Happy New Year, everyone...I hope this holiday season has provided some precious jewels of memory and experience for you to treasure well into 2019! However, if you are estranged from biological relatives and those cuts still sting like scratches on your soul, I hope even more for you that bits of beauty filled those spaces within you that may still feel dark and unloved. If you are saying to yourself, "Nope--nothing like that happened for me--no beauty, only memories of loss", I am wondering if you would consider looking a little closer at the just-passed holidays, maybe just a peek backwards into the past few weeks to see what may be hiding there to uplift and console you?

I'll go first while you do some flipping through your memories....

First, there was the rising sun on the day of the Winter Solstice that crested through the trees outside my kitchen window. That sun never lets me down! She always shows up, gives me her best, travels with me every step of my day, every day. And even though she sinks every dusk, I can count on her 100% to be there in the morning. What loyalty & consolation!

Second, there was a particularly difficult day this holiday that is the annual anniversary of the death of a relative, one who did not shun me. On this day, I was suffering and my sense of aloneness felt huge around me and also bone-deep. My ever-valiant husband encouraged me to go out, and upon walking into a restaurant, there sat an acquaintance of ours who greeted me with such love, with so much hugging and squeezing my hands and tears in her eyes, and she expressed regrets for years passing without visiting. It was like walking into the arms of a lost grandmother, and my mood immediately changed from grief to gratitude. I smiled. Apparently I had been a gift to her and never realized it, and when I needed support the most, she became a gift to me. What a blessing!

Last, three Carolina Wrens woke me this morning just outside my window, trilling, chortling, scampering through last summer's dried runner bean and morning glory vines. Before I opened my eyes, I was smiling, the first morning of 2019.

Aside from the innumerable blessings of my day to day life, these are some previous treasures from the 2018 holiday season that I will carry with me into 2019. They do not change the facts of my history, but they make life today much more joyful...and today is far more important and real than the past!

Now that I gave you some time to think, what treasures are winking at you from your holiday season that perhaps you did not initially notice? It may have been "only" music uplifting your heart or the blessing of wonderful food or the sweet smile of a child you pass on the street, but, I am certain, there is something that transfigured your losses and pain, even if for but a few moments, into peace...and that moment can be your greatest teacher in 2019! If you can have it for a moment, you can fashion it into a way of being.

May you find moments of peace, and even sparkling joy, in 2019---no one can take that from you!