December Sentences

happy new year

Greetings friends and family, Happy New Year to you all. Welcome to this edition of Wild Leaf. What a year! I am, ultimately, contrary to the sometimes raw catharsis I offer here on Substack, grateful for the transformation, the alignment, the mystery and the undeniable undulation of time that has been 2025.

How has it been for you?

I am happy to present this edition of December sentences, based on Chris La Tray’s daily single sentence writing practice. About the practice he writes:

It’s a simple practice and fulfilling … and also maybe not so simple as it may seem. Regardless, the practice is excellent training for paying attention to the small moments of my life, and I enjoy sharing those moments here. This remains the best and most consistent aspect of my writing efforts, and something within the reach of anyone who simply wants to be a more attentive participant in their own life.

I haven’t accomplished this practice in a while, and I found it actually deeply therapeutic. Reviewing the month through the lens of single sentences, witnessing the real transformation that has been a single month at the end of an epic year - it’s validating somehow; like, wow, we did that.

December 2025

1. I roll down the window to smell the snowy forest at night and catch the out-breath of a winter caribou.

2. Fireside saltwater brings me into complete surrender with all that is.

3. Amara and I find ourselves nibbling the last of the goji and elderberries hanging on snowy branches in the community garden.

4. Crouched at the doorway, watching a buck sniff the air, I consider the swirling experience of living in this town, with my new life.

5. Evening conversation shows me how subtle the weave of manipulation can be.

6. Stirring the indigo pot, she poses a question that brings tears to my eyes.

7. Deep depression momentarily evaporates as I move the pile of wood from the grass to the shed and into my home.

8. I dreamed about a community high in the mountains, a place I have dreamed about before but have never seen in real life - we were visiting, my daughter and I, seeing if we could live there in the house below the cliffs.

9. The blue and green Christmas lights reflecting off his deep brown eyes make the whole world seem to disappear.

10. A walk in the dark cold night allows me a moment to explore my own darkness, the stretched-out expression of my shadow, big and crunchy, until it dissolves finally into stillness and quietude.

11. Billowing smoke of a dozen bonfires makes the buffalo dancers appear and disappear, as they turn and dance to the beat of the drum.

12. Walls lined with vibrant ceremonial headdresses, pottery and an antelope bust draped in turquoise jewelry greet us as we enter the wrong house for the Guadalupe feast.

13. Before I walk into the “holy dirt” room in Chimayo, I hear a mother speaking very harshly to her daughter about being ungrateful, so I sit and wait outside with my own daughter, whose almost asleep on my back.

14. In a moment of spontaneous flow, I design a blue star and white lily mandala for the top of my broken kitchen table.

15. All three of us get pulled into the deeply restorative energy of the land, and we all fall asleep on the floor of the yurt.

16. By the time I leave my adopted grandmother’s house, my tears have dried and my belly is full of sweet squash, pecans and golden milk.

17. With my belly on the heating pad, I take a deep, slow, womb-releasing breath for the time in weeks, months, maybe even years.

18. I arrive in the sanctuary. I spin around and around and around, ringing the bell, clearing my field, cleansing my mind.

19. I sequester myself with the sunrise fire energies and manifest a new melody in the key of E.

20. We each pick up a handful of cottonwood wood chips, chewed up by the beaver alongside the river, and we sniff.

21. While chasing Amara down the road as she pedals full speed with her pants on her head and in a dress that gives her rainbow wings, I realize the perfect magic of children.

22. A blue cosmic night beneath a blue cosmic night, in water reflecting the moon.

23. A fully tattooed, half-bald woman named Charity ends up chopping my hair off in the ladies room at Orvis.

24. After singing my new solstice song a million times over, I finally feel ready to share it in the family home where my daughter was born.

25. After dinner, they tie up the water drum and we circle around, passing the staff, the rattle and singing our songs.

26. Absolutely cracking up during the unexpected trek up the hill behind Don’s market.

27. We fall asleep in the yurt, in the silence, in the beauty of winter and wake to the soft pitter patter of hail falling on the roof.

28. Pulling out weeds along the edges of the willow lodge, Mark takes a picture of us and sends it to Nino.

29. Driving down the highway to visit family, I look up for a moment at the blinking digital billboard over the road and it says, “More Grace”.

30. The frost tipped cottonwood branches sparkle like diamonds in the below-freezing sunrise air.

31. Gathered in a circle beneath the tall spruce, we enter the new year in silence.

Jan 1st. photo by author.

Thank you for reading this edition of Wild Leaf, an undulating landscape of meaning, poetry and what it seems to be a mother in these times. Please click the little ❤️ at the bottom of the page here so more readers can find this publication. Paid subscriptions support these works in a big way, thank you. You can also always: Buy Me A Coffee.