We Can Still Be Super Heroes :)

In the 25 years that I’ve been working with and corresponding with TBI survivors, there has been a common thread that runs through the countless upturned lives due to our injuries:

Many of us feel unimportant now. We feel like cast-offs. We feel left behind and left out of our early plans and imaginings that we would end up being important.

Well….gather ’round, fellow survivors. We can still be super heroes. We can still save the day. We can still affect the world in positive, wonderful ways!

Yep, us. :)))

I’ve been reading, lately, on the plight of monarch butterflies and bumble bees. Seems we have squeezed and squished out their natural habitats until they are suffering dire and dangerous decline.

Most of us have no idea who bumble bees, for example, affect most of what we eat. I found this nugget today:

Each year, bees are experiencing massive die-offs throughout the U.S. and Canada. In 2017, the rusty patched bumblebee was the first bee added to the endangered species list in the continental U.S. A 2019 survey from the Bee Informed Partnership states that nearly 40% of U.S. beekeepers lost their colonies during the previous year. Compared to 1947, the U.S. honeybee population has declined by 60%.

Bees pollinate one-third of the food we eat.

From apples and squash to buckwheat and coffee, bees are responsible for pollinating most of the fruits, vegetables, seeds, and nuts that are essential to our diets. Honeybees in particular play a huge role in agriculture, contributing over $15 billion to the value of US crop production.

Changing the world, improving the world, making a difference…these things are not out of our reach, brain injury or not. You want to feel like you are an important part of your marriage? Do the laundry or clean the house for your spouse, if you don’t already. You want to be a great parent, even after your injury has taken so much? Take your kids out and ask them about their lives. Tell them you love them. Ask how you can help them. You might be surprised that their answer has nothing to do with your injury or your perceived failures.

Improve your surroundings by walking around your neighborhood or your local school or beach and pick up garbage. Bring a bag of candy or a tray of cookies to your local fire house. Carry a sack of cheeseburgers with you and pass them out to people standing at a bus stop or homeless in the cold. Plant milkweed for the monarchs and nectar trees and flowers for the bees. Tend them without pesticides and you are CHANGING THE WORLD!!!

Go out and knock this life out of the park! Go make people happy. Go be a positive aspect of your marriage, your kids’ lives, your community.

We. Us. You and me. We can change the world!!!!!

Deadlines

One of the hardest parts of being a book writer is, by and large, there are no deadlines. No one tells you when the book is done. It’s hard to decide when it’s “good enough” to let fly because it’s never going to be perfect. I could spend the next twenty years working on this current novel because, each time I go through it, there’s another something to fix.

It’s never going to be perfect.

There’s a certain feel to things. A certain look. Symptoms, if you will. There’s a certain feeling to that day after Christmas and the lull before New Year’s. There’s a certain feel to the coming of spring, the turning to fall, the coming of winter. There is a certain feeling to the start or end of a relationship. There are “symptoms” to these changes: newly-cut grass smell, first frost, first time you need to turn on the AC in summer or the furnace in October. Just certain things that tell you what’s here and what’s coming.

In some ways, writing a novel is similar to our brain injury recoveries. They are lonely paths, in many ways. There is the realization that we have to be the ones who finish it because no one else can do it for us. And…

The deadline is up to us.

When we are hurt, no one can tell us that we will be cured in X amount of time. If they do, they are lying or ill-informed. There are tendencies, sure. Likelihoods. But our injuries will run willy nilly all over our lives and all through the years.

Until we stop them. Until we lay down the gauntlet. Until we set the deadline.

You might recognize the symptoms of this nearing time: Your loved ones have moved on and they are tired of hearing about your injury. Maybe you’ve lost relationships with friends or partners who were no longer willing to wait for your recovery or your decision to move forward with your new life. Your doctors may have no more tests to run and treatments to prescribe….

Like me with my novel, at some point, you gotta let her fly! Warts and all. Imperfections and not-quite-perfects. Less than ideals and left of what was aimed for.

Let her fly!

It’s never going to look like how it once did. It wouldn’t have, anyway, all this time later. You would have changed in the time since your injury, one way or another.

It’s time to add ACTION to the things you dream of being. If you want to be a writer, at some point, you have to start writing. If you want to be in a love relationship, you have to assess the requirements and see what you might need to work on. If you want to get a car, buy a house or take a vacation, you have to start saving.

