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#46 – What’s stirring beneath the surface?

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Hey, there you are listening to the In Kinship Podcast, a podcast for those who are craving a joy-filled, vibrant, lit off life on their own terms. I’m your host, Tina Vanderberg. Welcome to a new season. It’s been a little while since I’ve Podcasted life took a decided turn in 2025 and 2026 has found me ready to slowly emerge into something new and I say slowly emerge because we are, and it’s actually the perfect timing, isn’t it?

The timing as I’m speaking of this podcast is beautiful, one because it is January 29th, 2026 when I’m recording this podcast,

And in bulk is about to begin on February 1st. Here in northern lower Michigan, we [00:01:00] are deep into winter. The light has just started to get longer. You can noticeably tell there’s a little more sunshine. And that is very exciting.

This morning when I woke up and took my little boy to school, it was negative 16 degrees, we have probably two plus feet of snow on the ground with new snow seeming to fall every single day. It has been an abundance of snow kind of year, which has been really beautiful.

As somebody who loves the snow, I love to cross country ski. I don’t mind shoveling it. I don’t mind bringing wood in and having like roaring fire all day long. I love the seasons. I love the change that occurs from season to season. I love that it fully marks the passage of time, right?

Right now we’re in the winter season and wintering and embracing the darkness is all about being cozy and snuggling in [00:02:00] and dreaming of the future and thinking about. What it is you might want to create, but you’re not in any space to jump in and create it, and that’s perfect. You’re not supposed to be, we’re not hibernating like bears are, but we are slowing down and we are wintering and we are cozy into our homes.

And what’s beautiful about in bulk, also called candle mass in the Christian religion is. It’s just the quiet awakening, the sort of emerging, the seeds quickening in the ground, in fact, that’s what in bulk means is quickening in the belly, a sort of gentle emergence of an idea of a new plan, of a new way to go.

I love this take on it rather than our new year, new you kind of energy no one’s really ready for that. I mean, we might be ready for it ’cause we ate too much over the holidays. And it’s time to make a shift. And [00:03:00] definitely there are times in our lives where it’s valuable to sprint at something to go all in and give it your all for a short amount of time.

But we are not meant as humans. As any creature really to sprint all the time, and I think that’s one of the things I have definitely gotten wrong in my life and that I see people in my life also doing is this idea that we have to sprint all the time. We are meant to have fallow times, we’re meant to rest.

Like in this moment, we’re meant to emerge with something slowly and let it unfold and trust all the steps in the process. And that’s what in bulk feels like to me.

Not only is it in bulk, but on February 1st, it’s also the full snow moon, which is pretty exciting. I think it’s always a little bit of like extra magic to have two earth. And cosmic events happening at the same time. [00:04:00] So we have this earth event of in bulk, which is when you’re looking at the Earth holidays or the celebration of the earth seasons, which is how I feel about it in bulk, is a Celtic holiday that,

I think really mesmerizes a lot of us, this idea of that moment, right between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, we are on the tail end of the darkness just about to emerge into when the dark and the light are of equal measure in the Northern Hemisphere.

And so I. AM book is a perfect time to shake off the dust, stretch your limbs and think what are we here to do? What’s next for us? I certainly feel the pressure in January to start something new. I feel the pressure to get moving on this.

I need to get moving on that. I need to have this happen. And this year I took a different approach. This year I decided. To [00:05:00] create, to get in the energy of creating things. I made four or five different garments, and some of them had a really deep creative aspect to them, something I hadn’t done before.

Just to get into that, making space. For me, making things is one of my favorite things to do on the planet. And I think anytime you create, whether that’s clothing as I do, or that’s, artwork, or that’s journaling, or that’s dinner or that’s a snowman, like, it puts us into the present moment and we are no longer thinking about the past or the future. We’re focused in on the moment we’re in right now, and I think that is one of the beautiful things. About getting in the flow and about making things in general. I promised myself. That I would create the first couple of weeks in January. That doesn’t mean I still didn’t work. I still had work I needed to do for myself. I still had a household to tend, I still had a little boy to tend, I still had, work that I do for [00:06:00] charm patterns that I needed to accomplish.

And so all those things were still in process. But I made a focus and an intention of creating, rather than thinking about what I was going to build in my business, what I was going to build in my home this year, I was just gonna be present. I’m working on a small project, and I trusted that in that process, I would know what direction I wanted my business to go into.

