As I write this it is just moments away from the turning of the old year into the new. 2013 is passing, like the fading of the rose on the right, and 2014 is just coming into bud. I think that is a beautiful way to look at the old year passing and the new year just coming in. The rose above is one of my favorites, the old-fashioned rose ‘Rosette Delizy,’ a very fragrant tea rose.

I went through my photos for 2013 today to get a timeline of the year just passing. I take many photos everyday, a collection of moments, mindfulness in action. I was deeply touched by what I saw because, without going into the multitudes of pictures which would not be possible in one blog post, the over-arching theme was one of deep solitude. Most of the pictures were garden pictures, and pictures of my beloved animal companions, and quite a lot of pictures of my pastel drawings of “The 100 Ladies” which will be a book at some point. The inner world of Dragonfly Cottage.

The thing that so touched me was that it was a quiet year, and as I moved through it a liminal time, posed on the threshold of the life that would be coming in this new year (It is now 2014 and there are fireworks going off in the distance showering the sky with sparkling radiance…). The first half of the year was one of the quietest times of my life, and July 1 this website went up, my long-running blog, Maitri’s Heart, this blog here now, moved it’s home and archives back to 2007 to this location bowing in appreciation to over 700,000 visitors who shared the journey with me before the move, and that month I started working with Rachna, my business mentor, to bring together the threads of the tapestry of my life into a business that will be the foundation of my life in it’s final decades.

We have spent months working to bring it all together and this month, January 2014, my new school, The Wabi Sabi School of Mindfulness, will open, I will begin to do private mentoring, I am writing a book based on this “365 Days” series, and a number of other projects are in the works. It is the year I will turn 60, on April 30, and my life is changing in every direction. Too, my heart is opening to things I have long thought were gone forever. It is a year of limitless possibilities and I am as excited as an expectant child and feeling the warmth and fullness of a woman ripening with age. I am between the bud and the fading rose, I am a woman in full bloom with the blush of the rose above still in my cheeks. I look so forward to turning sixty. The very idea fills me with joy.

But it is the first hour of the new year and I want to savor these moments right now. All of the lights are off save one next to me here, glowing in the darkness. The clock on the wall is ticking loudly and there is the soft whirring of the big old fan from my childhood, built in the 1950’s, that still works like a charm, behind me. Many newer fans have come and gone while this one keeps humming along. It isn’t blowing on me, I like it to run because the soft background noise is comforting to me.

My tiny pug Delilah is asleep in my lap and my 3 little boy pugs are in their beds sleeping around me. A candle is burning on my little altar surrounded my crystals glimmering in the candlelight, the fragrance of the essential oils in the soy candle wax floats softly in the air around me and is lovely.

There is much to come in the year ahead, and I will write about it here as it happens, but just now I will spend the final moments of the night with my sweet, sleeping companions all around me, and sit in the silence, and pray in thanksgiving for all of the gifts of the year we have just left, and in gratitude in advance for those that will come this year.

I wish for you many blessings for the year ahead, and send you much love. May you bloom this year like the hundreds of roses here at Dragonfly Cottage, may your year be fecund, and full of delights and surprises you cannot yet imagine, and may you have peace in your heart every day. Count and bless the moments as you encounter them in 2014, and bless each one as it passes.

Welcome to the new year dear friends, welcome…