Releasing a Nine-Year Cycle: A Creative Journalling Ritual for Letting Go
- Celia Barsby
- Dec 19, 2025
- 4 min read
Sometimes the work doesn’t arrive neatly planned.
Sometimes it arrives as a whisper: light a candle, take a breath, begin.
That’s how this page began.
I sat down with my journal feeling a quiet but insistent pull to return to something I had started a week earlier. Beneath the blue writing already on the page, there was unfinished energy — something asking to be cleared, acknowledged, released.
As I breathed and grounded, I realised I was reflecting back nine years.
Nine years ago, my life looked completely different. I was off sick with stress. There was grief, anger, overwhelm, and a sense that everything I knew about myself was unraveling.
This creative journalling session became a ritual — not polished, not planned — but honest.
Creating Space Before Words
Before I wrote anything meaningful, I lit a candle and allowed myself to slow down. I breathed. I let my body arrive.
This is something I return to again and again in my creative practice : stillness before expression.
We live in a world that pushes us to explain, perform, and resolve quickly. But the deeper work often happens underneath language. It happens in sensation, colour, mark-making, breath.
This wasn’t about creating something beautiful. It was about creating space.
The Energy of Nine: Endings and Completion
As I began to work on the page, I found myself drawing number nines — over and over again.
Nine is a powerful number. It represents completion, endings, thresholds. Nine years. Nine cycles. Nine becoming one again.
I didn’t plan it. My hands simply moved.
This is the essence of intuitive journalling: allowing the body and subconscious to lead, rather than the mind. The page quickly became a place of release — of writing, crossing out, layering, and dissolving.
I invite you, if you feel called, to try this yourself:
Fill a page with symbols, numbers, or marks
Journal all over it
Write how you feel without structure
Let it be messy, layered, unresolved
This isn’t about clarity yet. It’s about honesty.
Letting Go of Control
One of the strongest themes that emerged for me in this session was control.
There was a moment where I didn’t know where the page was going.
I felt uncomfortable.
Exposed.
Vulnerable.
And I noticed the familiar urge to tidy it up, to make it make sense, to regain control.
That was the work.
Creative journalling teaches us how deeply we cling — not just on the page, but in life. We want certainty. We want guarantees. We want to know what comes next before we let go of what’s been.
But there are times — thresholds — when the only invitation is to trust.
Leaving Behind an Old Version of Me
As I continued, something became very clear:the person I was nine years ago is not coming forward with me.
My life now is unrecognisable compared to then.
I don’t recognise her — and she wouldn’t recognise me.
And while I honour everything she survived, everything she carried, everything she endured, I also know this truth:
She doesn’t belong in my next chapter.
Releasing her isn’t rejection. It’s completion.
I consciously chose to leave behind:
grief
anger
disappointment
sadness
an entire way of being
Not because they were wrong — but because they are no longer aligned.
Shedding Old Skin
There’s a powerful metaphor that kept returning during this session: the snake shedding its skin.
When a snake sheds, it doesn’t rush forward immediately.
It retreats.
It finds a quiet, protected space while the new skin forms.
It is vulnerable. Exposed. Tender.
This feels deeply aligned with the energy of solstice and the dark moon — a sacred pause between what has been and what will be.
If you’re feeling fragile right now, unsure, in-between, not quite ready to move — that doesn’t mean you’re behind.
It means you’re shedding.
Voice, Alignment, and Slowing Down
At a certain point, I reached for blue — the colour of the throat chakra, of voice, of truth.
The words that came through surprised me...
Slow down.Choose alignment.
So many of us are trying to speak louder, do more, push forward — when what’s actually being asked is deeper listening.
Less noise.
More presence.
This is a sacred time. A time to align rather than strive.
Making My Mark
Toward the end of the session, I used my finger to make a mark on the page — a literal fingerprint.
There was something deeply embodied about this moment. It felt like claiming my intention, anchoring it in the body rather than the mind.
This is my mark. This is my choice. This is my becoming.
A Blank Altar, A Clear Slate
The altar I chose for this session was intentionally bare. Clear. Empty.
It mirrored what I was doing internally.
When we truly let go, we create space — not emptiness, but possibility.
The next nine-year cycle doesn’t need to be defined yet.
It just needs room.
An Invitation
If you’re standing at the edge of change…
If you’re closing a chapter you never imagined you’d outgrow…
If you feel the weight of what you’ve been carrying…
I invite you to pause.
Light a candle.Take a breath.Pick up a pen, a crayon, your hands.
And begin.
You don’t need to know where the page is going.
You only need to be willing to let something end.
Connecting with Garden Party
💜 Join our online Garden Party Community Group
💜 If you would like to explore Garden Party further check out our series of mini online programs including Magical Key 9 : Shadow Work
💜 For further creative explorations and inspiration follow Soul Garden Party on YouTube
See you in the Garden!
If you're ready to embrace the life-changing power of self-discovery, authenticity, and purpose, then our online program Free to be Me! is your catalyst for transformation.
Break free from the old stories, connect with your inner wisdom, and unleash the creative, authentic, rebellious, and quirky self that's been waiting to emerge.
Click the link here to book your FREE Awakening Session - let's chat about your journey, what is holding you back and what lights you up ✨
Bring your questions and a cuppa 💜
Comments