I can look back on a really calm start of the year, where winter has ever so been a strong presence here in the North. I've also felt the recurring themes of integrity, counting my own blessings and staying present being very actively engaged with this month.
I live in the countryside, it tends to be more quiet here. Working mostly in big cities, most of my life - I got accustomed to the rushing and pushing of places filled to the brim with people. I've been in leading positions, I've been assisting, I've fallen and hit my face, I made differences. But the quiet of the countryside is nothing I experienced before.
Even moving here, in the beginning, I would travel to Hamar and work at a shopping centre. And albeit so much more quiet than Oslo or Amsterdam, it was still not enough to cause real change in the way I wish to work my own business. I needed quiet, I needed to steer by myself, I needed to be able to hear my own thoughts, breathe in and out instead of holding it in with tightened shoulders at all times.
I've always been driven by this wish to make a good change, a long term change, a bigger picture change too. For the good of all so to speak. Well. That doesn't work, not all will experience the good by my own doing. Learning to not be for everyone and please every single person to make a living - was a big lesson. It also pushed me in the direction of parting ways with many - not always initiated by myself or consciously acted on it. But living here, surrounded by the quiet of winter and the rushing stream of summer - made me realize I was trying way too hard.
The world is a mess. As world wars once again loom, not even in the shadows anymore and at the same time so many are distracted by Olympics or their own situations that require many of us to simply survive - I feel it is even more important to just retreat. I don't need to be in the spotlight, I don't have to be seen or heard or push my content on others. I just write, I see, I hear and sometimes record or take pictures. But I'm tired of partaking in a world that is so differently being communicated to us, yet so wildly experienced differently when I go outside and the sun shines on my face.
When I came to Norway I lost everything I thought I had build and then some more. Most people see Lene, they do not see the 27 years I brought with me in 2017, the 2 years of hell I went through in 2019. And now as I'm nearing 40 in only 4 years and I'm not interesting enough for the youths, yet probably too spoiled and inexperienced for all older than me: does it even really matter?
I was lying in the snow yesterday with a bright shining sun, birdsong and my loved ones going down the hill on their mats. I heard the laughter of my youngest, the joy from my husband, other children trying to be the fastest going down that hill. All in that moment I experienced complete bliss and just wanted stop time. It just happened in the moment and it required nothing but my presence.
I said goodbye to Helisir, all the music I composed in it's last stages is being released. I will be sending pre-ordered albums all over the world from April and am excited to its final worldwide online release in June 2026. I'm retiring from composing new music for a while. I just want to be and allow for inspiration to come again naturally. It is good to take a distance sometimes. It was a perfect Snake year to shed the old. To have things being left to close, have strings and attachments disappear as the time was there.
February has been a treshold month and I crossed it to the other side, the next chapter, the new road before me. With everything going on, I just let go of the reigns trying to push and control and resist. And for the first time in a while I'll just allow the waves of this life to carry me into a new adventure - whatever that may look like.
Until then I will lovingly tend to hair, body and mind and outrageously lovingly celebrate the seasons.
Oh and work on the Sojourns because I am so excited for what's to come! Have you checked out the Sojourn of Stone, Sirens and Mirrors in 2027?
With love,
Lene
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