Are you feeling a battered sense of relief you’ve made it to the shore of a new year? Does the past year look so much like a shipwreck on the rocks?

You can walk away from the wreck of the last year, but you can’t really leave it behind. You wear your past like clothes: your pockets are full of memories, your shirt smells like the sea of your experiences, life lessons are left in the seams.

​It’s lovely and hopeful to look forward to a new and improved year. But it’s far stronger to begin the year with what you learned from your struggles, the strength you’ve earned from slogging through what didn’t go right, the wisdom gleaned from being wrong and doing things the hard way, over and over again.

Here’s how I want you to ring in the New Year: Celebrate what didn’t go right in the past one. Make a toast to the arguments, the bad decisions, and the failures. Make a list of your struggles, disappointments, wrong turns, and dead ends. And then next to each unfortunate incident, uncomfortable memory, or broken promise, write down how it's a gift to you and your year to come.

Here are a few things from my list … 
A struggle: I’ve been dealing with insomnia for almost a year now.
The gift: On my search for sleep, I tried everything except for prescription drugs: supplements, herbs, homeopathic remedies, breathing techniques, acupuncture… And then, I surrendered. I’m finding my way toward a fragile acceptance of my insomnia – and a hard-won recognition that I can do difficult things with little sleep (like write a book).

Bad decisions: I’ve worked way too much this past year because I couldn’t figure out how to feel done for the day, which has affected all of my relationships – and not in a good way.
The gift: I’m being more realistic about my schedule for this coming year, building in time for friends and family, making room for creativity and quiet, and honoring Sundays as a day off with my family.

A big problem: I’ve neglected my marriage.
The gift: I’ve missed him, missed us, and I’m so clear on what I need to do to be more connected.

It’s tempting to abandon your past, just walk away from the disappointments like you don’t need anything from the damaged year. But when you do, you lose all the treasures you’ve collected along the way. Because your rewards are often so heavy, it’s easy to mistake them for only rocks in your pockets, weighing you down. But when you truly look at the last year, the wreckage becomes riches: the heavy memories shine and the little mistakes glitter in the sunlight, each and every one a pearl of wisdom to carry forward into the New Year.


Would you like a little help figuring out how to turn the wreckage into riches? Set up a time for a free call with me. We'll find your treasures and ways for you to use those well-earned rewards in 2016. Click here to schedule your session with me. Hugs, Kathleen

Just before Christmas three years ago, my best neighborhood friend moved away. She lived nearby, just a few blocks away, and our boys were the same ages, perfect built-in playmates. She understood how hard it was raising two boys because she was managing the same day-to-day struggles right alongside me: the bathroom that always smelled like pee because of the potty training failures of the three and a half year old; the weary arms and shoulder pain because the 18-month-old with separation anxiety wouldn't let me put him down; the ongoing sleep deprivation that made everything else so much harder.

But then my friend’s circumstances changed and she moved away, putting half an ocean between us. Instead of having her physically close, she joined my inner circle of faraway friends. 

​And life went on. Emptier than it was before, but busyness fills whatever space is leftover, even the lonely ones. 

But when the hot water heater at my home broke on a Friday before Presidents’ Day weekend, I realized how alone I was – I didn't feel comfortable asking anyone I knew in my neighborhood if I could use their shower. 

All of my close girlfriends lived far away.

It took eight days to get a new hot water heater, due to the holiday weekend, mistakes,  and missing parts. Each morning, as I stood in my cold bathroom taking a makeshift shower using pots of hot water that had been heated up on the stove and lugged upstairs, I missed having close girlfriends nearby. I missed the comfort of a true friendship where I could just pop into a girlfriend’s home with a towel over my arm, throwing my friend a carefree, friendly wave on my way to use her shower.

I was lonely for nearby friends.

I didn't set a goal to change this, exactly. It felt a little forced to say something like I’ll have three new friends by the end of the year. And I knew that needed to happen was more personal than changing my external circumstances – I had to change in order to make new friends.

I pretend to be extroverted but I’m really more like a turtle. When I’m feeling nervous or uncomfortable, I disappear, leaving only the shell of my social self behind. And my social self, (which is my outer polished personality that keeps people from seeing my soft, squishy, emotional parts on the inside), has no talent for making deep friendships. 

Instead of disappearing into my familiar turtle shell, I talked to people in dance class, at my sons’ school, and in my moms groups. I took mindful (what some would call cautious) steps to develop friendships and not hide when I felt too vulnerable. Little by little, I created my community.

I have a full menagerie of friends now, more in my neighborhood than ever before. It took many turtle steps to find them, much more than I expected. But those many steps have led me to what I wished for years ago: a community where I belong and where I’m blessed with support – which might look like a borrowed shower and always feels like being showered with love. 


What do you wish for? If you’d like to discover your inner longing – and make a creative, inspirational road map to fulfill it – sign up for one of my Vision Board workshops in January. It’s a great way to launch the New Year - and build your hometown tribe, too. For details, visit thewellcraftedmom.com.