Dear 2015,

I bid you a loving adieu. Thank you for opening my heart to you, even when I did not want to. Thank you for teaching me about my capacities for loving, forgiving, persevering, connecting, and letting go.

You’ve revealed to me that true strength begins in the muscle of the heart, not the biceps. But you’ve also helped me to rediscover the power of physical strength and in taking my health very seriously. You’ve allowed me to step out as my most assured self, yet also to see myself for who I am, and to remind me that my strength, my perseverance, can remain regardless of external circumstances.

You’ve given to me a deeper connection to myself and to the people that support me. You’ve given me new friends and deeper bonds with old ones. Thank you for opening my eyes to the faces of so many loved ones waiting for me to just recognize and reach out for the hand they’ve extended.

Thank you for giving me the capacity to forgive, to move out of the shadow of disconnect and anger, and to feel the joy of connection especially with those who are more difficult to love. Thank you for reminding me that forgiveness isn’t for the other, it’s to give freedom and lightness to my own tired soul. Thank you, too, for helping me to apologize when I’ve made a mess of things, when I’ve forgotten to live the qualities I teach.

Thank you for showing me my business can be purpose driven and important in this world, and for giving me the strength and resources to offer this world something true and nourishing. The teachers, students, and supporters you’ve sent my way are no small gift to allowing this to happen. Thank you for these wise teachers, precious collaborators, inspirers and gracious leaders. There is so much more space, time, wisdom and magic available when I’ve allowed myself to balance leading with being led. And thank you for reminding me again of the efficacy in this practice of yoga that helps keep me balanced, strong, and consciously living my life.

Thank you for the gift of seeing my children for the beautiful, light-filled beings they are, and for reminding me to hug more and yell less. Thank you for all of the long, slow breaths you kept me breathing, reminding me to slow my words, my reactions, my frustrations. Love is patient, you told me, again and again.

Thank you for giving me back things that I love, that have no measurable worth except that of great joy and well-being: friendships, poetry, long walks, writing, coloring, prayer and meditation. You reminded me that life is too special and too short to boil it down to numbers, money, tasks.

You came on me sharp as a knife some days, severing what I thought I knew about this world and about myself. Thank you for giving me the capacity to lay down my burdens, my work, my to-do list and to pay closer attention to what is calling me to attend to it deeply. Thank you for the compassion you’ve helped me learn for myself because of these moments, and for the grace you extended through so many loving souls. You’ve taught me to wrap up my past self in a blanket of love, kindness and humility, rather than shame and guilt, so that my future self has a shot at growing.

Thank you, also, for the gentle closings of doors that allowed for graceful new beginnings. Thank you for giving me patience to watch the new unfold, and for the strength to begin again, even when I had very little taste for doing so.

Yes, there’s been gloom and despair, yet behind its shadow has been great joy. As 15th century renaissance Franciscan Friar Giovanni Giocondo wrote on Christmas Eve 1513, “Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power. ” You’ve been a gift, not because you gave me ease and perfection, but because you did not. And in doing so, you’ve let me rewrite a story that needed to be told anew, to dig deeper for what is true and important, and to live, really live, each day leading me through you to all that comes next.

From The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac by Mary Oliver
I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.

so why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.