I hadn’t planned to write my first official blog post today, but a woolly mammoth insisted. Though they’re extinct, mammoths are remarkably wise and persistent when they want something done.

Let me give you some context. A couple of years ago on the Fall Equinox, I bought a necklace and earrings made with fossilized mammoth tusk. (Cruelty-free I promise: no mammoths were harmed in the process.) The moment I saw these pieces, I knew I had to have them.

Later that day, wearing the jewelry, I understood why.

I was in the middle of a conversation when I suddenly felt the presence of a herd of woolly mammoths. I saw them with my third eye vision, my mind’s eye you might call it. I saw an enormous female step forward. She introduced herself as Aelif, the matriarch of the herd.

Then Aelif and her herd began stomping on the polar ice caps. The sound and vibrational feelings were intense, but I felt a focused calm coming from the mammoths. They were breaking the ice so that what Aelif called original wisdom, something encoded into the ice eons ago, could now be released. I felt the certainty and purpose of this so strongly that it gave me an entirely different perspective on some of what is happening in our physical world.

Aelif appears regularly and is like my own personal Ganesh. Much of what we talk about is related to the cycle of destruction and creation.

Aelif showed up again this morning at a perfect time. The first 16 days of 2018 have been challenging. My only aunt died on New Year’s Day, and on that day, I also learned that a woman who was like an aunt had crossed over the week before. I’m concerned about my Dad who’s in his mid-80s and half a country away. I’ve been riding the emotional rollercoaster through the good and difficult days of Cooper, our 14-year-old Labrador. I’ve been experiencing the dregs of the flu that won’t go away, and I’m getting little sleep as a result. Then a friendship I’ve treasured for years blew up in a way I never thought it could. I’m usually quite centered, but all this coming at once left me off-kilter.

Enter Aelif.

This morning she showed me how all that has been troubling me, all that has felt like destruction and loss, is like a scab over a wound. She showed me, especially regarding the relationship that erupted, that the scab has loosened enough for me to see the fresh skin beneath it. My first thought was that this skin was a new relationship forming with my friend. But then I understood. The new skin is me. It’s the new version of me emerging in this new year.

As evolving beings, we’re always transforming. We all have scabs in our lives. We all have outdated thought patterns, emotions, situations, relationships, social constructs, etc., that will naturally fall away as we grow. We, however, like to interfere. We give the scabs a lot of attention and energy. We pick at them, even though we know we might reopen a wound and force the body to start over, prolonging the process. Sometimes it seems we do this intentionally because there can be an emotional and often social payoff to identifying with the wound, the hurt, the anger or the outrage. Sometimes we’ll drop into victim mode and cling to the scab out of fear or to justify our victimhood. But no matter how much attention we give a scab or how much we hold on, it’s never going to change back to new, thriving tissue.

Aelif’s reminder today was to continually turn my attention to the new, emerging version of myself. To be vigilant about doing this every time my mind turns to what is falling away. This is good advice for all of us, and it’s the reason I’m sharing Aelif’s  message today. We can all make the conscious choice to leave the scabs alone and focus on what’s emerging, even when we haven’t a clue about what that will ultimately be.

I close this with gratitude for Aelif and her morsel of mammoth wisdom. With gratitude for what is falling away. And with gratitude for the fresh, emerging skin that’s always there for us to find.