Good morning,
Christmas is still with us. We carry it with us. Some of us carry it with us all year long. The light is always inside of us.
And today, the day after the celebration, many of us get a little time to catch up with ourselves.
The New Year is upon us. We can get up any day and make a new start but there is something about the time between Christmas and New Years that makes me stop and reflect. I think many of us do. It is a definitive time for resolutions and choosing words to live by.
Sometimes we need a fresh start. Sometimes we just need to reignite what we already have, know or understand to be true. It does not have to be a time of great change, or complete reinvention. Small changes are important. In fact over time many small changes add up significantly.
It is a time that I like to think about the year that has gone by. I go over how I spent my time and what I am grateful for. Each day through out the year I write a few notes about how I spent the day. I have all these notes written down in my calendar, and in late December I like to go over them. It helps me ask myself the needed questions. It helps me look at how I spent my life. I have been doing this for a couple of years.
Through out the fall I keep my ear out for a word to carry into the new year. This will be my fifth year doing this. It is an idea I found somewhere on the internet and it struck me as better than a resolution because it had more flexibility. I take a word and I carry it with me. I find that over time these words add up and once I carry them for a year they stay with me the next year. Once you commit to a word for the year you don't just let it go the following year. You continue to build on it. I keep the words in mind. I have them written on my bulletin board and I do my best trying to live out the intention of the word and what I believe it means.
I know many of you do this too. You carry a word around in your pocket just like I do. It is there to remind you of whatever it is you need to be reminded of. I know that you too are thinking and dreaming up ideas for the new year. Because we live we change and grow and reflection is an essential part of that.
So I hope that this time in between the holidays is restful for you. I hope that it is a time of intention and a time of sweetness, and that you carry whatever you need into the new year.
When I look over the last four years I think of my words and as you know I will bring them forward as best I can.
May you savour.
May you strengthen.
May you inspire.
May you go into the year with grace.
Thank you so much for reading. This year Angela has created a Create Beauty Everyday Calendar that we have enclosed here in this letter for you to download and copy if you would like.
Deanne
PS: Don't forget the ever popular Packing Presents is back until December 31st!
