Every month on the 1st, Cookie + Kate’s What To Cook This Month shows up in my inbox.
I love it. It saves me from a rabbit hole of recipe searching, and tells me exactly what’s good, what’s in season, and what works with my food allergies.
I’m offering you something similar, but guided by the worlds I live in. ('Cause I'm not a culinary genius...yet.)
Introducing: What to Write This Month 💫🖋️
It’s a connection-led, intuitively-informed guide to attune your business practices and content creation to the seasonal, astrological, and collective energies shaping the month ahead.
But it's not all woo. I layer in my lived experience and clinical perspective as a long-time therapist, and filter everything through my lens as a conversion copywriter and consent-based marketer.
My hope: You'll choose whichever sections and prompts most resonate for you, feel inspired to create for and tend to your business through a seasonal, non-linear lens, or simply feel validated that your experience is being reflected in the cosmos.
Prefer to reference this later? Click here to bookmark the blog version.
DECEMBER'S THEME: SANCTUARY
A theme, word, or feeling that can anchor you this month.
As the world around us continues to feel chaotic and overwhelming, many of us are holding space for increased client crises. We’re getting bills for higher insurance premiums or other living expenses, and mentally calculating what that means for our workload or what needs to be scaled back.
...All while navigating complex feelings about holidays, consumerism, capitalism, family, traditions, and community safety.
During my meditation for this edition, the word that came through was Sanctuary. An intentional invitation to come home and give yourself room for everything to be felt, even when—especially when— everything feels swirly around us.
🪺 What does sanctuary mean to you?
🪺 What are the small ways you might offer a moment of sanctuary to yourself, your clients, your business, or your community?
CONTENT BY THE CARDS: TAROT ARCHETYPES FOR DECEMBER
Reflections + prompts to help you weave sanctuary, stillness, and celebration into your content.
THE HERMIT 🕯️
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The Hermit is the loving friend who sees the tired look on our face at the party and says, “Let’s get you home.”
It is the foggy days that you stay in bed reading. It is the late nights scribbling in your journal, trying to make sense of your feelings. It is going on a soul-mending retreat, returning with a truth you can't articulate.
It is only seeing one step in front of you, and trusting your inner light.
Card pictured: The Hermit from The Modern Witch Tarot Deck (aff link)
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Hermit-Inspired Content Prompts:
- “Why slowing down helps [ideal clients] [achieve desired goal]”
- “When you’re feeling [client struggle], here’s one simple step you can take.”
- “If everything feels too loud right now, here’s what you can do…”
- “How to tell when you’re avoiding [struggle] or simply [adaptive behavior], according to a [your profession]”
→ i.e., How to tell if you’re avoiding intimacy or just giving yourself a dating reset, according to a relationship therapist.
FOUR OF SWORDS ⚔️
The Four of Swords is my favorite call for rest. It’s the deep sleep that comes after your fever breaks; you feel strength returning. It is watching your favorite show, so immersed you smell the lead character's shampoo. It is resetting your nervous system with a hot bath, a yoga class, or curling up with your senior cat.
Four of Swords Content Prompts:
- “If your brain feels overextended as a [ideal client], try this…”
- “How to practice micro-rest as a [ideal client] who struggles with [top client struggle]”
- “Why [behavior someone feels guilty about] might actually be helping you, according to a [your profession]”
FOUR OF WANDS 🎪
Four of Wands is belonging, celebration, and crossing a threshold or milestone. It’s the small "just because" party that your friend threw last minute. It’s feeling quietly proud after you submit a poem to a local publication. It’s noticing a milestone in your recovery that reminds you of your healing.
Four of Wands Content Prompts:
- “If you struggle to celebrate yourself as a [ideal client], here are small wins you’re allowed to feel proud of.”
- “How to find belonging when you’re a [ideal client] navigating [struggle] or working toward [goal].”
- “Small signs you’re growing/healing as a [ideal client] - even if you haven’t realized it yet.”
SEASONAL ENERGIES FOR YOUR BUSINESS
Seasonal insights to attune your content to what your clients may be holding, feeling, or navigating right now.
🌎 These are attuned to the Northern Hemisphere, as that’s where I reside and am connected with. Southern Hemisphere folks, please skip this section or use what resonates.
WHAT YOUR CLIENTS MIGHT NEED:
- Permission to soften their expectations of themselves and others
- Support navigating family dynamics, grief, and loneliness
- Seasonal practices to manage the shorter days/cold weather
- Reassurance that slowness is not regression
- Firmer boundaries amidst overwhelming, overstimulating, or stressful events
- Conversations about consumerism, values, and authentic giving
- Guidance on how to opt out of ‘new year, new me’ pressure
DECEMBER CONTENT THEMES
- Offer countercultural guidance that speaks to your client's deepest wound, like “you don’t need to finish strong," “you don’t need to spend the holidays with your family,” or “you don’t need to break your budget to show you care.”
