Happy New Year!

I have been thinking about the New Year. Although it is nothing more than a mere change of date on the calendar, it gives everyone a little nudge for introspection and self-reflection. Life isn’t so generous that you get to completely start over but with a new year, a small window does open to changing things perhaps so that it feels like a new start.
We all secretly hope to start over, sometimes so we can be free of our past mistakes and errors, to set the record straight or to reclaim what we have lost. That is why resolutions are made. To start with a clean slate, clean of the markings from our pasts that we desire no longer to acknowledge and admit. Somethings cannot be undone. A lost love, a lost opportunity, a lost moment in time, sometimes can change the trajectory of one’s life. But there is always hope. A hope to start over and get things right or at least in the right direction.
I want to start my new year with hope. Hope for better things, better times, better moments. I hope for less fear and more love. I hope for more affection and less heart ache. I hope for more kindness and less cruelty. I hope for more wisdom and less foolishness.
I want to start my new year with caring. Caring better for myself, so that I can care for others too. I am nothing if I don’t care, for myself and others. Caring gives meaning to life and makes life worth living.
I want to start my new year with passion. I want to feel the intensity of wanting to do something so badly that it hurts when I can’t. Knowing what you are passionate about is a gift. I want to unwrap this gift over and over again. I want to connect and reconnect with my passions.
I want this new year to start with mindfulness. Mindfulness of who I am and how I belong in the world around me. I want to understand my deeper desires and interests and things that keep me alive.
I want to stay alive. As a cancer survivor, my first and foremost resolution is to stay alive with utmost honesty to the gift of life that I have been given.
I need to enter this year with a continued commitment to help others who suffer and with a wish to help alleviate their suffering with the gifts and insights I have to offer.
I want this new year to allow me to maintain my spirit of giving throughout the year and not just around holidays.
I want to enter the new year with an open heart and an open mind. Open heart for forgiveness and healing and open mind for growing and expanding.
I hope for the opportunities to learn more about the world and people around me and what makes them click. I hope for more patience and willingness to understand who they are. I hope for more ability to accept others as who and where they are.
I hope for the better judgement to walk away when need be but also to hold my ground when it is necessary.
I hope to honor myself by remaining happy with the choices I have made and to work on being happy every day. I hope to be accepting of things that weren’t my choice but I still have to withstand them.
I want this new year to remain a year that I find myself full of gratitude and to nurture practicing gratitude every day.
I want to be true to myself and to others to the best of my ability.
I resolve to be me just a little better, just a little stronger, just a little more hopeful, just a little more open. The weight loss, exercise, money and vacations will all happen if I am truly happy with who I am and what I do!
Wishing all of you a very happy and blessed new year! Happy 2016. May you have a year where you get to be who you are and whom you love.

Wishing you lots of days of health, joy and self renewal in 2016.