My New Year’s Eve ritual:

An early Happy Hour with a friend at a gorgeous hotel bar. Quiet. Whiskey. Delicious food. Laughter. Pommes frites for dessert.

I bring a small notebook and I write three small letters to myself, one to a page. The size of the notebook means that each letter isn’t much more than what might fit on a postcard.

We know it’s time to leave when the bar starts to fill up with women in sparkly dresses.

I head home and sit by the fireplace. And then BED! Dear god I love bed. Still haven’t made it to midnight, but the new year is always still there the next day.

Do you want to read the letters? I’m putting them here.

The letter from me-right-now to me-exactly-one-year-ago.

Oh love. Listen. You can handle everything that happens this year. You can. At times you’ll think you won’t and can’t, but you do. Beautifully.

Even moments of utterly-destroyed and zerstört am Boden turn out later to be what was needed. I am on the other side and I see it.

Wanna know a secret? You can have things that you think you can’t. You’ll just have to release a lot of rules about how.

Also: things will happen that seem awful but they are not awful. They are exactly what is needed. So breathe. And take care of yourself. And go to the beach. I am with you.

The letter from me-right-now to me-in-one-year-from-now.

Wow. I can’t wait to meet you. I can’t wait to be you.

Here is what I wish for you: That you always know there is no way to let me down. That you can look back on your year delightedly, with a secret smile and a contented sigh.

With at least a few (lots!) moments of OH THANK GOD FINALLY.

I wish you pleasure, lusciousness and delight. I hope you are glowing and serene, energized and steady, smiling your smile, wearing something gorgeous. And feeling great in every way. I am squeezing your hand from here.

The letter from me-in-one-year-from-now to me-right-now.

Look at you! Thank you so much for everything you went through in 2012 so we could be together here, now. I hope you are tingling with anticipation!

It is so much easier to be done with false limitations than you think. That’s what this coming year is about. You filled an entire 2012 with unraveling, so that these restrictions could fall away.

Step into a year of pleasures if you choose to have them.

Here’s what I want you to know:

The idea that you could ever be behind is a lie. The idea that you have to make do is a lie. Have-to and either-or: lies. TRUTH is: Pleasure. Breath. Touch. Silence. Laughter. Delight in enough and delight in plenty. It’s all in the compass. You don’t have to believe me and it doesn’t have to make sense.

Take it in. Take me in. I am with you all the way.

Goodbye, goodbye. Hello, hello.

Goodbye, goodbye to the year when the barns all burned.

What I want to remember from last year was not the barns burning but that the burning was how I learned the song you sing while watching them burn. Humming it now.

Sweet dreams, 2012. I can’t wait to explore you, 2013.

And the thing I want to remember most is how adoring I feel towards me from a year ago. How much I want to hold her and tell her that she is okay. And to remember that me in a year feels that way about me. She knows how much work I had to do to get to her, and she is more appreciative than I can imagine.

I will forget, of course. But maybe I’ll remember a little sooner next time. Planting that.

Play with me?

You can write your own little letters, if you like.

I am also receptive to: smiles, humming, warm wishes for a FANTASTIC new year, and general hanging out.

As always: we make this a safe and welcoming space through the deceptively simple practice of abstaining from advice. Love and to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads.