As this is Astrid’s last message for 2018, I was curious what she would want to share. She’s been extra playful and cuddly these days, which has added another layer to our together-time, and it also speaks to some of what her message is that she wants to leave you with.

And what might that be?

Astrid says, “The end to struggle.”

We’ve been immersed in year-end closure here, went deep with watching all four parts of the new Watership Down rabbit movie, along with prepping for new whimsical ventures in 2019 together – this to include our new book, art, and rabbit Faery fun. Our little Wonderland Faery realm has become a true Otherworld for creative manifesting, as we threaded together a Rabbit Hole of delight we feel enriched in every day. We’ve also been examining the reality we want to live and leave behind.

There’s been a lot of creative work and anchoring this last year to set up and define our intentions, and although this New Year, for us, will continue to be one of vision, setting priorities, and determination, it will also be one of breakthroughs and embodied beliefs. This, Astrid shares, to be done with joy, ease, and peace – with the knowing that we can trust our essence to guide us in flow and fun through the next leg of the journey.

If we find ourselves struggling, where can we be curious about ways in which we might be holding on to old patterns and realities, lower ideals, or stringent and limited attachments?

Astrid says, “The struggle is a detour to who you really are. The struggle is a way to stay small. The struggle is a way to keep you away from what you believe you don’t deserve. The struggle keeps illusion as an interference to seeing the possibilities and beauty available. The struggle isn’t you.”

For most of the first part of my life I struggled on many levels. I was constantly inflicting inner torment upon myself with voices of knowing battling voices of fear, pain, confusion, and conflicting patterns that weren’t even mine in many cases.

And this kept me from being me and being able to expand further. It was like being tethered to a post and always hitting the end that snapped me back.

That is, until I realized the post didn’t truly exist except for believing it did.

Astrid has been through her own struggles and in seeing her come to this place of surrender and no longer feeling the need to fight, she is finding the love and joy her essence exudes, feeling right at home.

And so are we both experiencing this, which is creating greater peace daily.

“There is always another way,” she says, “and while we feel things serve us, truly they serve our patterned beliefs – not our hearts. Love is not a struggle. Creative energy simply flows. When we relax into these spaces, spend more time nurturing and cultivating the love in our hearts, we find greater comfort in things we never thought we could. We open ourselves to different opportunities, see new perspectives, and realize there are a multitude of ways to experience what we want, rather than believe it can only be in one form.”

“And what about those old realities and lower ideals so many of us struggle to hold on to?” I ask her.

“Like the unlimited dimensional experiences you can’t see, but still exist, why is it that you feel there to be only one reality? You struggle to hold on because you are so close to letting go. It is that last piece that will change everything. The release and fall into your grace. You fight to stay small because being more means greater empowerment and awareness. It’s been easier to let others and even beliefs power over you then to truly live without constraints. Hope, love, imagination…these things no one controls, but you. They are the keys to a new reality no one can take away. They live where struggle does not exist. When you go there, you know what I mean. If you can learn to stay there, you will know what is possible,” Astrid says.

We have both been embracing this experience where struggle need not be anymore and gently breathing deeper into our hearts to help it move through.

This has brought Astrid to a place of exuberant and loving expression as her norm now, without need to struggle and fight within, as a way of preserving it only for special moments. We have both learned to trust who we each really are and that life is meant to be a joyful, creative, and wondrous experience.

The other things may exist and they may knock on our door to try to tether us back, but they will meet with surprise when they find there is no knot on the other end. We’ll see the rope and when the knocking thinks it has us, we will let go of the other end and watch them disappear.

Let this be a year we all let go of the struggle and fight.

Let this be a year to create a new reality.

For me and Astrid it is a storybook year we are weaving together, piece by piece, heart to heart.

We both wish you all a wondrous New Year – a year of greater creativity, transformation, fertile and abundant potential, and alignment for the collective with it being a 3 year in numerology.

Astrid will be back next year on January 4th, 2019.