Bye 2022: Why I spent New Years 2023 alone
5 Emotional Manifestors (human design type) stand on a sandy beach, with the mountain Rangitoto in the background and a lovely blue patch of sky amongst clearing clouds.
Happy 2023 babies! A Chariot Year is here! We’re about to head into the Full Moon in Cancer as I write this! I don’t know about you, but the I’m feeling like the energy is strong and the tide is slow. Ah yes. Here’s a photo of how I ended the year: surrounded by 5 Emotional Manifestors (and some others) on a beach in tāmaki makaurau, the city of my birth.
Now, spending the day of NYE with 5 different Emo Manifestors really got me all fired up for 2023, so much so that this undefined sacral centre is currently in the Day 6 of Simone Grace Seol’s Garbage Post Challenge (100 posts in 30 days) and I’m blogging. Imma be honest with y’all and myself that idk how consistent I am gonna be with any of this so let’s all just enjoy this gift that I’m giving y’all and myself which is the gift of my precious energy & thoughts rn.
Okay so, around 10pm New Year’s Eve, something fucking fantastic happened, that I kinda of never in a million years thought would happen… well, at least not so soon.
I surprised myself by spending the passing of 2022 into 2023 with myself, by myself and with no one I knew around. At a beach.
Sheeeit, for some of y’all that’s no problem, but anyone who knows me vaguely or follows me on socials knows that I’m one of the biggest extroverts you’ve ever met. I mean, not only am I a Leo Stellium with a Gemini Moon & Mars, but I’m a goddamn ENFP for chrissake. As my sis said to me recently: “you’re the type to celebrate major days and celebrations surrounded by people”. So choosing to spend NYs alone (and defo not for lack of invites/plans) has been one of the most rewarding successes for me.
So how did this come about? Let’’s use the lens of the 10 of Wands to talk about this.
10 of Wands Tarot Card (RWS Deck)
10 of Wands has been constantly coming up before AND on NYE for a lot of people and the resounding message I always get with this is “bitch, put some shit. down. Whose shit are you carrying that is not yours?!".
For me, 2022 in every way has been an amazing journey with this fiery suit around my creative fire. It had me asking the questions:
How often do I feel connected to my sacred fire?
What even is my sacred fire?
How can I keep this fire burning without burning out as a Manifestor?
And y’all know that as a Leo Stellium, fire is my element (although thank god I’m a water monkey lol) PLUS in human design terms, I’m a Manifestor and that sacred fire can come out in so many ways: passion, anger, moving...
When any 10 appears in the Minor Arcana, it is mini-death energy. Some part of ourselves is ready to die to be reborn. And particularly with this 10 of Wands, we are being ask to burn something, to burn the wands that we have inherited, that have served their purpose but are now just baggage. I love this idea that the person on the card is on their on way to building a bonfire with these wands, to make a funeral pyre for all of their old selves that they’re ready to let go of. We need to do this before we ascend into the card after, the Page of Wands, in which we are looking at our one chosen wand and asking “what else can it do, now that I have cleansed this wand?”.
2022 summarised
2022 was big. I turned 30, finally had my mainstage theatre debut (and what a debut it was iykyk), landed my first (small) role on a US TV Show (currently under NDA but can’t wait to share it), made my first trip back to Singapore in 3 years cuz of COVID.
I also socially burnt out. My body went into peak eczema inflammation mode that no amount of creams could remedy.
I spent the second half of the year (conveniently after I turned 30) questioning how I defined myself socially. Really doing that 4 of cups and 6 of pentacles work of actually taking inventory of my friendships and looking at my boundaries, looking at energy input vs energy output. Out of a huge friend pool, I felt like seeing very few. I felt bored and uninspired with my social circles. I went from doing 2 social events per day to doing 2 per week. And I started to ask myself “Who am I outside of my social identity?”. And the hardest question was “if the way you are growing means that you have to leave all these friends behind, can you be okay with that?”.
Along with seeing my guides and my coach, L, every week, I had to do that nitty gritty work of rediscovering how to enjoy my own company and actually work through the discomfort of having to be with myself. I realise 30 hit different in that I could no longer do, sleep or eat how or what I wanted without my body responding. I had to prioritise my health- there’s nothing like an eczema outbreak on your face while filming that makes you double down on that basic routine shit- 9 hours of sleep, switched to a cantonese-type diet of broth, marinated protein, steamed veggies and rice, making sure I saw no one the day before I was filming to prevent any energy leaks. And guess what? I’m STILL detoxing. It’s getting better, but as my spirits said- you can’t expect to detox from years of being out of balance in like 4 months.
As New Year’s loomed, L said to me “you need to consider who you want to pass the year with. If you’re going to spend it with people, spend it with people who truly value you”. She also says to me, time and time again: “It is better to be alone and lonely than be around people who suck your energy”. It has taken me 2 years of journeying with her and this epic burn out to really understand what overgoing to my friends has cost me. Probably a peak moment was realising that almost no one spoilt this Leo on their 30th birthday because I had trained them all to think I would spoil them and there was no need to spoil me back. Tsk tsk tsk. Y’all know I took some good notes on who spoilt me and who just did the usual turning up.
Closing them doors
L had me write my 2023 Manifestion letter to self: a letter from Amanda on the 31/12/2023 to Amanda now, 31/12/2022, telling me about all the amazing things that happened in 2023. She told me to burn the letter at the beach so that the smoke goes up towards the Universe.
I also decided to add to that and write a list of all the things, specific people & old versions of myself I was shutting the door on, leaving behind.
So on NYE at around 10pm, after beaching and dinnering with the friends I do love, I was about to drop my Manifestor friend Will off to his car, and was then going to remeet the others in the city to watch the fireworks.
However, I realised that almost all the Manifestors that I had seen that day were going home early to sleep. And then I thought about this thing that my other Manifestor friend Ruby, who has been on a similar journey, who said to me recently- “I just wanted to be at home, with my own body, seeing what it wants to do”. As I did a quick car Tarot reading for Will as I was dropping him off, it was then that I realised- that is what I want to do. I don’t want to remeet anyone, I just want to be in my own energy and stay on the beach. And that’s exactly what I did. I stayed on the beach and lit my own bonfire and burnt those 2 letters to myself. And it’s honestly the best New Years I’ve ever had.
Amanda holding her burning 2023 letter of Manifestation
Btw, haven’t sorted out your 2023 intentions/energies yet?
✨Book your 1-1 Tarot Reading with me 🧚🏼♀️
For more free medicinal reflection by yours truly, follow me on IG @graceandtarot.
