A Happy New Year

Champagne, fireworks, hugs and kisses, and the ushering in of a brand new year. The celebration of the exchange of the old for the new, an acknowledgment that everything can be made fresh again.

This is new year.

May 2017 be for you and the people you love a year of positivity. A year of challenges instead of obstacles, when bumps in the road mean we’re feeling the ride more fully.

May it be a year of commitments kept. Of surrounding ourselves with people we can depend on and being that person for them in return.

May it be a year of kindness. To our children, our spouses, our family and friends, our acquaintances, to the stranger in the street – and to ourselves as well. Let’s listen more, understand more, empathise more, and judge less.

May this be a year of loving ourselves more. Loving ourselves enough to take responsibility for the changes we want to make in our lives.

May it be a year we use our bodies more. Live in them more, be more inspired by what they can do and how amazing they really are. Let’s put good things into them and ask good things out of them – because nothing is more important than our health and the health of the people we love.

May this be a year of more sunrises – of realising how much more we can get done in our day if we commit to starting it just an hour earlier.

May it be a year of gratitude. Of looking at the glass as not just half full but running over, and understanding that the more we focus on what we have, the more room we leave for even better things to come.

May this be a year of good books and good TV, of keeping up with what’s going on in the world and using technology no more than is productive.

May 2017 be a year of vision. Vision of what we want for ourselves in every area of our lives, and of how we will get there. Let’s write it down and use it as a road map. Let’s plan it out and know where we’re going – because, unfortunately, hope is not a plan and distractions are everywhere.

May it be a year of friendship – old friends, good friends, new friends. We never know who’s out there waiting to come into our lives.

May it be a year of good food and good conversation, and these two things in combination with one another as often as possible. But let’s listen more than we talk, let’s ask questions instead of telling stories – and watch and see how much more we learn about the people who matter to us.

May it be a year where we accept that many of these things will not occur at the same time as one another and that imperfection really is one of life’s only true certainties. It’s in the grey areas that the magic happens and the surprises reveal themselves. Let’s forgive ourselves more, laugh at ourselves more.

In 2017 I wish you love and health and sunshine and sweet kisses and uncontrollable laughter and perfect cups of tea and every good thing you wish for yourself.

Let’s make this a very, very happy new year!

Love, Catherine