As we enter the last month of the year, there is a tendency to rush forward, to make plans for next year, to set new goals, vision new dreams. But there are still 28 days left of this year to savor, unwind, and reflect on this past year.
These last weeks can be a time to celebrate where you are, what you’ve done, who you are becoming. It can be a time to grieve what you have lost, what you were ready to let go of and leave behind. It can be a time to feel and notice and say thank you for all that has happened, and all that is.
As I look back, I am so grateful to be back at the beach, after a year of not knowing. How two months in Arizona became eight, including the dreaded summer. And how I used that time being flat on my back to lean into the pain of sciatica and learn so much from it, to grieve some very old losses, and to finally write and publish my first book. And how I have opened my heart in new ways and am learning how to connect with and create new kinds of community.
In October 2013, at Patti Digh’s Life is a Verb Camp, I wrote “I want: to find and connect with tribe people where I live, to be able to look at Laddy’s pictures without it hurting so much, to write and publish and tour and workshop my new book, to feel more joy, more engagement in daily life.”
And now, a full year later, it is all happening. I am connecting with new communities, I have opened my heart to a new dog and, next year, I’ll be on that Heart Sparks Book Tour.
A big voice in me is saying, “Hey, when are you going to start booking the Heart Sparks Road Tour, contacting colleagues, planning the route?” And another voice answers, “In time, in time.”
For now I am lingering in the bitter and the sweetness of this past year, really embracing all I’ve been and felt and done to get where I am today. Sure, I’m having fun playing with the Road Tour vision, but I’m not getting obsessed. I’m engaging and letting go. Saying Yes and stepping back to see what happens.
It’s like casting your fishing line out into the water, then sitting back, relaxed, but with your eye on the bobber, ready to reel it in when you feel a tug. My fishing pole is baited and ready, and now I am resting back, soaking it all in, eye on the bobber, saying thank you.
