The question was: what story are you telling yourself right now? (And, can you give yourself permission to change the ending?)

The answer was: this year, this decade, is ending in sadness. This year, this decade, is ending and my heart is wrapped in grief.

But: I can give myself permission to change the ending. I just need to figure out how.

A start: reflecting on the things that have made me happy this year. To wit: traveling across the country with my children and with dear friends; having a few lovely, brilliant days with my father before he died; my husband, who is my joy and my rock; my children, my children, my children, my children; overcoming fear; overcoming greater fear; facing fear and calling it to account and demanding that it reveal itself as something more, something better, something beautiful.

This is the ending that I want for my year, an ending that celebrates all the joy that circumnavigated the grief, and ending that finds the bravery in the fear and the beauty in the darkness and the wonder and greatness and living and loving that was in everything.

And I want this ending to be a beginning, an opening-up, an opening-towards new fear and new beauty and new wonder and new confusion and new dark and new light – because all of these need each other, each of these requires the others – and all of this as it folds back into the old and becomes greater-than and more.

And it can be. It will.

Happy New Year.