Happy New Year to all of you who have found your way to this blog. . .

I am so happy to welcome all of you to this site, the ones who have been here before and all of you who have just stumbled on to it today.  I love the connection I can make with all of you here.  Connection is what makes this life truly worth living.  Because I am an author and my words are read by people I seldom have the good fortune to meet “in the flesh,” it’s so gratifying that I hear from readers through emails, snail mail, phone calls and now here on this blog site too.  I can assure you that every writer wants to know she or he has made a connection with one of you, at least.  So let me say again, thanks for responding in some fashion to my words, wherever you have come across them.

Because it’s the first day of the new year, and the day so many of us make resolutions about the changes we hope to make in the new year,  I have decided to follow the lead of a friend I was at an AA meeting with this morning.  She shared that she got up and began making a list of the experiences she had this year that she is grateful for.  I loved that idea.  I plan to do the same.

And then another friend, who’s blog post I get as an email every time she writes a new one, shared how a group that she writes with on a regular basis lists the accomplishments they had for the yea and then they share that list in their sacred circle.  She said that each year they have done it has made it an even more blessed experience the next year.  It’s for sure a way to honor ourselves for work we did that we may have given very little loving attention to.  And it’s a way to help others recognize their own accomplishments too.  I want to do a variation of this tonight with some friends who are here for the week end.  It’s too easy to dismiss our every day successes as too ordinary to count.  We need to pay homage to ourselves as well as to others.

And last, but definitely not least, I want to write a list of intentions for the new year.  One that comes quickly to mind is to flesh out the direction of two new books I am eager to  write.  I actually  have four new books rumbling around in my mind but I haven’t put on paper just which to pursue first and the plan for doing so.  I love my work so I look forward to this “task” with eager anticipation.  However, I must finish the current book I’m writing and plan to have it done by March 1.  It’s a memoir and has taught me so much.

My cup does runneth over, as the saying goes.  How lucky I feel to have friends, a loving husband, sobriety, good health  and work that I love.  What more could any 71 year old woman want.  I think nothing!!  And what truly puts the icing on the cake is a decision I have made every day for this last year to act from a place of love in all encounters. I haven’t always succeeded but every time I did, I think I helped to spread a bit of peace around the world.  A bit is all that’s truly necessary for the shift to a more peaceful world to happen.

I pray that your new year is as amazing as I intend for mine to be.  Blessings on all of us.