Oh, yes. Is this not what our mothers, and their mothers before them have passed down to us? Is it not what we have ourselves embraced and held tightly to in all of the empty, echoing corridors of our minds when the wind blew fiercely and the bone cold of it all threatened to leave us numb with wanting? Oh, my mother wasn’t a happy woman - rarely was there an unselfconscious smile about her lips or a cheerful word for me, and it took me a very long time (an insufferably long time) to discover that the world could have some sunshine in it and that winter, after all, wasn’t meant to be forever. Someone whispered in my ear…”Go, my darling. Run and laugh, and listen to the trees, for they have much wisdom to share with you.” And so I learned to smile, and yes, even to laugh, and I learned to love and be loved, although that came after much stumbling and tumbling and many bruises and bumps. And who was that someone? The whisperer? The one whose voice was like a warm woolen wrap about my shoulders keeping me safe and warm through cold times? Well, the other night in a dream, I saw a young woman with her head in her hands, and I smiled at her and wrapped her in my arms and said, ” Go my darling….”

And so I did.

I think about the early years of my marriage - my determination to be a good wife and then a good mother - and the devastation I felt when I learned that my husband had cheated on me. The recriminations, the apologies, the long series of broken promises…my broken-hearted disappointment and shame, my feelings of inadequacy, of inferiority, of insecurity and self-loathing. I couldn’t tell anyone because I saw it as MY failure, not his -and so, I lived with it and pretended that it didn’t matter; convinced myself that this was *real* life that I was living, not some glamorized fairy tale, after all. But there were times when I wanted to give up. Wanted to just lie down and never get up again. Just wanted it all to end, somehow.

But all along, and especially at my lowest points, there was a voice, a presence, an ephemeral sense of communion and support, of love and of assurance that all would be well. Perhaps in dreams.

And now I feel very strongly you see that the *now* me has sent comfort back to the *then* me, and made it possible for her to carry on. And strangely, now, when I encounter difficulties in life, or things don’t go quite as I had hoped, there is some *knowing*, some overarching sense that all really will be well - that all really IS well.

Oh, magical thinking, no doubt, but Jung would’ve loved it, wouldn’t he have?

Even my body seems, lately, to be in tune with what I believe to be best for it; my cravings for *bad* things (chocolate, pastries, great gobs of freshly baked bread dripping with butter) flare up now and again, but disappear almost as soon as they arrived.

Omigoodness. I can drive a car through a blizzard and come out whole on the other side; I can take one bite of a blueberry muffin and throw the rest away…I can set one hell of a table, and I can cook most anything (except those cakes of Ruby Jean’s). I may even throw caution to the wind and WEIGH myself tomorrow! Life is good.

Each one of you is so very, very special to me. I hope that deep inside yourselves, you know how very lovely you are. (And you are decidedly NOT a horse’s rear end, Anngirl. Tsk.)

And now for a little holiday cheer….I promise you’ll LOVE this: (make sure your volume is up a bit)

http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=2Fe11OlMiz8

Thhhhaaaaaaat’s aaaaalllllll, folks!