2014! Happy New Year!

I said good-bye to 2013 with a big grin on my face and a sigh of relief.

It was a tough year. My family is healthy, my friends are healthy---I am deeply, eternally grateful for those things---but, boy, in the patience-and-faith department of life, the lessons I have faced this year have been relentless and heavy.  Lots of waiting, lots of setbacks, lots of shouldering too many things at once and, therefor, lots of fatigue.  And I'm not alone. Many of my family members had the same experience this year.  Many of my friends too.

As the new year yawns and stretches its arms high, I have been reflecting, as most of us have been, on the last twelve months.  On how to frame it all. On what I can hold in my hands as a result of slogging through.

It's a cocoon, I think. That dark, private, quiet, slow time of transformation. Yes, all of those adjectives. Each and every one. This has been a year of waiting, of not knowing when change will come, of working so hard all alone (my husband worked three jobs all year, talk about working hard all alone…), of doing all of this in the dark without the light of external validation, without the pinnacle view of the rest of the journey.

Inside that cocoon?
I believe I have been growing some faith.
(That and a healthy dose of frustration… :-))


I've also been growing some gratitude for the tiniest moments of light, community, noise and movement. I've had those this year too.  I've come to realize---deep in my bones---that tiny is everything because tiny is still something and as long as I am present with what is something then it permeates my skin regardless of its size and it takes my shape and offers me its gifts.  Phew.  A mouthful. But yeah, all that. Kind of amazing.

So to those friends and family who have offered me those tiny moments, I offer you this, from The Zombies.  This has sort of become Derek's and my 2014 New Year's song and I extend it to you all: A thank you and a hopeful promise, for all of us, of good things to come.

And I won't forget
The way you helped me up when I was down
And I won't forget
The way you said "darling, I love you"
You gave me faith to go on
Now we're there
And we've only just begun
This will be our year
Took a long time to come. *

But like I said, I am grinning and sighing as 2014 wakes its sleepy self up.  Or as my friend Jeannie Mobley Tanaka said, "…2013, don't let the door slap your backside going out." And I'll admit it, you should have seen me New Year's Eve at midnight, I had all my weight pushing 2013 through that damn door...

This will be our year
took a long time to come.


*This video is for Derek because how could I not pick the one where they are performing in a bike shop?!!


Happy 2014 everyone.
Tam