Write a word. Talk to a professional about symptoms that might be standing in the way of a successful love relationship. Save a nickel. Save a dime.

Beyond certain careers, nobody hands out a certificate and tells us that we are, now, officially, this or that. Nobody declares that we are a writer, that we are done with brain injury, that we are ready to be in a great relationship.

We have to make it so. We have to live as if we are what we want to be. If we want to be a writer, we have to write something. If we want to stop yelling at our children so much, we have to stop yelling at our children so much. If we hate our jobs, we have to go find better ones.

Women who get pregnant have a deadline. Nine months, give or take, the pregnancy ends. Our injuries are not that clear. Pregnant women don’t go on with their lives, after nine months, still a little pregnant.

We have our work cut out for us, no doubt.

But, after two years and five years and ten, the cavalry is not coming. We are what we have. It’s up to us to take the step and take the leap.

With this stupid injury, the bad news is that no one else can tell us when our time to wait is over.

With this stupid injury, the good news is that no one else can tell us when our time to wait is over.

Let her fly!

What Is Your Message?

“The Martian” starring Matt Damon was a surprise to me. It came out like 5 or 6 years ago and I didn’t see it at the theatre but I catch it on TV, from time to time.

It’s about an astronaut on Mars, faced with the most daunting of tasks after everything guessed and everything planned goes out the window and he is faced with extraordinarily-low odds of ever making it home.

Many of us with brain injury find, at some point, the odds of us ever making it home (back to our old normal) are similarly tiny.

In the film, he talks to a group of students about his experience and his message to them is (I’m paraphrasing here) that you solve one problem and the next and the next and you keep solving problems until you find your way back home.

My message to myself and one I share with all of my fellow TBI survivors is this: You solve one problem and the next and the next and you keep solving problems until…

NOT so that you find your way back home. But, instead, so that you find you don’t need to.

Castles Out Of Sand

I’m sure you’ve seen them….glorious castles in the sand. Pictures near the beach, gulls overheard, sun shining brightly….

While most of us created modest block or bucket structures out of sand on the beach, others take that same sand and add unchained imagination. They make glorious, amazing castles of awesome, even knowing they will be overcome by waves, at some point, and drawn out to sea.

Think of those wild-good artists who create lifelike pictures from chalk on streets and sidewalks. You’ve seen them? Some are pictures of holes that are so real people avoid and walk around them.

They spend hours and hours creating, knowing full-well the next rain will wash away their latest masterpiece.

I guess what I’m thinking today is that so many of us get hooked and become obsessed with the 73 things we cannot do or the measures of slower or the shades of less we feel after injury.

Maybe we should make glorious castles anyway.

Maybe we should just focus on taking the simple and making it great. Making it awesome. Making it bad-ass. Making it satisfying and rewarding. Making it for the people we love or the loves we seek.

We don’t have to be everything. We were everything even before we were hurt.

We weren’t.

But we can be enough and more in all the departments we seek happiness and success from.

Do you want to work, again, after injury? Find out what you love and find an offshoot of that love that you can do well. Something that you can knock out of the park. There are dozens of offshoots that spring up from every interest, every job, every subject. There are ways to be a part. An excellent part.

Do you want to find, again, after injury? Find out the basic rules to healthy, successful relationships: Be safe, be generous, be kind, be stable, be supportive. Look at each of those elements and see if you need to tackle them with acceptance, change, therapy or medication.

You don’t have to, only, do the one job and have the one life you had before your injury. The injury itself is begging to convince you of this.

But life is full of a thousand jobs, a million hobbies, a billion people to choose to love.

Take one, choose one, knowing that the waves may come again to wash that masterpiece away.

Build it, anyway. Build it with a bucket and sand, even when it might have been more glorious using the concrete and steel you once knew.

Build it, anyway. Use what you have. Use what is available to you.

And make that masterpiece, again and again.

Backward Forward

While early therapies for speech, physical and occupational improvement are awesome kick-offs to our recoveries, they often lack the particular focus of our actual problems. Those problems we face and find in our individual lives and homes and jobs.

Over these 25+ years of successfully beating back my TBI, I have created many strategies to solve simple problems which, early on, confounded me.

I learned quickly that I had a hard time gauging the time it would take to get ready and out the door in order to make a time deadline of any sort. I can’t count the times I have shown up two hours early for my announcing job or doctor appointments. It has always been hard for me to balance the fear of being late with the ability to manage my time when making sure that didn’t happen.

