Welcome 2010

I let go of 2009 quietly. I didn't want any big fanfare, no loud parties, no countdowns. My husband, step-daughter and I spent the evening quietly at home; a fire in the fireplace, homemade clam chowder on the stove, and a jigsaw puzzle on the coffee table in all of it's difficult glory. We didn't make the effort to stay up. I didn't want 2009 to think that I wished it to linger any longer than necessary, so we drifted off to bed when we felt sleepy. I didn't even wake up at midnight with the neighborhood noisemakers. I simply woke to the sun at our window the next morning and a bright new future waiting for me.

I chose a word of the year for 2010. Bloom. Because I feel like a plant that has been carefully transplanted from a place where I was barely surviving (what a shock, though!) and then fed and watered with all kinds of good stuff that seems nasty and icky at first (manure, anyone?). With all of this glorious care, what plant wouldn't recover with lush and healthy growth and a plethora of staggeringly beautiful blossoms? So with the darkness and ickness of 2009 behind me and the door closed, I am blooming in 2010.

On December 30, I received news that allowed me a huge amount of closure for a very painful time in 2009. The door has been closed and I have barred and locked it from my side, to make sure that it stays there until I call on it. But with the closing of that door a whole new door that was opened just a crack at first has blown wide open with all of the glorious possibilities and dreams waiting for me to follow them. So these first days and weeks of a new year, a new decade, are filled with searching for tools to help me in my search for what dreams are truly me and what dreams are simply dreams. Who am I and what gifts was I given at birth in order to fulfill my created purpose? Why was the last path I was on so traumatically ripped away from me... what was it keeping me from doing?