Dear friends,

May 2026 bring you the healing balm that your heart needs and the ease, love and purpose that your soul longs for.

Happy, loving, peaceful and prosperous New Year! May 2026 be an important step towards becoming more truly and authentically you. May it soothe your heart about the pains past and usher you into a new chapter, where alignment to your soul matters more than comfort, other people’s opinions and societal boxes to tick. May it carry you smoothly from darkness to more light (or at least, that’s what they say is happening astrologically).

May we all learn to surrender our individual will to Thy Will, to the will of the life that was meant for us. May we learn to be quiet enough and to listen, so that we can discern more clearly what this will even is.

Darkness and light on the hills behind my house at sunset

In the dark winter cocoon

I have been quiet for a while, mainly because I have nothing to say. Words are rarely coming to me these days. When I read the old newsletters and sharings on Instagram, I kinda wonder who wrote this - it reads beautifully. I’m not sure if it was ever me or it just ‘passed through’ me.

The insights into our human nature became rarer, simpler, more cellular in a way and harder to verbalise. And although I haven’t said much, I have been quietly working with some of you in the background, for which I’m very grateful and honoured.

The sessions changed in nature - they are longer, quite direct, sometimes akin to ceremonies. It has become hard to describe what I do, how it works. Perhaps I don’t have all the answers, but I see that I am being used in ways that are needed and that I don’t fully understand. I’ll honour that as much as I can (mostly by listening and getting out of the way).

Arrifana at sunset…the darkness is beautiful too.

Bye bye, 2025 - you did feel like being awake in the middle of surgery

2025 was a year of lessons of surrender, grief and ultimately love. It was the year I thoroughly questioned what love was…and realised that I had it all wrong. In fact, the world we live in has it all wrong. More to come - I will explore this whole ginormous subject in greater detail as 2026 unravels.

2025 was the year I realised I operated from so much incorrect and deeply inbuilt conditioning - not just mine, but generations of it - that looked like love, but wasn’t. It was fear. And though it is not my fault, it is still my responsibility to address it if I want to live a more loving life (which I do).

2025 was the year I saw that I confused sacrifice and love. In truth, it has nothing in common. Not one thing. Perhaps it is my Balkan roots, or maybe me being a woman. Perhaps, it is in Christian ideology that we carry in our cells for generations, where the sacrifice and death of Jesus were conveniently made by the church to be the teaching. A teaching of guilt…I’m not sure where it comes from and in a way, it doesn’t matter. What I see now is that it ran deep and it was very unconscious in the way I operated around partners, family and friends. It justified so much abuse, both from me and towards me. I somehow carried the belief that it should all be hard work and self-erasure, that I don’t deserve to be well without all the suffering that wellness “costs”…How strange?! Little did I know that sacrifice is closer to self-hatred, control, fear…than it is to love.

It was the year I realised I can be deeply hurt, betrayed, put in tremendous danger, abused…and still love. Love doesn’t mean staying for all that. Definitely not. But it does mean not closing my heart, not punishing the blindness of another, not withdrawing love to protect myself from the deep grief that comes with all that.

It seems so obvious, but it wasn’t obvious to me. I grew up in a household where my mum withdrew love when I did something wrong, and so did her mum and everyone before her probably. I never learnt there is another option. Not to punish, not to swallow it and people-please either, until it brews into resentment one day. But to communicate, to express my feelings, to set a boundary…To open my fist and keep loving, however pained I am. So simple…so eye-opening.

If you were on the receiving end of my dysfunction and error in love, please forgive me. I deeply apologise. I knew not what I was doing. Nor did I know any different.

2025 was the year where I learnt I am more capable and hardworking than I ever appreciated. I am really proud of what I created with the house renovation, pretty much alone, through shitloads of blood, sweat and tears. The hardest part was for sure dealing with the gaslighting and denial culture that Portugal can be in the face of poorly done work, undelivered promises, broken word, lack of responsibility and…simply care.

I love my space. I now wake up so happy in it, despite everything that went on. And though I may not be able to keep it for much longer, I feel so deeply fulfilled to have poured heaps of love and beauty in it.

2026, here we come

You know me - I don’t like these fake calendar turning points, designed to make us consume when we are supposed to cocoon. For me, the real new year starts in March, with the new birth in nature. Right now, we are designed to be incubating, planting seeds, withdrawing in the darkness of winter, meeting aspects of death that allow for new life to begin.
I’m not gonna lie - I’m fully in it. I can’t count the number of evenings where tears fall uncontrollably, where I’m faced with unloving aspects of myself I really didn’t see before and pray to be helped.

But also, somewhere in there, I feel the seeds of a new beginning. Something to do with a deep wish to finally take really good care of myself. Something about my self-care and self-appreciation being the better and necessary foundation for my work with others. Something about me fully stepping into service for this world…not out of sacrifice but out of love.

What about you? What was your greatest lesson of 2025? What is your heart’s deepest wish for the next cycle?

I would love to hear and read. Please write to me.

Much love and I look forward to connecting with you in 2026.

Iri

2026, from Darkness to Light...or so say the stars