from manifestation skeptic to something in between

I tried the 13 Magical Nights ritual this year, beginning on Winter Solstice and ending in the New Year.

I’d already been thinking about what I wanted to shift or change in my life. I call this my Essentials List—an exercise I do every couple of years to see what needs tending in order for my well-being to thrive. I ask myself:

What is essential to change, release, or create in my life for my health, joy, and wholeness?

Past Essentials Lists have nudged me toward so many good things—finding my little green house, starting my spiritual direction practice, taking an ancestry trip, investigating my health, exploring my queer identity… the list goes on.

So this year, I combined the two processes. I made a list of my 13 essential wishes—some deeply personal (relationships, routines, home), some playful (travel, hobbies), and some about work dreams and offerings I want to bring into the world.

Why this ritual surprised me

From the outside, 13 magical wishes isn’t something I’d normally be drawn to. It definitely plays with the concept of manifestion, and even feels close to the realm of spiritual bypassing—and let me tell you, I am deeply skeptical of any form of binary thinking and spiritual bypassing.

So a quick definition:

Spiritual bypassing is using spiritual ideas, practices, or beliefs to avoid dealing with emotional pain, trauma, or life’s harder realities.

The term (coined by psychotherapist John Welwood) describes things like:
• “good vibes only” instead of naming pain
• demanding forgiveness without addressing harm
• “just pray about it” or “God had a plan” instead of allowing suffering to be present and sitting in unknowing
• using positivity or faith to suppress difficult emotions

Manifestation becomes bypassing when it tries to skip the messy human work—processing grief, trauma, discomfort—and jumps straight to “think good thoughts and it will appear.”

So when I see something inviting me to write 13 Magical Wishes, my first instinct is skepticism. I’m not someone who believes you can put wishes on paper and — poof! — they happen.

And to avoid that magical thinking, I tend to swing to the opposite extreme: radical independence. The belief that I alone must make every change happen through effort, strategy, and grit. This swing to the other side started pretty young, with scepticism anytime prayer was suggested to me as a way to avoid feeling my emotions or difficult realities. I have lived with a physical disability and mom who carried severe depression my whole life, neither of which were “healed”. God didn’t change those realities. So I leaned into trusting myself to make life happen, into hyper-control.

But I’m learning that there’s a middle space between bypassing and hyper-independence — a space where personal effort and surrender co-mingle. Where I do my part, and also trust that I am not in charge of controlling my whole universe. Because let’s face it, I’m totally not. And it’s actua;;y quite comical (and completely exhausting) to think i can.

Back to the ritual…

After journaling and gathering my 13 essential wishes, I wrote each one on a strip of paper. Every night, I pulled one at random and burned it (unopened) in a candle—until only one wish remained on New Year’s Day.

That last strip becomes my conscious work for the year — the one I put real effort behind.

The other twelve?
I’m trusting those to Spirit, to Life, to the Universe — not abandoning them, but releasing my grip. They will simmer in my subconscious, drift through dreams and thoughts, and have space to unfold without me project-managing them into existence.

It’s not about wiping my hands clean. It’s about letting go of control. No ten-step action plans. No performance pressure. Just trust, surrender, and subtle movement. Letting myself dream without gripping.

What remained — my “one” for the year

The final surviving wish was a work wish.

It’s about re-creating or re-working an old offering into something new — a space for folks who have deconstructed to play, explore, and reconnect with their bodies. I’m envisioning something experiential, curious, and imaginative — an offering that gets you out of your head and back into sensation, movement, dreaming, and creative possibility.

That is my conscious work for this year. And I’m excited to follow where it leads.

Did you try this ritual—or something like it? What emerged for you, and what are you holding lightly this year while still giving it care?

If you’re curious about exploring this further, I offer [spiritual direction sessions] that help you connect with your inner life, your longings, and what wants to emerge—without needing to force or control the process.

Did you try this ritual—or something like it?

What emerged for you, and what are you holding lightly this year while still giving it care?

If you’re curious about exploring this further, I offer spiritual direction sessions that help you connect with your inner life, your longings, and what wants to emerge—without needing to force or control the process.

I’d love to hear from you