Welcoming 2022

We did it. We made it through the year. Perhaps a little worse for wear, but we’re here. No matter how you intend to spend New Year’s Eve, either with family and friends or celebrating on your own, the evening of December 31st is a beautiful time to reflect.

Here are some questions to take stock of the year behind you, and to invest in hope for the year ahead:  

What inspired me this year?

What connections sustained me?

What made me laugh in 2021?

What was my biggest challenge?

What am I most grateful for?

What do I want to take with me into the new year?

What do I want to leave behind?

What soothed and grounded me this year?

How did I grow this year?

Consider journaling on a few of these questions and, if you’d like, reading aloud this poem by W.S. Merwin. Happy New Year.

To the New Year

by W.S. Merwin

With what stillness at last

you appear in the valley

your first sunlight reaching down

to touch the tips of a few

high leaves that do not stir

as though they had not noticed

and did not know you at all

then the voice of a dove calls

from far away in itself

to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible