Happy New Year!! Here's to becoming our true selves ...

It's hard to believe that today is the last day of 2010. Hard for me to even put into words what a year this has been. I have been challenged on so many levels. It's been a hard year but it has also been a very rewarding and joyful year. It is in our darkest moments where I believe true transformation and growth take place ... I reached my darkest moment this year, and thank God for all the love and support of friends, family, my dogs (Ahnung, Missy and Mister), faith .... I was able to see that it is in our darkest moments where the stars shine the brightest.

I close out this year with a heart full of gratitude for all who have touched my life and my heart in so many ways. We are all connected ... I am especially grateful for my dear friend Laura who has opened up her heart and her home to me as I have gone through a very painful transition and the ending of a long-term relationship. In exactly two weeks I close on my new home. It will mark the beginning of my next phase in my life's journey. I will continue to work on healing myself ... spiritually, emotionally and physically ...

I would like to wish everyone a very Happy New Year! May 2011 bring us joy and happiness ... and when loss and pain touch our lives, I wish for us the courage and strength to move through the pain and to trust that we can get to the other side ...

Now I Become Myself

by May Sarton

Now I become myself. It's taken

Time, many years and places;

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people's faces,

Run madly, as if Time were there,

Terribly old, crying a warning,

"Hurry, you will be dead before--"

(What? Before you reach the morning?

Or the end of the poem is clear?

Or love safe in the walled city?)

Now to stand still, to be here,

Feel my own weight and density!

The black shadow on the paper

Is my hand; the shadow of a word

As thought shapes the shaper

Falls heavy on the page, is heard.

All fuses now, falls into place

From wish to action, word to silence,

My work, my love, my time, my face

Gathered into one intense

Gesture of growing like a plant.

As slowly as the ripening fruit

Fertile, detached, and always spent,

Falls but does not exhaust the root,

So all the poem is, can give,

Grows in me to become the song,

Made so and rooted by love.

Now there is time and Time is young.

O, in this single hour I live

All of myself and do not move.

I, the pursued, who madly ran,

Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

and thank you Ahnung (her name means 'star' in ojibway) for continuing to be my north star and guiding me through the night skies as we move through this transition. She's been busy doing her work as a therapy dog by simply being with me. It never ceases to amaze me how healing and powerful the love of our four-legged furry companions can be .... for those of you with furry companions, give them an extra hug (and treat!) as we welcome the New Year!!!