A Different Kind of Holiday Letter

Though we live much of our lives outside, in action and engagement in the world,
the deeper impact of what happens is registered in the narrative of the heart…
Sometimes the simplest things effect unexpected transformation.
~ John O’Donohue

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Christmas tree and holiday lights are out this year. In the five weeks since I returned from Santa Fe, I’ve found and secured another place to live, interviewed movers & hired one, hauled off 20% of our belongings, had a root canal, made address changes, had a 3+ hour dental procedure, dashed in for a quick pedicure. I attended a Florida Writers Assoc. holiday party, picked up used moving boxes, volunteered for our neighborhood parade of homes. I listened to podcasts, and packed the hardest room in the house, my office, and planned two books I’d write in 2016.

Angry at first to be forced from our home by an unseemly rent increase, I’m now thankful it’s happening so fast. There’s perfection in starting a new year in a new place, right after Chanukah and Christmas when many hearts open. Right as the light returns. I can almost taste the freedom from the continual maintenance in our 1910 house with an absentee landlord. Feel the ease of counter space and a dishwasher, again. Hear the silence. Silence most golden after a year of razed buildings, felled trees, beeps and grind of big trucks scraping and building the block across the street. I can imagine the words I’ll write, the life I’ll recover.

Yesterday I realized I’m looking back with new eyes now, too. I’d wanted a different year. One not weighted with financial stress and frustration. I wanted to travel. Wanted to be further along in the good stuff I’m creating. Wanted to feel better. But 2015 was about Being and Clarity. I thought what if we all wrote year-end letters from the perspective of Being rather than Doing. And I gave it a go, wrote one to you:

Wonder and awe took full residence inside me this year. I have days when moments of sparkly happy overtake me. Moments when I’m in love with the world and all the people in it. I now follow my intuition, trust it like I’ve never done before. Meaning I trust myself like never before. It’s led me to questions, new friends, a new home, to answers. Once to the answer for a question I’ve held twenty-seven years.

I briefly had a Turkish facebook friend, a ‘fundamentalist actuary’ (his words) who told me I changed the way he sees the world. Something he thought impossible. He loves an ancient tree in his yard, talks to it every morning he’s home. I think he’s a mystic, take heart in that dichotomy. I met another Facebook friend in person for the first time. She gifted me a book of poetry she wrote, read a poem out loud as we sat eating cinnamon buns. I have six new tribe members, found the way it always happens. By chance encounter, a word and unspoken recognition.

I started this blog after eight years resistance and three page re-designs. No clue what I’d write or format it’d have. It birthed itself. Two readers named it. Small journeys. Navigating through life. I write every week, stand naked in a way I never thought I would.

I was brave in my work. Submitted to contests, walked with a literary agent who solicited me though I knew she was wrong, entered steep learning curves of study. I emerged intact, more confident. Grew a Vision of myself and offerings far beyond what I’d ever considered.

I replaced my sunglasses after twenty years. With the help of a dentist I trust, learned to relax into my bite destroyed by a crazy dentist with a drill a while ago. Corrected the curvature of my spine, straightened the blossoming dowager’s hump with the help of a chiropractor I trust. Reconnected with my Santa Fe network chiropractor, blasted energetically through stuff that needed blasting.

I had Beautiful Firsts: A Super Moon. Driving back from a soak at Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs. So huge I pulled to the side of the highway, gazed with awed amazement, no thought to the cars whizzing by. A rocket launch. Like a freaky close comet in the dark dawn sky that grew to a giant balloon with a fat tail, sparked a skip in my heart with the thought I viewed an alien landing. A milestone one-page synopsis of my 300 pg. multi-layered novel. A CV list of writing classes, workshops, retreats, and conferences I’ve attended. Four pages to now that for the first time left me feeling legitimized as a writer.

Finally, I’ve had the joy of four perfectly balanced meals, my best in years, all in homes of master-chef friends. And my little grandson sends regular postcards from Taiwan that split my heart wide open. It was a good year.

Tell me, what kind of  year-end letter will you write? What will it say?

Happy Solstice, Return to the Light
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Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

A secret:  I never guessed, for even a brief moment, what a year it was.
A favorite:  The postcards from my grandson.