“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

2017 ended with hosting a family holiday get-together in our new home, visiting my parents in their new home and watching the ball drop with our kids at home, ringing in 2018 with the people I love the most. 2017 was full of much transition – we moved into a new home, my oldest two kids left elementary school and moved on to middle school and my parents bought a new home. 2017 held much ugliness on the national stage. It beat down all of us who are dreamers and hopers and optimists. But the year ahead is a blank book waiting to be written, a plot of soil waiting to be planted.

In 2018, may we all sow seeds of all the things we’d like to see bloom in our world: love, compassion, empathy, diversity, knowledge. May we leave behind the ugliness and the division and the hate and the pessimism and bring our renewed hopes into this New Year.

This year, I will stand up for myself, for those I love, and for those who are marginalized. I will confront ignorance and hatred with as much grace as I can muster, and I will not be afraid to say no to things that do not serve my highest good. I will let go of those people and situations that need to be left behind. And I will be open to the magic of this world, and when I need to, I will create my own.

I wish you all a wonderful 2018.