If You Knew You Had a Year to Live, How Would You Live?

I’ve had a question circling around in my head lately:

If I knew I was going to die in a year, how would I live my life?

It sounds a little morbid when I say it out loud. But strangely, it doesn’t feel morbid.

It feels alive.

Recently, on my birthday, I went to the funeral of a beautiful woman. There was something poignant about marking another year of my own life while honouring the end of someone else’s.

I listened as people spoke about her, and what stayed with me wasn’t what she had achieved or how much she had done.

It was how she had loved.

Her relationships. The memories people carried. The way she had made people feel.

And it made me think about my own life.

What kind of relationship do I want with my children? My husband? My friends?

How do I want the people I love to feel when they’re with me?

And am I living that way now?

We are all dying

I know. Not exactly an uplifting sentence. 😂

But there’s something strangely freeing about acknowledging it.

We know our lives are finite, yet so often we live as though there will always be more time.

More time to do the thing.

More time to say what we feel.

More time to really be with the people we love.

More time to enjoy our lives once everything else is sorted.

But what if remembering that we are going to die isn’t morbid at all?

What if it reminds us to live?

To worry a little less about things that don’t really matter.

To love people well.

To stop postponing what matters.

To be here for the life that is already happening.

The Lion and the Gate

This has been swirling around for me alongside Lion’s Gate.

There are many spiritual meanings attached to Lion’s Gate, but I keep coming back to the symbolism of it.

The lion. The heart. Courage. The gate. A threshold.

And I wonder if the invitation isn’t to manifest a new life or become a new version of ourselves.

Maybe it’s to have the courage to step more fully into the life we already have.

To ask:

If I knew I had one year left, what would really matter to me?

And then perhaps the more important question:

How can I live a little more like that now?

An invitation to Winter

This feels so deeply connected to Wintering.

Because sometimes we don’t need another plan for our lives.

We need enough quiet to hear ourselves.

Wintering is a day to step out of the doing and tending for a while. To move, breathe, reflect, create, eat beautiful food, rest and receive.

And we’ll finish our day with an extended sound bath relaxation with Kati Soundz, allowing everything to settle into the body.

Our Wintering Day Retreat is Sunday 16 August, and it will be our final Wintering for the year.

There are just a couple of spaces left.

Maybe the gate isn’t leading you somewhere else.

Maybe it’s bringing you home.

Come and Winter with us. 🤎