For you, and for the lifetimes you’ve lived in one short year:

For the endings, and the beginnings and all the spaces in between.

For last year’s words and this years voice and for everything that must remain unsaid.

For boldly speaking your truth and for all that you still hold inside.

For falling over and over and rising again and again.

For life lessons that left you in stunned disbelief and the gentle eyes of an unexpected teacher who lifted you up and carried you from the void.

For living the questions and for discovering the answers.

For losing your way and finding your tribe.

For being willing to break in order to become.

For lust and for trust and for the long twisty journey in between the two.

For head up and eyes wide open and for moments of faith when there is no light to be found.

For quiet resolve and for wailing confusion.

For eyes locked across a room for the first time and for the way your hands find each other in the middle of the night after years of sharing the same bed.

For the courage to strike off on your own and for the comfort of knowing you can always come back home.

For taking up arms against fears and demons and those intent on harm, and for laying down your weapons and walking away in peace.

For claiming what is rightfully yours and for releasing what can no longer be.

For loving what you don’t understand and questioning what you thought you knew for sure.

For letting go and holding on tight.

For losing it all in order to gain what matters.

For standing tall and learning your truth and for forgetting it all in order to start all over again.

For blind faith in something you cannot see, touch or feel and for knowing that all of life is at your fingertips.
For the beauty in contradiction, the bitterness in the compromise and the brilliance of the mystery.

For dancing with ache and longing, and for making peace with what you have.

For grasping tight and for releasing to the wind.
and the unknowing and that sliver of space where both coexist.

For the buckets of salty tears and the kindness that dried them all.

For pleasure and for pain and for the ability to hold both in one body.

For simple pleasures and crazy imaginings.

For the releasing the wild spirit within and for holding yourself in quiet dignity.

For blazing seduction, for the wild rhythm of bodies and lips and teeth and skin and for tender reverence and holding hands and spooning in the dark.

For the ease found in comfort zones and for the fierce reality of smashing down walls.

For angry battles, and grudges held and for the sweet bliss of forgiveness.

For the desolation of the desert, for the pounding of the surf and for the forever green of the forest.

For boundaries crossed and limits held firm.

For the dishes and the laundry and the dust bunnies. For keeping up with the Joneses and for leaving the mess to go out and play instead.

For building a house of cards and for burning it all to the ground.

For painstaking attention and determination and for wasting hours on beautifully impossible daydreams.

For red wine and dark chocolate and hot sex and all the earthly pleasures that ground you here.

For celebration and for mourning and for surrounding both in the ritual of spirit.

For believing and for questioning and for the unsteady ground that bridges the two.

For holding your breath till your lungs burn and for the sweet relief of the exhale.

For head-spinning kisses and mind-numbing loneliness.

For thinking you might never get what you want and for knowing you’ll always have what you need and for the bittersweet edge that this acceptance brings.

For companionship and for solitude and for the spaces you can have both at once.

For solo living room dance parties and for singing in the shower.

For hula hoops and crayons and roller skates. For growing older in body and staying young in spirit.

For the times you thought you couldn’t go on, and the moment you realized that nothing could stop you.

For knowing that you are divinity personified, beautiful beyond comprehension and powerful beyond measure.

For all of this I honor you, the year you have lived and the one you are about to begin.

Happy New Year.

– Jeanette LeBlanc