Hugging the world until it stings

... and still sighing for wings

Dear friends

I’m just popping on here briefly to wish all my lovely paying subscribers a very wonderful New Year, and to thank you wholeheartedly for your support during the past year. Without you, this Substack publication would not be possible. I’m also intruding into your email inboxes because it seems that my note in our Chat about the recording of my ‘Ask Me Anything’ video didn’t get emailed out to you all on December 21, even though I clicked on all the right settings. So, with apologies for the omission, please find at the bottom of this post the link to the original article, where the video of my responses to you is now embedded.

It’s been quite the year here at The Art of Enchantment. I’ve put out 105 posts in total, and I’m especially grateful to paying subscribers for your thoughtful contributions to the series during which, for most of this year, we worked with my original conceptualisation of the Fairy-Tale Heroine’s Journey. These ideas are going to be expanded in my new oracle card deck, The Fairy Tale Heroine Oracle, coming from Hay House/ Penguin Random House in September (there’ll be more about it in this Saturday’s newsletter) and a book from September/ Duckworth in spring 2026 (more of which later this year).

For me personally, it’s been quite the year, too. During the summer I navigated surgery and a lengthy healing process for a thoroughly broken wrist, and an even more lengthy diagnostic and treatment process for Grave’s Disease, an autoimmune thyroid disorder which runs in my mother’s family (happily, under control now). I spent the autumn swanning around the country to support the publication of Wise Women, and really enjoyed meeting many of you along the way. I should get out more! But it won’t be (much) in 2025, because I’m knuckling down now for the next six months, to finish that new book.

As for 2025? Well, I don’t expect it to be dull, and I don’t expect it to be easy. But if the story was all plain sailing, it wouldn’t be a proper story, right? So I’m taking my lines for the year ahead from this new year poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. I’ll be hugging the world until it stings – and sighing still for wings. And in the meantime – I still have work to do. Hugging the world, embracing the longing, and carrying on with my work while I can is the only answer I have to any of it. It brings both grounding and joy in the craziest of times. I wish much grounding and joy for you all, too, amidst all the nonsense that 2025 might throw at us.

The Year

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of a year.