I would know what direction and intention I wanted for my life in this coming year. There were moments when I was like, I need to get moving on this. I don’t know exactly what I wanna do. I felt lost and floundering a little bit in my direction, especially when it came to my business.

Did I wanna take this opportunity? Did I wanna take that opportunity? Am I done doing these things, I just continually kept coming back to that trust and I said, Tina, your only responsibility for the next two weeks. Is to create. You have to make things.

That’s your job. And so I did and like magic, in the [00:07:00] last week I got this complete download of the direction I want 2026 to go in how I wanna feel about 2026, what I want to focus on as far as my own personal intentions and with my business. It felt magical to be honest, and it was just me trusting in the seasons and the cycle that I was in and trusting in something larger than myself, for the first two weeks of January, I spent any spare time I had listening to inspiring podcasts, reading good books. Creating things in my studio making dinner doing the dishes tending to my son and doing work

but creating magic and creating space in your life doesn’t take monumental change. It takes having, an intention and setting.

Space for it to [00:08:00] happen, the space that I found to do the creating that I’ve been doing the last couple weeks. It wasn’t giant spaces. There were a couple of afternoons, like on the weekends that I was able to do things, but for the most part it was 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there.

It was listening intentionally to a certain kind of podcast when I was driving rather than maybe the audio book that I wanted to. It was making an intention to bring in those certain things into my life and that felt really amazing and I love the magic that can happen from that. And so now we find ourselves on the cusp of, in bulk, on the cusp of this full snow moon, about to feel, that energy of just starting to emerge.

And I wonder what I, your life you feel is sort of beneath the surface, ready to be either had attention brought to it or ready to emerge, ready to grow [00:09:00] into something. All I want for you to do right now, is to notice it, think about what is there and how that might emerge. And I think that’s enough.

The other things though, that I do like to do, so, the Goddess Bridget is associated with in bulk, and she was a Celtic goddess known for. Her protection of the hearth, her protection of things, domestic and of utility, very nurturing feminine energy. She’s also known for being like the gutters of the threshold.

So from one space into the other, which is exactly what we feel like we’re in right now, right? We’re just slowly stretching our arms. And emerging into the hint of spring, you might have more of a hint than I do, but we [00:10:00] have two plus feet of snow on the ground, so it’s gonna be a little while before spring really springs up here.

But that energy is definitely evident and I think one of the most beautiful gifts I’ve ever given myself is to embrace the seasons. And try to incorporate that energy into my life and allowing what is has just been such a gift. So I believe that so much of our turmoil and so much of our stresses in life are fighting what is right?

I know. A ton of people who detest the winter, they don’t like to be cold and they are anxiously awaiting spring. The problem with anxiously awaiting spring is that you are no longer present. You’re no longer in the moment and are waiting for something else to happen for your joy and happiness to [00:11:00] occur.

While winter may not be your favorite, maybe that means you need to move someplace that isn’t under two feet of snow in the beginning of February. Maybe it means a shift of perspective in changing what it is that you embrace during the winter so you can find the joy peace and strength that comes from it.

But if we can both accept what we are experiencing. And strive for better at the same time, strive for change. I think that is truly the key to happiness.

I don’t know why happiness, but it was the key. But it is, it is one of the keys to happiness. This idea that fighting what is. Is[00:12:00] 

always gonna my us in this negative energy, and that doesn’t mean we just roll over and allow whatever’s happening to happen. I’m not saying you don’t make a change happen, but I am saying that.

Fighting what is is a different energy than deciding to make a change or deciding to be part of the change, or deciding to stand up for something or deciding to live in integrity in your own self. Like that’s a very different thing than just being in that fight mode of anger and frustration and waiting for something to end,

so here we are on the cusp of this new year, if you will. Spring is just gently starting to emerge, and again, I wonder what it is that you have [00:13:00] growing under the surface. What do you have that you are just beginning to see the stirrings of? One of the things that I love to do to celebrate, in bulk and to honor bridged

One of the things I love to do with my son is we go out and collect weeds. I don’t know what else to call them. Let’s call them plants that are dead. And we create a cross out of them. So actually just like an X shape, and we place that cross over our doorway to bless and protect the home. You don’t have to believe in anything in particular.

To really embrace the magic of intentionally putting things in your home that feel protective and like little blessings, right? One of the other things that we do, and I think I might do this this year, is create a little bed on Invoke, that bed is meant [00:14:00] to be a space where. You can welcome inspiration and new life.

