Happy New Year!

Such excitement! Parties and hopes for a fresh start, tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow starts a new day and new year. Yes, it can be overwhelming. But it should not be... tomorrow will be just like today. The new year does bring a kind of hope that we can set goals and things will be different. Nothing to stress about. Use this time to think about things you may want. Kind of a Christmas Club account if you will. Now, some of you reading this may not know what a Christmas Club account is ( ha ha) I am aging myself. A Christmas Club account was available at banks, and you could save money through out the year for Christmas. Ok, I was a mere child when those were popular. Start the day exploring and taking small steps toward a larger goal you would like. Use this time wisely for change but understand it will be small change and there will be bumps on the road. Happy New Year and thank you for reading my thoughts!

Christmas and the newly single.......

Well, it's Christmas. The time of the year for families and friends to gather, pictures of long tables with everyone looking nice , smiling and surrounded with family are everywhere. Children are all smiling, their clean, well dressed and well mannered. Sweet isn't it? Perhaps your picture is not that cute. Perhaps you have a Goth teen, a grouchy husband, or no family at all. Whatever you have, if you can read this, feel blessed for your eyesight and your cognitive skills. I have learned that there is a season for everything. I have a personal mantra, "when in doubt, look at nature". We can have horrible weather, be it snow or rain storms where it looks like it will never clear, but it does! After a horrible Winter there is Spring ( my favorite time of year) I want to dedicate my thoughts to the men and women coping with their first year of separation from a spouse or any long term relationship. There is a "death" or very bitter winter when you first separate or divorce and you feel that your world just had an earthquake. I am not getting into how you got there, you are there. While you should allow yourself time to mourn, also look at this as being the only Christmas you will have in 2012. Start a new tradition for yourself that will help you feel like it is Christmas. If you always have a tree and don't feel like getting one, buy a live 6 inch Christmas plant at the grocery store. Do something Christmas-like. Do something different. Live the moment. It may feel like life is over, and some part of your life is, but guess what? Spring will come and new feelings will blossom. You have a choice right now, rebuild your soul stronger, or whither away. I say you choose to rebuild. Make new friends, open your soul to the world. Find others that have lived through what you are living, both currently and/or that have rebuilt. You are not alone. Reach out and you will see that there is a whole community of separated and divorced just waiting to be your friend. Let the light of hope shine on you!

NYC officer, the boots and the world......

National news is reporting that the man given a pair of boots by a NYC officer is walking around barefoot again. I can't say that it suprises me. Homeless people are on the street for a myriad of reasons. There is a large number of them that suffer from mental illness. They do have loving families that can not help their relative because the person does not want to be helped. Not that they are ung...rateful or bad, just that they have a mental illness, usually a psychotic disorder, which does not allow them to live in "reality" or in "the conventional world" And, yes, many do have a drug and/or alchol addiction but that is usually secondary to the mental illness. In fact, many addicts in general are self medicating for a mental illness. What the NYC officer did was necessary for him as well as for society. To give to others feeds our souls. We should not be discouraged by the homeless man not wearing his new shoes, we need to feel encouraged that a young, NYC officer bought a shoeless man shoes, a woman was impressed enough to take a picture and the world chose to honor all this via a viral you tube posting, facebook postings, and all that ensued. Religous people may say that the NYC office acted as God's angel on earth.