There are two upcoming opportunities to gather—with two more to come before the end of the year. (Including the annual I Ching New Year’s workshop that Satya Doyle Byock and I do on Zoom—we are finalizing a date, more to come soon!)

I had to a chance to gather with some dear friends last week and sit in a circle. (For more on what circling means, here’s a conversation with Dre Bendewald from Pulling the Thread that’s all about it.) I’ve come to love a circle—for the invariable synchrony and signs, and also because they offer a rare moment to just sit and listen to what women have to share without needing to respond. (No cross talk allowed!)

There was no specific set of instructions for our gathering, but we naturally began to talk about a moment of convergence. While some of the women in the circle have been friends for decades, our paths all started to cross in late 2019 and early 2020: We experienced a collision of fates right around the beginning of COVID, seven years ago.

In many traditions, seven is a cycle, and not just because it’s the number of days of the week: It’s deeply symbolic in Judaism, in Greek philosophy, in Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, in the chakra system, and so on. (Yes, it’s the number of “Deadly Sins,” too.) As we approach the end of this seventh year, it feels like we are completing something, even if I’m not exactly sure what the “something” is. The energy is shifting.

As we kept talking, something magical happened the other night: We each reflected about where we were then and what we’ve become now. In parenting, there’s a saying that days are long and years are short; there’s another maxim that stipulates that we overestimate what we can accomplish in one year, but wildly underestimate what we can accomplish in five, or ten. It was wild to look into each other’s faces and remember where we had been.

Seven years ago, I was beginning to think, Huh, maybe I want to write a book on my own, but I had not figured out the big question I was circling and had not started writing anything down. I had a full-time corporate gig where I was also the co-host of a very successful podcast and about to put out a TV show where I did psychedelic mushrooms on TV. I had bits and bobs of an Instagram account (I posted maybe five times a year), no newsletter, no community—really, I just had an inkling I was being called to move in a different direction. My kids were tiny. I barely saw my friends. Life was good—and yet it’s gotten so much better.

I highly recommend doing this. If it feels impossible to remember, look back at your photo feed and see what’s there. According to my photo roll, on this day seven years ago, I interviewed Malcolm Gladwell, where I asked him if he remembered being set up on a blind date with me twenty years before…he didn’t! I wrote a bit about that in “Resisting Being Saved.” More importantly, two days before this, I had met and interviewed Marie Forleo about her book, Everything is Figureoutable. Some of you have heard me tell this story about my experience with Marie’s book—the title, all of it, sent me into a tizzy that I would later recognize as envy—but it all came full circle when, completely unprompted, Marie asked me why I hadn’t written a book of my own. In that moment, I realized it was time—and Marie has since become a dear friend.)

I’d love to hear what you discover about your own seven year cycle in the comments below. (I hear the comments section is a little sticky over here—if you can’t post a comment, try logging in and out to see if it works. Apologies why we work out the kinks!)