And I think that’s a really delightful thing. Often they’ll put it near the fireplace or near the hearth. That’s this warm, cozy bed. Just waiting for new life, waiting for new inspiration. I am really delighted by that and I think we’re gonna do that this weekend.

We’ll make a little bed and we’ll make the cross for Bridget. We’ll also light a candle and think of the things that are starting to start a life inside of us. It doesn’t mean we’re gonna jump at them, doesn’t mean we’re gonna rush off and do this giant to-do list, even though, you know, I love, love to-do list.

You know that. That’s one of my favorite things. We’re still not going to do it quite like that. We’re going to ease into this because. I’m still a little tired from 2025, and I’m looking for 2026 to be about continuing my house projects. You probably know if you’ve been listening for any amount of time, last year in April, we broke ground [00:15:00] on an addition to our tiny house. We have this little 400 square foot house that was on wheels. It no longer is, but that’s actually not quite true. It is still on wheels, but it’s also on a foundation just to be fun.

And we built an addition that was 500 square feet onto the tiny house and sort of this L shape, which. I am adoring, right, because I love all of the light that my tiny house gets it’s only 12 feet wide, so there are windows on either side of that 12 feet, so there’s always light coming in from outside, which feels beautiful to me, especially living in a place that can be really dark in the winter.

The new addition is 18 feet wide, and it is also one room wide throughout it. So the addition is to the point now where it’s been built and the electrical is run, the water’s run to it, and it’s been insulated. The only things left to do on the [00:16:00] inside are to drywall, knock out the wall.

Or the opening rather, between the two buildings. And then start on the outside. So the outside still needs siding. The tiny house is also gonna get new windows and new siding so that everything will have a congruency and a synchronicity. So that’s the plan for this chair. The plan for this chair is to finish the inside, which is very close, and then continue to build and finish the outside so that the siding’s done and get the siding painted.

Is. Really amazing cedar siding that I found locally that was salvaged from an old building. I’m going to incorporate not only this cedar siding, which is like a shiplap kind of siding. Not quite, but sort of. And I’m also going to do, board and batten on the gable lens, which I’m really excited about as well.

I love texture and they’ll be all the same color ’cause I. Really have my heart set on this sort of smoky teal for the exterior of the house. But they will [00:17:00] have a different texture, which I think will be amazing. We have a tiny little door cut between the two sections so that we can go in and out.

’cause the washer and dryer is now in the new addition. So I have to actually crawl through it. Not on my hands and knees, but I have to crunch down and go through I feel like at this little hobbit door or something going into the addition, so the addition is a big part of 2026, as well as revamping the work that I’m doing and making sure that, one, I have the space for it and the energy for it, and that is aligned with what it is I want to do with my life, and also the work that I need to do to make sure all the bills are met and things that need to happen.

I love to think about a word for the ear. I’m sure you’ve heard this, and some of you might be like, oh, not a word for the ear. ’cause it can be a little, trendy, right? But because I believe so much in mindfulness and intention, I find a word and also pull an Oracle card [00:18:00] for the year.

I find both of those elements to be really grounding. Sometimes I don’t even think about the word or the card until like June. Then i’ll remember that they’re there and I’ll look and I’m like, wow. And see how it has really steered some of the directions I’m going in without me being overly focused on it,

so the word that has come to me for 2026 is honor. What that means to me is to honor my commitments to myself. To honor my body, to honor my time, to honor my desire for an ease filled peaceful life, to honor the work that I’ve already done and the work that I’m going to be doing feels like this kind of attending sort of work.

Like 2025 was challenging enough for me, that I feel like I have entered 2026 as a different version of myself. I have healed a lot of old wounds and worked through a [00:19:00] lot of things that have been challenging and I, I feel new to be honest. I mean, I’m still me, right? You’re still gonna get the same Tina on the podcast, but I feel like I have come.

Yeah, out of 2025 as a new version of myself, I wonder how many of you feel the same? I definitely have friends who also, while they’ve experienced different things than I have in 2025, have that same sort of feeling about them. And so in 2026, I wanna honor

the joy and the directions that I want in my life because I believe that how we spend our days is how we spend our lives, and if I want the finished product, whether that’s my house to be finished or the young man that I’m raising, or. The work that I’m doing. If I wanted to feel a certain way at the end of its journey, if I want it to feel expansive and [00:20:00] successful and full of ease, if I want the house to feel full of beauty and like I wanna feel held and safe in it, then I need the journey to that end to feel that way now, and that has been a major shift for me in 2025, the deep knowing that the journey needs to feel like the end result in order for my life to feel all the joy and all the beauty that I want it to feel. If I want to feel held and excited and safe and surrounded by beauty in my home.