Many years ago, I started writing up a time schedule for what I needed to do before I left the house. During those early years, I used it every time I left the house. Now I, mainly, use it for big-ticket days like Christmas with the family.

I found that I could move forward by moving backward and it has never failed me.

The first priority is to make sure I create the list the day before when I am not rushed and not cognitively fatigued. For this example, I am using Christmas Day. At the bottom of the list, I put, “Leave the house at noon.” I put the time I need to be walking out the door. Then I work up from there. I might put, “Pack the car” and, since I know that will take fifteen minutes, I mark it 11:45. Before that, maybe “Finish wrapping presents.” That might take two hours so now I’ve started that at 9:45. 9:30 to be safe. Before that is “Shower and get ready.” That’s an hour so I start that at 8:30. I always try to preserve two hours each morning before I have to go anywhere in order to have my coffee and cognitive quiet time. I do a few balancing things to make sure I’m “good to go” and not rushing. That’s two hours so, at the top of my list, I write, “Up at 6:30.”‘

I’ve learned to make the list when I am sharp and then trust the list when I am not. It has never failed me.

Early therapies are broadly-designed to help all of us in some way. One of the secrets to successful recovery is found in our ability to design me-specific strategies that actually fix problems in our individual lives.

Rocking it here in Michigan. Loving the fact that you are, too!

It’s Done When It’s Done

We seem to get ourselves into trouble when we decide to place deadlines on events and things and people who aren’t playing by the same set of rules.

I’ve watched couples break up because the woman decided that her man “should have proposed by now.” I’ve seen couples splinter because one concludes that they “should have been pregnant by now.”

I am trying to finish my latest book, my first full-length novel, and I admit that, several times, I have felt the self-imposed pressure of, “I should have this done by now.”

Lord knows there are countless people out there who have chucked pandemic restrictions in anger and impatience because they determined that THIS THING SHOULD BE OVER ALREADY!!!

The hard truth is that we don’t get to decide everything. Some things are not up to us and we invite frustration and fracture when we assume the power of creating deadlines that weren’t ours to decide.

You know where I’m going with this..

Hurried stew is just chunks of tough meat in water..

Brain injuries should be completely healed long before most of us enjoy all of our healing. There is an impatience to return to what we had and what we no longer have access to. That wait is painful, frustrating and, when it takes too long, desperate and depressing.

What do we do?

It’s important that we install deadlines in order to get certain things done, certainly. But we have to choose wisely. Not everything, like pandemics, are ours to place deadlines upon. Maybe, in the instance of a dragging partner, we can do the proposing. Maybe, when a couple hasn’t gotten pregnant, they can set a deadline for when they turn to alternative avenues for bringing children into the family.

We can sit around feeling anxious and desperate for things to meet our deadlines. Or we can aim that energy toward positive action and change.

It all begins with assessment. We have to take an honest look at what we are dealing with.

Brain injuries aren’t working for anyone. They don’t answer to me or to you. They have their own timetable. While it’s important to measure, the measure of progress should not begin from the day before your injury. It should begin on the day after it. Start your measurement there.

How far have you come?

Setting deadlines can help if we set them NOT for a finished product of our choosing but, instead, to mark progress. In the case of my writing, the book is just not ready yet. Ugh.

But I can assess and I can set deadlines that are reasonable. I can grab power and create power by inspiring myself and imploring myself to write each morning.

One by one by one.

All of us will face uncomfortable situations that we want to rush to a conclusion. But rushed stew makes for tough-as-leather chunks of meat in water. A rushed book makes for a lousy novel. A rushed return after a sprained ankle means pain and limping.

It’s done when it’s done.

When it comes to our injuries, we can alleviate stress and frustration by installing the deadlines, not of conclusion, but of assessment. Allow yourself to set down the deadlines you created for when this thing should be over and when you should be “back to normal.” Instead, set your deadlines to assess how far you have come and which things you can impact.

If you allow yourself to view it as a marathon, you will stop training for a sprint.

I am assessing today and I realize the pandemic is not done yet. I cannot just burn all my masks and go running naked into a crowd, hugging and kissing as I go.

The pandemic is not done yet and it’s not in my power to end it.

I am assessing today and I realize my book is not ready. I cannot just publish it now and put out a lousy product.

It’s done when it’s done.

