2011 - The Year of Sweet Surrender

Thank you, Sarah McLachlan, for the phrase in my title. "Sweet Surrender" is what has been coming to me over and over as I look ahead to yet another New Year.

In years past, I've always sat there on New Year's Eve making all sorts of positive intentions and visualizing things I would like to see happen in the new year. And many years, things did indeed move and shake and change my life. But in the last 3 years, I have to honestly say that--with the exception of publishing my novel, which was a HUGE milestone and personal victory/dream come true for me--very little has "come true" or changed. In fact, I would have to say that for the last three years my life I have felt trapped in an unmovable glacier.

2010 wasn't the happiest of years for me. It was a year of loss. Coping with the loss of my late brother. Losing my business, because of the loss of full use of my right arm tendon. Loss of my savings, as I lived off them during a long period of unemployment. Then when I did land a temp job, I still didn't quite make enough to change my living arrangement, which I've felt "stuck" in for way too long. Loss of consistent and quality writing time. There were other minor losses and disappointments here and there, but they're not worth going into.

The three things that kept my spirits up this year...were my dearest loved ones, running the Air Force Half Marathon, and my hiking club--which was something I could always look forward to on several weekends out of the year.

So yeah...I will be very glad to see 2010 go. Arrivederci, baby!

And this year, rather than making resolutions or hopefully intending that this will happen and that will happen....I will just laugh and admit that I haven't a CLUE what's going to happen. I surrender. Not in a complacent way, but in a letting go kind of way. A "trusting that my Higher Power (who I call God) will shine a light" kind of way.

I'll accept the things I can't change, I'll put on my Big Girl Pants and change the things I can, and hopefully I'll have the wisdom to know the difference. And I will take ALL the divine inspiration I can possibly get. (Please and thank you)

Bring on 2011, I say. Bring it! (Makes me giggle and think of the guy in Spinal Tap..."Ours go to 11.")

I'm ready to move forward....in sweet surrender.


~Namaste