It’s New Year’s Eve Day and I’m scrolling through friends’ year end roundup posts. They share stories of grief, love, travel, illness, trauma, and cautious hope for 2023.
I’m lucky. My 2022 was amazing. I attended writing retreats in Monterey, California and Lesbos, Greece. I went on a spiritual journey on Iona, Scotland. I realized I’m supposed to write a memoir about healing chronic Lyme disease and I’m starting the new year with 100 pages already written.
I have the luxury of three months of full time writing ahead of me. No day job to exhaust me. In comparison, I wrote my last novel ALL THE MOMENTS IN BETWEEN over four years between meetings and long days writing training materials.
So far, the memoir has gushed out. Snippets come to me in the quiet. In the shower, while out for a walk, lying in bed before and after sleep. Writing the rest will be easy. Right now, life is easy. I’m truly in the flow. And I'm incredibly grateful.
Sometime around 2016, I had a remote session with a psychic a friend recommended. At the time, I was gravely thin, my skin had a green hue, most of my hair had fallen out, my tongue was white and furry, and my head felt like a giant bowling ball. My right big toenail had fallen off and the skin under my right breast had turned a weird brown color.
“I’m afraid I’m going to die,” I told the psychic.
“No, you’re not going to die,” she said.
“But would you even tell me if I was going to die?” I asked.
“Look, what you’re going through is awful, but it’s not permanent. At the end of this, I see a life for you that is better than you ever could have imagined.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“But I’m so sick. I’m barely able to function and I can’t date,” I said. At the time, I was so worried about not being able to date. It was like a giant stopwatch loomed, ticking away my girlfriend viability. I didn’t realize it then, but my priorities were scrambled – finding another person was more important than finding myself.
“Maybe that’s because you’re not supposed to date right now,” she said.
It was one of the moments I’ll never forget, where what should have been an obvious truth stunned me.
“I feel like this is happening so you change the way you do everything,” she said.
I had already started to do that. Chronic Lyme disease had forced me to stop partying with friends. It forced me to stay home, settle into my own personal quiet, to pull myself back to myself.
The more I did that, the better I felt.
Now, years later, I think about that psychic woman and I wish I knew her name so I could thank her, because she was right. Life is better than I ever could have imagined.
And I look forward to the next few months of writing about all of it.
Meanwhile, here are some fun photos featuring family and longtime and new friends around the world. Wishing peace and love to everyone in 2023.