The end result of our choosing doesn’t always come with a time stamp of our choosing. Not for a marriage proposal. Not for babies. Not for pandemics or novels or brain injuries.

But we can keep working to improve a relationship. We can investigate adoption. We can keep getting up at 5 in the morning and writing. We can get through another day of wearing masks and not hugging our loved ones.

And we can assess where we are on this brain injury journey and see if changes need to be made. Instead of awaiting some golden finish line, we can set deadlines for things we have the power to create. Solve problems we can figure. Determine we need help for this or for that. Add this. Trim off that. Stop here. Turn there.

It’s done when it’s done. We have the opportunity to look at it in a different way. What is done can be the excruciating waiting for an end we cannot choose and, instead, a step toward better in any direction. We can’t keep waiting for our brain injury journey to return us to our starting line. We have to invite and allow for our journey to take us to somewhere else. Somewhere that can be, dare I say, better.

Celebrating 25 Years! Yayayayay!

As soon as I hit 56 two weeks ago, I knew my 25th year of being brain injured was just around the corner. Twenty-five years. Proud as hell.

One day, God willing, I will have lived more years as a brain injury survivor than I did as “well”…Some days that feels remarkable to me.

I don’t need to look at the calendar anymore. My body knows. My BEING knows. All that was me and is me now…

Knows.

You know, too.

I look out at the frigid January morning and I nod, quietly. The sun tricks us into believing it’s warmer than 14 degrees out there. Then, as now, the air cuts and the eyes water and the salt spray covers ours cars and our boots.

I smile to myself. I catch myself thinking…most would say today, 25 years ago, was the last day before my whole life blew up. I know, instead, that that day, before my crash, was the last day of the shiny shield.

But not the last day of the warrior behind it.

She was just getting started.

I know, true as anything, that I’ve done way more in these last 25 years than I did in the ones before it. I was prettier then, surely. Slimmer. I made more money. I was moving and dancing and coaching and playing ball.

But I decided something extraordinary after I was left with a pile of less than ordinary. As I gathered the stories and missions of those like me, determined to get back to their old selves, their old lives, their old “par”….

I decided my own “par” was a low bar, really. I wanted more. I wanted better. In looking at the ruins of my life, strewn like puzzle pieces all around me, I decided:

I can do better than all of this. Better, in every direction.

Have you decided that?

Most of you know me because of the book I wrote all those years ago. “I’ll Carry the Fork! Recovering a Life After Brain Injury” was about what happened to me. What happened to us. It was about trying to define what none of us understood. For all of us left trying to count raindrops in a bucket.

That first book on brain injury scored me awards and articles in the paper and invitations to speak all around the U.S. and in Canada. It was successful because I was not nearly alone in my quest to name this invisible, devastating monster. To convey the extent and the wide spread of the ruin.

Most would say that was the best book I’ve written. To me, it isn’t. To me, the need to define it was only a modest beginning. I knew that, in order to create a life I could be proud of and to do things that were meaningful and significant, I would have to answer the question posed in the first book.

What do we do now and what do we do next?

I wrote my second book about brain injury, “I’ll Carry the Fork! The 20th Anniversary Chapter,” because we cannot just sit there in the ruins. We cannot, even, simply define the ruins and make no space between them and us. Knowing what happened may bring peace but it doesn’t bring joy.

We deserve joy.

I am sitting here, 25 years after my injury. I am full of joy. Love. Peace. I share my blogs and my books because the bottom line is that I was so young when I was hurt that I hadn’t yet acquired any life skills necessary to create some kind of fabulous, stand-out recovery. That is so key! I am not extraordinary and, yet, I am living an extraordinary life.

Are you, yet?

Successful recovery has very little to do with how much of our symptoms heal, amazing as that sounds. I don’t have to ask you to believe that or trust my story. What I do or who I become is not important to your story.

Your success story.

All that matter is you and how you write next. How you pick important. How you measure success. How you aim your best energies and intentions.

I’m celebrating my 25th anniversary from brain injury by slashing the price of my second book to clearance levels. I marked it down where I saw people were selling used copies of it and clearance prices for it.

I am hoping it is another tool in your tool box. Another high step in your march to a version of your life you can celebrate, too.

These brain injuries end lives we chose. Many of them were solid lives. Good lives. Happy ones. But, after 25 years of this, I know full-well that this injury did not take our choice to make, again, solid and good and happy lives. I believe that for us.

