What a year. Yet despite the challenges, it still held gifts.

This year I traveled less.  I focused finally on creating the home sanctuary that was in my heart.  My bathroom and bedroom feel wonderful to spend time in now.  Other parts of our home are still works in progress.  
I bought a cello!!!!!  After 20 years of writing in my dream journal that I’d love to learn to play the cello, i finally did something about it.  I can now play the G-scale pretty well and pluck the strings. I’ve drawn an awkward and stilted version of Simple Gifts out of my cello through the bow.  I enjoy my few minutes of beautiful exploration into music making baby steps most days and it makes me smile.  Life isn’t any less full, but I’ve made space for what has long been in my heart.  

2020 catalyzed my heart to actively be the change I wish to see. I tested a number of paths, and focused in on fulfilling a dream I’ve held for many years—with the help of friends I created HEART NATURE GIVING—a full-fledged charity. By creating a container for giving that others can join me in and leveraging doTERRA’s generous Healing Hands Foundation Wellness Advocate projects, we can double all the gifts and make that much more of an impact in this world of ours. 

It would mean a great deal to me if you visit our website: www.heartnaturegiving.org.  Sign up for the newsletter--we haven’t sent any yet and will only send a few times a year.  Poke around at what we hope to create over time.  If you are able, I would be SO appreciative if you’d donate to our first project--a sustainable food source innovative greenhouse system spearheaded by a brilliant Priest in Juarez, Mexico just on the other side of El Paso.  

This year, thanks to Isabelle Bridges, I experienced a new, beautiful kind of women’s circle online and since then have found several more that feed my soul, knit me with others and feels healthy.  I expect that in the years to come, women’s circles will play a larger part in my life and business--I see the puzzle pieces and don’t yet see how they will all fit together yet, but I will say, it’s lovely and I’m treasuring the adventure of it.  

The pandemic and the craziness of the world has not impacted us in the ways that it has impacted many.  For that, I am grateful.  I am also very aware that others have not been as lucky and this year has been full of pain, grief, overwhelm, loss and struggle.  This year has been a reckoning within me to realize and hold space for both.  For those among my friends and world who are suffering AND for the beauty and goodness that others among us have experienced this year.  I also recognize that truly, this year has held so much of both for us all.  

Reading my family update you might think we’ve avoided all suffering, and in so many ways we have.  Yet truth be told, there are also struggles.  Because that’s what it is to be human.  Losses.  Confusion and pain.  Worry and overwhelm.  Some is private and not mine to tell.  Some is universal and you already know because you’re living it too.  

As I wrap up my personal 2020, I turn my face and heart toward you.  I send you love.  I send you peace.  I send you comfort.  I send you light for your darkness and strength for your weariness.  I send you smiles and hugs for all you celebrate in your life today.  I send you gratitude for being in my life.  For touching me in ways that only you can.  For showing up in your world and in your body as best you can, even when it’s hard.  That’s all we can ever ask of ourselves.  I am grateful for you.  

May 2021 hold fresh starts, new ways of being, answers and miracles. 

May it hold healing and knitting together of hearts and communities, families and friends.  May we grow through the hard and discover a better way that we knew before.  May 2021 usher in a new season after this Great Conjunction--that Star of Bethlehem that has visited us this year.