70: You're loved & whole
I'm dropping in briefly this evening (evening for me—we're still on New York time), after talking a meandering family walk through some wet woods and then feasting at our favorite Mexican restaurant, where, by some stroke of serendipity, the one big table was available for the six of us.
What do I want to say?
I want you to know you're loved (I love you) and whole (you need nothing; you're fine as you are; you couldn't be finer), and there is no particular way you're required to feel at this time of year, or anytime for that matter. Your inner landscape deserves to be honored whether or not it matches the season or makes sense to anyone.
A new year is coming.
There are things you might be reflecting on—things that live in the past and things that await you. Try to recognize how little control you have over either. What's done is done, and what's yet to be is largely unknowable.
In the countdown to the start of something big and new, try to fully inhabit each of the seconds ticking by—all the in-between, the throwaway moments, everything that leads up to the annual ritual of tossing out one calendar and hanging up another.
You don't need a January 1 to get what you want. There's time—an abundance of it—if you promise to stay right here, and sink into what's right now. There's hope; it lives absolutely everywhere (you might need to resolve to become better at locating it). There's you in all your you-ness.
If you believe you need something more than time, hope, and your you-ness, you're not taking small enough steps. Slow down. Breathe deeply. What's the tiniest forward-oriented action you could possibly take? Half it and start there.
Incidentally, my Madame Clairevoyant horoscope for this week is as follows:
It’s easy to think the answer to life is becoming a person other than the person you are. Like there’s a model of goodness somewhere, like if you kept traveling inward forever and ever, you’d eventually find the truth, small and smooth as a pebble. It’s a strange trap, this desire to polish yourself until you’re perfect. This week, turn your gaze outside your self, outside your windows, outside the familiar contours inside your own head.
When you turn away from regrets and resolutions, from polishing and perfecting, what do you see? What's asking for your attention and action? What half-step will you take to get closer to it? Hit 'reply' and share with me. Maybe I can help (at the very least, we could have some fun talking).
Happy New Moment,
Helen xx
Fieldnotes
Hugged Dave, Sarah Jo, George Sr., Cindy, George Jr., James, Katie, Suzanne, Pat, Fred, Lorraine, Jack, Carolyn, Chris, Debbie, Mike, Kathy, Susan, Mary Ann, and Emelia; FaceTimed with Lucy in Cambodia; ate World Peace cookies and chocolate chip orange biscotti; walked to downtown Oyster Bay in the cold, three or four times; hung out with Kitty and Zane again, and then Kitty again; found and bought merino wool shoes for Dana; smelled the Christmas tree; played Settlers of Catan for the first time (and won!); stuffed boxes of Bon Bons Chocolatier chocolate into everyone's stockings; watched Florence Foster Jenkins and ate white cheddar popcorn