I believe that in you.

Wishing you a day when you will celebrate 25 years of living after your brain injury. Feeling joyful and happy and successful and peaceful. You joined me in the sour, splintered past. Hope you’ll join me in the glorious today, sitting around drinking coffee and eating brownies and planning extraordinary futures. Throwing our heads back and laughing, surrounded by delicious possibility.

You know I’m cheering for you.

What Is The Cost Of Change?

We’ve all heard how change can be so hard for most of us. Those of us with brain injuries often cannot navigate or invite or suffer change because, for so many of us, routine is a helpful tool in our toolbox of successful recovery.

The cost of change, then, seems too big. Too dangerous. What might we lose? We might fail or we might look dumb or people might laugh at us or we might make things worse.

Change becomes something to avoid, at every cost.

The problem, though, with never changing is that we remain that close to the worst times in our lives. We cannot move away from them. In our need to keep things from getting worse, we create a situation where things never get better, either.

Those of you who know me well are sure to roll your eyes when, every new year, I vow to lose all this weight I’ve been keeping for too many years. Like a sick, nonstop rider on the merry-go-round of madness, I try to change everything at the new year. I decide I’m not going to eat sugar and I’m going to walk miles each day and do push-ups and drink gallons of water and start eating all sorts of crazy non-meat and non-chocolate foods.

And all that goodness lasts about three days, if it is a good year. Ha. Two weeks later I catch myself thinking, “Wasn’t I supposed to be doing push-ups?” LOL

What does change cost? Does it cost you everything? Does it cost too much?

I submit it costs us less than 20 dollars.

We don’t have to lose everything to change. Not all our hard-won progress. Not our sense of security. Not our stable bubbles which allow us to function with damaged brains.

We can inch away from the people who were so close to the white-hot heat of our devastating injuries and inch toward those people we aim to be. We can have a little more. A little more confidence, a little more success, a little more happiness.

A little more than today or the day after we were hurt.

It’s not something to feel pressured by. It’s not for those around us who may conclude we are not doing enough. It’s not for those who judge us as failures.

It is for us. And, gosh darned it, we sure deserve it.

So….how much does change cost?

I welcomed and created and enjoyed and successfully created change with less than twenty dollars. This new year, I bought different tooth paste and different deodorant. I tried this new hemp face mask that you wear for five minutes. My family bought me the paint and tools for Christmas and my birthday so that I could finally paint my living room in order to get rid of the dingy gold it had been bugging me as. I downloaded a free app that reminds me to drink water throughout the day.

Change.

It is glorious. It feels awesome. I have a skip in my step. It doesn’t matter that, even with the hemp face mask, I still look too much like my Aunt Laila, all of a sudden and thirty years too soon. It doesn’t matter that, between you and me, I am a terrible painter and I have paint all over my feet and I spilled half a gallon on the tarp. It doesn’t matter that I don’t always drink all the water my app tells me to and that, in all honesty, I am lying to my app robot. LOL.

It’s wonderful. I am inching toward better each day. Even with all my wobbles, I am walking forward. I am taking my soft face and my clean and fresh walls and my better-watered body and rocking today and planning tomorrow.

Change is good. Change inches us forward but, even better, it inches us further away from the worst of our days.

Best wishes to all of you in all the ways you invite and welcome good changes in your lives. Love you.

What If?

One of the things I like about playing Words With Friends on Facebook is that my opponent cannot see all my tiles. They don’t know if my word is the best word I could have played. There is no one looking over my shoulder, frowning upon my choices or my performance. It is just fun. It is a great exercise for my mind. It is something I enjoy.

As we kick off this new year, I allow my thoughts to swirl some. I can do this and I could try that! I might like this and I could change that! It’s new and fresh and exhilarating to imagine and dare without fear. Long ago I gave up the fear that I wouldn’t write well enough or speak well enough or play all the best words in Words With Friends.

No fear left.

What if we painted, just to see what we came up with? What if we wrote, just to see what kind of story we could tell? What if we took up knitting just because it always seemed kind of cool? What if we sang, just because it feels good?

This past year was tough, no doubt. The pandemic shut our whole world down and we were faced with something most of us are not used to: a very real need to prioritize survival. Our days and weeks and months were pared down to basics that kept us alive but, also, left us missing. We missed a lot this past year.

But we made it.

