So, it's a bit of a quiet start to 2025, huh?

(That sentence is written in severe sarcasm font, in case you can’t see.)

From the wildfires ravaging the California coast - in winter - to that same country facing its own reckonings on so many counts, to Gaza ceasefires called, reneged, and finally a signed agreement, to a world that’s navigating a polycrisis - a confluence of challenges the likes of which none of us have seen before - we’re facing a decent amount of collective demons at the moment.

And it’s only the 28th of January.

It’s also the eve of the lunar new year, as we say goodbye to the year of the Dragon and hello to the year of the Snake - if you can’t sense the energy of rebirth and transformation already calling, you had better get on board, ‘cos it’s coming for us all!

A couple of days ago I had a quiet interaction with a snake on the beach path of my friend Melissa’s family shack in northern New South Wales, Australia.

I was doing my usual morning routine of rolling out of bed, donning my bikini hanging on the backyard clothesline (still a little damp from the day before), and gently padding up the sandy garden path barefoot to check the swell and beach conditions.

As I did this, I heard a gentle hiss on the ground to my right, as a slim dark green snake slithered off into the bushes gracefully away from me.

[And while I don’t make it a habit to interact with wild snakes all the time, having grown up in Singapore with a neighbourhood python named Percy, and jumping barefoot over black spitting cobra nests in the ground of our home’s gardens - they don’t instill much fear in me. (Spiders, however, are another story.)]

I felt blessed to have received this snake sighting in the days preceding this Chinese New Year, especially as I feel as though I’ve already started on the medicine of the snake before this year has even properly begun.

And this sighting seemed like a little wink from the universe to say, we see you.

While my life has thankfully not mirrored the collective drama too closely, I’ve been facing my own demons and taking my transformation medicine in spades.

This will be explored and traversed through my writing in time, but suffice to say I haven’t yet sifted through it all enough to be able to say what’s mine and what isn’t mine to tell.

I know - it’s annoying when someone alludes to things but doesn’t come out and just TELL YOU what they are. Details, we want details!

But I ask for your grace at this time, while things are still fresh.

Instead, I’ll give you a brief overview of my close friend’s responses when they’ve heard about the time I’ve been having: both eyebrows raised, mouths O-shaped, and many exclamations of holy heck. Accompanied by descriptors like ‘that’s a ‘tsunami' of events’, a complete timeline shift, and everything’s moved SO fast.

In a conversation with a close friend recently, I regaled her with a story that I felt represented the process I’d most recently been in, the one of Milarepa and the Demons:

“One day, the Tibetan teacher Milarepa left his cave to gather firewood. When he returned, he found that his cave had been taken over by demons. There were demons everywhere!

His first thought upon seeing them was, “I have got to get rid of them!” He lunges toward them, chasing after them, trying forcefully to get them out of his cave. But the demons are completely unfazed. In fact, the more he chases them, the more comfortable and settled-in they seem to be.

Realizing that his efforts to run them out have failed miserably, Milarepa opts for a new approach and decides to teach them the dharma. If chasing them out won’t work, then maybe hearing the teachings will change their minds and get them to go. So he takes his seat and begins teaching about existence and nonexistence, compassion and kindness, the nature of impermanence.

After a while, he looks around and realizes all the demons are still there. They simply stare at him with their huge bulging eyes; not a single one is leaving.

At this point Milarepa lets out a deep breath of surrender, knowing now that these demons will not be manipulated into leaving and that maybe he has something to learn from them. He looks deeply into the eyes of each demon and bows, saying, “It looks like we’re going to be here together. I open myself to whatever you have to teach me.”

In that moment all the demons but one disappear. One huge and especially fierce demon, with flaring nostrils and dripping fangs, is still there.

So Milarepa lets go even further. Stepping over to the largest demon, he offers himself completely, holding nothing back. “Eat me if you wish.” He places his head in the demon’s mouth, and at that moment the largest demon bows low and dissolves into space.”

I feel privileged to know that letting yourself be eaten by your biggest demons doesn’t weaken you, rather, it makes them disappear and leaves you far stronger than you ever thought possible.

I can almost feel the gentle but decisive hands of creation picking me up and placing me emphatically in a whole new space in time, and one thing I feel so deeply is an abiding sense of TRUST.

Full stop, capital T trust. No questions, wondering, or unsureness. Trust that’s so deep in my bones there’s no room for anything else.

So in case you’ve found yourself in a cave full of your own demons lately, I invite you to surrender to the medicine they bring with them (which usually involves diving right into the most tender soft parts of yourself). Your resistance to the medicine they bring is what prolongs the scariness of their presence. Jump into the biggest one’s mouth, and you’ll unlock an important key to your inner authenticity and strength.

For me, it’s unleashed a wave of energetic richness, creative inspiration, and flow.

A flow that’s taking me speedily to the beautiful shores of Bali, Indonesia in a few short weeks - a country that’s an ancestral home of my father’s side of the family dating back to the 1800s (edit, I’ve since checked our family tree and it’s the 1700s), a place where I spent many a childhood holiday while growing up in Singapore and whose language I’ve also learned and spoken since I was a teenager.

I’m excited for all that’s to come - yes even amongst the collective and personal machinations going on!

It’s demon-facing season, and I know that what lies beyond for us all is wildly powerful and full of beauty.

Happy Year of the Snake - let the transformations begin! xx

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