Happy New Year!  I hope this finds you and yours aware, awake and compassionate as you step into this new year.

The holiday season was a mixed bag for me.  I enjoy the deepening into the dark that living in the Pacific northwest brings at winter’s solstice.  I relish the dark mornings that commence with the lighting of candles and sitting in front of the fire with my coffee and the twinkling Christmas tree.  For myself, I can’t think of a easier way to enter the day than that!

But this year, I found it was also the time for the depression that is part of my personal cycle.  At this time of year, when depression is ‘driving the bus’, I find it easier to not get out of bed; I use the candle light to sequester myself from connecting from others; even from my loved ones. And, I find something in my life to be fearful about and commence on a snowball experience: as the ‘ball’ rolls, I pick up all sorts of other things to be afraid of and for.  Or to worry about!

Being one of two in an intimate partnership where both of us are self employed is a conducive environment (at least coming from my personality structure) for that fear element to be at the front of the line of choices of reactions to the vicissitudes of life.  When I am walking the personal landscape of depression I notice that I am nigh unavailable to process that landscape from any other perspective.  Conversely, when my psyche is cycling a life enhancing perspective, I find that I can reframe my responses to the darker aspects of myself from fear to wonder.

In the name of self empowerment, when I am in the ‘depths of (my) despair’ (to quote Anne of Green Gables) I need to have a solid list of doable tools to help me practice the reframe to walk in wonder rather than fear.  Here are some of them.

• First and foremost: a cuddle with my Yorkies, Emily and Sophie.  Especially Emily who has a difficult time ‘holding her licker’.
• Keeping the hummingbird feeders filled and posted right outside windows I look out of regularly.  If you are in a place with no hummingbirds, bird feeders with similarly easy visual access will work equally as well.
• Living in a place of natural beauty.
• Finding and declaring the everyday articles to be grateful for: the heat turning on in the cold room; the softness of the sheets in my bed; the smile in my husband’s eyes (not to mention the coffee he makes as he gets up before me in the morning :))
• My knitting, watching saved TV shows and listening to my books on IPod

So, if this blog post resonates for you (or one of yours), what if you chose the practice to reframe your walking in fear to walking in wonder?  And, what is your solid list of tools to assist in that practice?

I look forward to your comments.  Go in peace dear ones.