While there are still months to go before we get to see some symptoms of what was once normal, it’s a great time to allow our thoughts and imagination to swirl a bit.

What if?

What if you weren’t here today? What if you had died on any day before now? All that fear and worry that holds any of us back would simply slop into regret. We would regret.

So let’s sing because we like to. Let’s join the church choir or the community musical or the other people singing the National Anthem before ball games. Let’s sing extra loud for all the people who didn’t make it. For all the people who would love to sing anything.

Let’s not care how it all works out. Let’s not measure it by whether our singing is the best there ever was or by whether it wins us a Grammy. Let’s just sing because we want to and because it feels good and because we are alive..

I was looking through the books and magazines at my grocery, shopping for a mag for my niece for Christmas. I saw a bunch of famous authors’ books and they were selling for 99 cents in the clearance bin.

So let’s write.

I’m finishing off my first full-length novel and I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. LOL. I have no idea if it’s good. I’m pretty sure it’s not The Grapes of Wrath.

But it sure feels good to write, just to see what story I can tell. Just to see if I can do it. Just to see how it all comes out. Just to see what my characters do.

I know I’ve mentioned here before how my life after brain injury has been about seeing what I COULD do and not just tallying what I could no longer do. I believe in that, entirely.

Let’s not allow our fears to slide into regrets. Let’s realize that everything we “always kind of wanted to do” is worth trying. Let’s dare! Pick up a paint brush. Pick up a pen. Pick up some knitting needles. Pick up an instrument at a pawn shop. Pick up a cook book. Pick up supplies at the hardware store.

Let’s make this a new year when we become something new and something extra that we always secretly imagined would be cool. Let’s brush off this 2020 knowing how dangerous a situation we have, so far, survived. And let us take that last year as a reminder that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

I am not alone in saying that I could never have imagined an event that would, in short order, literally shut down our world. I still can’t believe it.

But it reminds me that fears shouldn’t slide into regrets. That we have no idea what’s coming around the bend and we need to act as if.

Let’s live! Let’s try everything. So far I’ve tried jewelry making and bird house painting and dog watching and piano playing and book writing and public speaking and antique researching and sports announcing and canvass painting. I have dozens more things in my head, swirling with their hopeful magic.

Do you?

Happy New Year, all of you. Wishing you a year when you keep safe and keep moving forward. Trying new and becoming a you that surprises and delights and evolves and learns and gives and enjoys.

Know you deserve to be happy. Know you deserve to enjoy and to try and to be delighted.

Know I am cheering for you, every step of the way. Love you! Kara

Practice Your Past

I’ve been at this brain injury thing coming up on 25 years soon. As I am older than many of you, I can share with keen certainty that age-related memory dysfunction, coupled with all the brain injury whonky memory nonsense most of us endure, all blend into a stupid stew.

Thirty years ago, I was surprised to hear that my Great Aunt had once been married. I asked her what his name was and was astounded when she replied, “Oh, Kara. I don’t remember his name!” I couldn’t believe it.

Now I get you, Aunt Helen!!!! 🙂

I’m finding that, as I get older, doors in my mind seem to be shutting, closing me off from tidbits of information that I never imagined I’d lose access to.

The struggle is real.

So I’ve started playing a game with my mind. I do it a couple of times a week. Thought I’d share in case you want to join.

Take a few moments, here and there, and fling open those doors in your mind. Test yourself. Reclaim access to that information.

Name your teachers, starting with Kindergarten. In order, as far as you can go. Picture the block you grew up on in your childhood home and name all the families all the way down each side of the street. Name every boyfriend or girlfriend in order. If you are feeling sassy, add those shameful drunk hook-ups from your college years if you ever got their names to begin with. LOL.

Name all your Halloween costumes. How about every quarterback that played for your team or every baseball player or hockey player. Go through the alphabet, naming a show that starts with every letter. Yes, you can use Charlie’s Angels for “C” 🙂

Test yourself so you can recall your past but not so that you have to repeat it. We are, all, moving forward. We are, all, writing new chapters in this exciting lifetime. Keep your past alive so that you can be reminded of all that you have accomplished. All the ways you have been outstanding. All the ways you have enjoyed and learned and been loved.

Use those memories to boost your confidence as you go forward into this new year. Take a strong mind with all those experiences to guide and support and protect you.

Get ready to rock this New Year!!!!

Wishing you all a great one. Love, Kara