Things I'm grateful for this month:
Things I'm grateful for this month:
It was Falling Petals' 10th birthday yesterday! It's hard to believe that it's been 10 years since I started this blog and now 5 years since I celebrated its 5th birthday. :)
I started Falling Petals on 25th February 2013. You can read my first post here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2013/02/welcome-to-falling-petals.html
And here is my post to celebrate the blog's 5th birthday: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2018/02/falling-petals-5th-birthday-fave-posts.html
Falling Petals was the second blog I created, having previously started Star Sparkle Blog (about entertainment) in April 2011. I also set up The Seasonal Life (about seasonal living) in July 2013. I've loved writing since I was little (mainly stories) and blogging gave me a new way to do that. I think that starting Star Sparkle gave me the courage to start this blog covering "deeper" more spiritual/philosophical type subjects.
In my first post (and the 5th birthday post) I explained that the inspiration for the blog's name came from Liza Dalby's book The Tale of Murasaki which I was re-reading at the time, about the real-life Japanese author, poet and lady in waiting Murasaki Shikibu who wrote The Tale of Genji. (I'm actually reading it again now; I re-read about it once a year.) She observed seasonal changes and wrote poetry about the seasons, such as cherry blossoms in spring.
When I started out, I wasn't sure which direction the blog would go in exactly, but ended up expanding from self-help and spiritual topics, including the Law of Attraction (LOA), to sharing resources for finding information about self-help/personal development. Since then, I've also covered mental health topics, because I have depression and anxiety myself.
I normally post on Sundays or Mondays but I'm behind with blog posts (I also run the blogs Star Sparkle Blog and The Seasonal Life), and just remembered I haven't done January's Gratitude List! So here it is on a Tuesday (and the last day of the month). :)
Things I'm grateful for this month:
And here is a sunset picture I took recently:
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| Coronation Green, Shoreham-by-sea. |
We've just started a new year, so it's time for my annual letting go of the (previous) year post. I normally post this on New Year's Eve but wasn't able to this time, so I'm posting it today instead (even though it's not one of my usual posting days). :) You can see my past year-end posts at the links below:
Letting Go of 2017: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2017/12/letting-go-of-2017.html
Letting Go of 2018: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2018/12/letting-go-of-2018.html
Letting Go of 2019 + Starting a New Decade: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2019/12/letting-go-of-2019-starting-new-decade.html
Letting Go of 2020: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2020/12/letting-go-of-2020.html
Letting Go of 2021: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2021/12/letting-go-of-2021.html
2022 was an up and down year for me and probably for a lot of people. It had been the first time in two years when things were feeling a bit more "normal" after the pandemic and all the lockdowns. All restrictions were basically dropped in the UK in March but things have still felt a bit strange. I wrote a mid-year reflection post in June. You can read it here: https://fallingpetalsuk.blogspot.com/2022/06/mid-2022-reflections.html
If you follow numerology, the Universal Year Number for 2022 was 6, so 2023's is 7. It's supposed to be about spiritual and personal growth and evolution. Read more about the universal year here: https://astrostyle.com/7-universal-year-numerology-horoscope/
My Personal Year Number for 2022 was a 1, which means that for 2023 it's 2. It's about partnerships and co-operation. I normally use the book 21st Century Goddess for my year number, but I have also used this resource a couple of times (it helps you calculate your personal year): https://feliciabender.com/monthly-numerology-forecast/#calculate
Things I'm grateful for this month:
Things I'm grateful for this month:
Thoughts
In addition to my monthly gratitude list, I decided to share some random thoughts. I haven't written many posts this year apart from my Gratitude Lists. I do have a couple of ideas in mind but for now I'm just going to do a sort of "mini" blog post.
This time of year feels a bit hard to me in some ways because the days are getting shorter and darker as we move towards winter. (Although I find January the hardest really). I've mentioned before that I struggle a bit during autumn. I also have a seasonal living blog called The Seasonal Life and I've gone a bit more into that subject over there, e.g. about how I find the transition from summer to autumn more difficult than that of the one from winter to spring. It feels like a "pulling in" as we move towards the darkest part of the year, the Winter Solstice (also known as Yule) in December, which is the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
Autumn is a beautiful time of year but it's also quite melancholy for me because nature is dying off and the weather becoming bleaker. Several years ago, I went through a hard time during October (I wrote the post When You're Struggling then) but when November came, I felt a bit "lighter" again. These past couple of years have been extra hard for everyone with the pandemic and other issues/events such as racial unrest and the war in Ukraine. Things still feel very uncertain.
I tend to feel a bit weary during the last part of the year because while
sometimes the year seems to have gone quite quickly, some months feel
long! The time from September to December always seem to go quickly.
I haven't felt as inspired to blog on here as much over the past two years, although I have written more regularly on The Seasonal Life and my entertainment blog Star Sparkle Blog. I think posts here require more "energy" because I'm covering deeper subjects. I do still enjoy it though and I'm glad that I have this space to reflect on self-help/personal development and spiritual subjects. Next year it will be 10 years since I started Falling Petals! I will do a birthday post.
A couple of months ago I picked up my Feeling Your Emotions series again after a break of 2 and a half years, writing a recap post. I plan to write more in that series next year. I've also been looking into the Law of Assumption (after previously having only known the Law of Attraction).
So that's it for now! Next month I will do my annual end of year post, which will be more in-depth. Thank you for reading and hope everyone is doing ok. I know that in America you just had Thanksgiving, so I hope that those who celebrated had a good time. :)
Photo: Buckingham Park, Shoreham-by-sea. Moonsparkle 2022.
