how good it feels. What a difference it has made.

Miracles come this way.

with so much love,

P.S. This time between Christmas + New Year’s is the perfect empty slate to begin dreaming your own incredible year in life and business. Click here to get your own workbooks to help you make your dreams come true.