Hello Beautiful Friend!

It’s the last day of 2021 and you are on my mind.

I’m feeling so grateful for us being able to walk, side by side, through all the ups and downs of life.

I know this past year has been filled with a lot of uncertainty, loss, and disappointment. And, also, it has also been filled with connection, joy, and love.

Whatever you have experienced, and however you are feeling right now, I want you to know that you are not alone and that I honor your journey. I trust your path. I see your goodness.

Because you are here with me, I know that you share my values of friendship, family, connection, love, creativity, and self-expression.

I wanted to pop by today to remind us all that we have the choice to focus today on these values. We can turn our attention to simple gratitude and to love. We can end this year by practicing living what we value most.

I don’t say that in the sense of “don’t feel your feelings” or in some silly Pollyanna way. I say it in the purest sense of gifting ourselves with a few moments of basking in thoughts and memories that feel good.

I say it because I love you and I want you to remember that joy is a practice.

Celebration is a practice.

Love is a practice.

***

So, as we end the year, I want to share with you something off the top of my head that I posted to social media yesterday. It is an example of what happens when we turn our attention to love.

I had a simple urge to share a photo of our upside down Christmas tree. When I went to Instagram to post the photo, I was overcome with a feeling of appreciation and deep love for my son, Kayne.

I listened to that feeling and let myself write from that place.

Here’s what tumbled out into that post: 

{❤️ Reasons why I LOVE my son}

He’s home for the holidays and nothing makes me happier than when I step in the house + he’s there, at the kitchen table, studying French. He always looks up and says in a happy, hearty voice: “Welcome home, Mom!”

(Sometimes he says it in a squeaky mouse voice or a sing-song voice. Sometimes he draws out all the vowels, so the phrase lasts a loooooong time!)

I love that sometimes he does handstands in the living room. Sometimes he sings silly made-up verses. Sometimes he makes funny faces in the mirror. Sometimes he pretends to be our cats talking. Sometimes he looks up how to properly pronounce words like caprese, ratatouille, or Carcassone.

I love that he is quirky — and completely unapologetically himself.

That’s us in front of our #upsidedownChristmas tree.

I love that he singlehandedly selected which of our dozens of ornaments should be hung this year + then he specially designed it. (You can’t see it, but the whimsical bird looks like she’s flying toward the pickle to eat it. Just one example of the pockets of stories on our tree!)

Every year since he was little, I asked my son to pick out an ornament. Usually they reflected his current interests — a chess board from when he was seven, a musical note when he took piano lessons, a kung-fu kid from middle school years.

As he got older, ornament choices got a bit more unconventional. See that pencil dangling from the bottom? That represents the year he got into the SF School of the Arts Writing program. There’s also a crumpled up essay from his first year in college.

So, this post is just a random rambling as thoughts dropped in. YOU can DO THIS, too. I call it a LOVE LIST + it makes an amazing gift.

Maybe at New Year’s Eve dinner tonight, you write 3 things you love about each person + slip ’em under the plates? Maybe you get a jar and fill it with slips of love? Maybe you print a photo and send in a card along with some things you love? Maybe you text someone, wishing them the best and telling them something lovable about them?

There’s really nothing more fun than LOVE! Sending oodles of it your way today — into 2022 — and always.

***

In case you are brand new to my world, let me tell you a little more about the LOVE LIST:

The Love List is simply this: a list of specific reasons that you love someone. It is the ways this person has impacted your life + the reasons they are unique in all the world.

A Love List is sweet, funny, sexy, or serious. It can include any number — from five to fifteen to fifty — of loving attributes, characteristics, or memories about someone.

A Love List can be created with photos, in a Joy Jar, in fortune cookies, scribbled on a sheet of paper, attached to flower stems with  ribbon, taped to the back of dollar bills— or in countless other ways!

***

So, today on New Year’s Eve, I want you to know that you are on my mind and that I am sending you love and peace.

I’m also here to remind you to take care of yourself by intentionally thinking some good thoughts. Maybe do what I did and look at a photo that makes you happy. List the reasons why it makes you feel good.

And, if you have the energy to do so, please throw some light out to someone who needs it.

Please consider mixing some extra love into your New Year’s day. Use your imagination and see how you can combine a Love List with something you are doing with others.

Seek celebration — even in dark corners,

xo Sherry

 

P.S. If you have ever made a Love List — or when you make your first one!— please take half a minute to log it on my Million Love List page. (I want to inspire a million Love Lists in my life and YOU can help me reach that goal!)

P.P.S. Please take some time today to appreciate yourself and to celebrate who you are. Don’t wait another minute to acknowledge your generous heart and your beautiful spirit. I see you. You are absolutely lovable. YOU MATTER!