- Help clients identify and honor their needs. Consider the biggest needs they have during this time, normalize why it's hard to ask, and offer scripts to help.
- Show what slowing down actually looks like, tailored to your ideal client. Slowing down for parents with a newborn is different than a fundraising executive. Adapt your content accordingly.
- Provide rituals or reflection prompts for closing out the year meaningfully, allowing space for the all range of emotions, not just celebration.
- Share a relevant recap of your year – highlights, lessons, and intentions for 2026. This offers an inside look at your process, models self-awareness, and offers relatability.
ASTRO-TENDING YOUR BUSINESS
How this month’s astrology can guide your business practices + priorities.
Sagittarius Season runs until December 21, inviting us to make meaning, see the bigger picture, and expand our mind and spirit.
Capricorn Season, starting Dec 21, on the Winter Solstice, shifts the energy from expansive into structured, where we may be called to focus on goal setting, and what's practically needed to accomplish our long-term visions.
Mercury was retrograde in Scorpio until Nov 29th, and fully emerges from its shadow on Dec 16th. Scorpio is the excavator – the one who likes to dive deep and bring to the surface what you may be avoiding. Associated with shared resources, intimacy, the “taboo”, and death/rebirth, you may find yourself reflecting on what you have been avoiding in your business, what's ready to be composed, or the inklings of a new horizon in your career.
YOUR ASTRO TO-DOS 📝
Do the one thing you’ve been avoiding. (You know what it is.)
- Identify the one overdue task that carries the most emotional weight in your business – especially if it’s tied to money, boundaries, or closure – and take one tiny step toward resolving it.
- Ask yourself: “What would feel lighter if I finally handled this?” and let the answer inform your next move.
Revisit your why.
- Check in: How are you currently measuring success in your business? Does that still align with who you are now?
- Notice if your offers genuinely feel joyful or if something needs to shift to feel more nourishing.
Become your favorite boss.
- Choose one business practice for 2026, whether it’s a weekly hour to vision or a monthly CEO day to give your business attention.
- Review your 2025 profit and loss statements, assess your offers for viability, and anchor your decisions into long-term thinking.
🪐 For the astro-nerds: I recommend looking up which houses the signs Scorpio, Sagittarius, and Capricorn are moving through in your chart for how you may be personally impacted by them.
CONTENT BY DESIGN: WORKING WITH HUMAN DESIGN TRANSITS
Human Design transits that highlight the collective energy + offer prompts to open to it.
Human Design is an energetic blueprint that weaves together ancient systems (astrology, chakras, the I Ching, Kabbalah) to help you understand your natural patterns, strengths, and ways of engaging with life.
In December, the Sun and Earth move through five different gates, each highlighting a unique theme you may feel or notice in yourself or your clients.
(If Human Design feels confusing to you, don’t worry. Just tune into the content prompts and see where your creativity flows.)
Human Design Transit Energy This Month:
- Gate 9: Focus, micro-steps, sustainable attention
- Gate 5: Rhythms, routines, seasonal cycles
- Gate 26: Integrity in marketing, selling with heart, honesty
- Gate 11: Ideas, storytelling, meaning-making
- Gate 10: Self-love, alignment, identity
Human-Design Inspired Content Prompts:
- “What focus actually looks like for [ideal client]” (Gate 9)
- “My winter rhythm vs. summer rhythm as a [role/identity]” reflection (Gate 5)
- “Here’s one thing I’d like to clear up about [service] (Gate 26)
- “A story I haven’t told you yet…” or “An idea I can’t stop thinking about…” (Gate 11)
- “A belief I’m releasing about who I should be as a [identity/role], and you can, too…” (Gate 10)
BEFORE YOU GO 💛
I hope this guide supports you in creating what feels good, tending your business in a way that feels nourishing, and gives you permission to show up just as you are.
Want to reference this later? Bookmark the blog version here and come back to it whenever you need it this month.
xo Arianna
P.S. What did you think? Hit "reply" with your honest thoughts, or click below to offer feedback. (Seriously, I welcome it!)
What did you think of What To Write This Month? 🖊️
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Grounding + helpful. Excited to try a few things.
⭐️⭐️ Helpful, but not what I'm navigating right now.
⭐️ Didn't quite land for me this month.