Just a thought… Watch out for blessing blockers: fear, anger, doubt, worry, regret, jealousy, negative people. [Karen Salmansohn]

It’s dawned on you by now that this is the first day of the last month of 2025. If you’re like me, you have no idea where the other 11 months have flown, but you’re taking time to look back on the year that was. There’s plenty of room for retrospection in the 30 days ahead – from words and people of the year to remembering those we lost, and so on; I’d like to focus today on embracing change.

My sister Cindy is here for a few weeks and brought with her a couple of tarot and oracle card decks. From the readings and spreads I have had the last few days, there’s plenty of change in my year ahead. Loss – or letting go – is a big theme, as is the Garden and the Gate: key around her neck, a girl sits where it’s safe and comfortable, but beyond the gate are riches and the possibility of better things. Contract card came up a few times in different readings. But the big one was that girl.

A Google search yielded this, a summary of analyses from a variety of sources:

The “Garden and the Gate” oracle card suggests that while you may be in a place of comfort, like a beautiful garden, a locked gate might represent a fear of the unknown that is preventing you from exploring new opportunities and your true path. The card’s message is to enjoy your current blessings while having the awareness to use the “key” (your will and awareness) to open the gate and embrace a wider world. 

That is me. This month marks nine years since we pulled up stakes and headed west to beautiful Vancouver Island, leaving one home we thought was forever for another for which we had those same plans. Well, as we said good-bye to our first BC moorings, we became ready to embrace the land beyond the gate: community, friendship, activity and the feeling of belonging that we instantly felt in tiny Sidney-by-the-Sea. A place where if, to paraphrase the Cheerstheme song, not everyone knows your name, they sure want to know what your dogs are called – and that is, to me, even better!

It may surprise you to learn that next month, even as I am still here in Mexico, Rob and I will close a deal on a tiny house on a nearby island. I was introduced to Pender a year ago when my Gracefully and Frankly pod partner and friend Lisa Brandt set up a meeting there with a friend of hers, the singer/rocker Sarah Smith. I fell in love with the island and its hospitality immediately, a feeling that was echoed even without our friend’s accompaniment. It simply felt like we belonged.

During Rob’s and my road trip to Alberta in September we stayed in a few cabins and said to each other how nice it would be to have a tiny place to call our own. Not another house; just a one- or two-bedroom with a fireplace and privacy where we could escape and cocoon. And we started to peruse listings on nearby BC islands.

The one that found us is a nearly new place with one loft bedroom, a wood burning stove and heated floors and everything we could possibly need. Nestled in the woods (we drove past the driveway looking for it, and that was with an agent!) there were four deer just outside the living room window and two more lying down on a ridge above. Nature laid out the welcome mat, and we, my friend, have stepped across it to make the tiny 790 square foot place our own.

The smaller Gulf Islands are a ferry ride from Vancouver Island and this one is but a 45 minute sail. Add to that the ten minute drive from our condo to the terminal and the lineup to wait for boarding, and you still have less commute time to even our closest Ontario cottage.

Rob asks, only half joking, “But why would you want to come home?” once I’m there with the dogs, my coffee maker, WiFi, fire and the MINI.

But the answers will come in their own time. It’s a place of quiet, of tranquil independence and a connection not only with self but with nature. The ocean’s shore is a bit farther away than it is from our condo, but that’s not why we chose this place, which already has a name, and into which Rob will move our things while I lie around here in the Nuevo Vallarta sun.

Our Ontario forever home, the one we built with love in Jackson’s Point, where Lauren’s wedding party had their makeup done and where we all shared in our last family Christmas together in 2014, had a nickname: Hedgie. Sitting on Hedge Road as it did, and sharing the moniker of our dog’s favourite toy, a hedgehog, it was perfect.

This place is a teeny version of that home. It’s a tight fit in many ways, like the underwear up the bum that shares its name, which echoes our heart home on Lake Simcoe.

It shall be Wedgie. And it shall be on the other side of that metaphorical gate. (Not a real one; no way am I keeping the deer out.)

Thanks for coming by and sharing our journey just a bit. And have a gentle entry into this busiest of months.