Then I need to bring that into my home. Now I need to bring that into the journey now. Part of that has already actualized, which is kind of fun. At the end of the year, we were about to work on the drywall, we have all this snow. Money’s a little tight at the end of the year, and we made a decision to pause for a little while to wait until there’s not quite so much [00:21:00] snow to navigate bringing in drywall and also to save some money for the next portion of the house build.

And at first I felt really sad about that ’cause I just want to get into the addition. I just want to sit in my claw white tub that’s gonna be in my bedroom and lounge by candlelight, maybe a glass of champagne in my hand, vining plants hanging all over in a chandelier. Like, you know this. That’s all a girl wants.

I want that so badly. But to push on the drywall right now, would just feel like too much, it would feel too uncomfortable financially, physically, all of the above. So we decided not to, and I finally settled myself around that thought, it’s okay if this takes a couple more months, so then what we did decide to do during these couple of months when we’re not actively working on furthering the house project, we decided to work on smaller projects. We just refinished the kitchen table, which, was this [00:22:00] beautiful old, drop leaf table that I absolutely adore, but had some broken feet that I had.

Roped together and the top had lost a lot of its finish and had like big rings from hot cups and all these things, right, that happen to old tables, old wooden tables as time goes on. And so we decided to refinish it. So we, it’s actually just got his last coat of top coat. It was gonna come back into the house, the tiny house this weekend for Inva.

Look at that. A new table for Inva. How exciting is that? And what’s beautiful about that is that. That table project has been on our radar for a long time, and had we continue to push forward with the bigger house project, it would’ve been years before we got to that. Once we get the House project done, I’m guessing it’s gonna be like, whew, let’s just take a long break from all of it.

So there’s that, that we’re working on. We’re also building a canning cabinet that is gonna hold all my canning jars and my [00:23:00] canning. Pots and things like that, which I’m very excited about. I love seeing the beauty of all that harvest being preserved, that just brings joy to my eyes. It’s kind of like seeing a full, wood shed.

It makes me feel safe. Here’s this food that I have prepared and it’s gonna feed my family and here’s this wood that is stacked and it’s gonna keep my family warm. Those things bring me a lot of, safety and security. We’re working on other little projects that are making a big visual impact, a big beauty and delight kind of impact, but aren’t part of the larger project. That actually felt like growth to me,

it felt like this moment of like, oh my goodness. I am finally actualizing this idea of make the journey so that it feels like the end result because this feels like the end result. This working on beautiful things. It’s still progress, it’s still moving forward, but it’s doing it in this way that is just full [00:24:00] of beauty, literally.

So One of the things I want you to take home from this idea of in bulk, and maybe you do something this weekend just to celebrate the light and to celebrate the emergence, the tiny stirring into spring, deep in the belly of the earth. Think about how small changes make huge differences and that tending the small flames in our life, doing a small step, having a intentional morning routine, if that’s your thing, which I’m a big advocate for, I know that you know that like my morning routine sets up my whole day for all the success that I want to have.

But sometimes it’s real small. Sometimes I light a candle and draw a card. Sometimes that’s all I have time for. Sometimes I do a meditation and I light a candle and draw a card, and I journal for three morning pages. Like maybe I do all of that in a perfect day. I do that most of the time, but sometimes I just have space for a little bit [00:25:00] making sure that I do even just a little bit.

It is this way of really honoring myself and honoring my desire to have a spiritual and sacred connection to the earth and to the universe as a whole and to God, however you define God. Right? That’s really important to me. So remember that. It’s just the small things.

Things that are sort of coming and emerging into light. It doesn’t need to be about monumental changes, although it’s okay to sprint sometimes, but not all the time. Allow yourself to be at ease in the season. Allow yourself to be creative and tend the small fires and to cook dinner with so much intention and love and embrace that on this end bulk and this full snow moon.

Think about the things that are hidden beneath the surface, the things that you’re ready to let go of, the things that you’re ready to just allow to grow. [00:26:00] Alright, dear once, thanks for being here. I can’t wait to see you next time.