Dear 2023,

Last year I asked on my knees for one more trip around the sun and I’ve emerged as if I’ve spent the year laying in clover, arms open to the sky  

and while I laid there in stillness, all that I needed found me.

All that I needed came and laid down beside me and all that I needed stayed with me while I started over
wiser and braver and with more softness
More “let’s sleep a little longer” more “you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to”
Less harshness, more softness.

Dear 2023,

Teach me nothing is permanent.

Teach me to rise each morning with the pure fascination of the way my breath sounds and how my body feels and who I am that day- teach me to sit with her and stare into her eyes and ask her “what do you need?”

Teach me to hold others how they need to be held, not how I want to hold them. To treat them as newborns, tender and with gratitude. Let me hold myself the same way.

Let me speak all that is in my heart
Let me stare at my darkness and invite her in for tea, ask her what she’s afraid of.

Dear 2023

Engulf me in new beginnings and the gift of stepping into the arms of others and trusting there is good inside them too

I have tended to the garden inside of me and this year I will sit in the shade of all that I have grown, wild and free.