So, I went out last night with two wonderful women. (Echoes of the earlier-in-the-week conversation: “I’m less and less impressed by men. Especially when you know how many amazing women there are out there.”) They are both divorced. The one – who has an amazing Buddhist practice, just WOW was all I could think as she described it; I so crave something similar – was talking about how many people she knows right now going through separation/divorce. Indeed, there does seem to be an epidemic. “I watch them and see the pain and know how awful it is,” she said, “but I also know that once you get through it you are so strong, you come out glowing. You can do anything after you’ve been through that.”

The other woman, this lovely 50-something Pre-Rapheaellite scholar with three grown kids and a budding career, said that though kids were “scarred” by divorce, they could be just as hardy and curious, just as good and wise as those who haven’t gone through it. And we all have things that scar us. “If divorce, just the possibility of it, is in the air of a house, that’s as damaging – perhaps more so – than the thing itself.”

Looking out at this very grey rainy December 27th, as I cook soup and bake cakes for my mom’s birthday, I am suddenly looking forward to the new year. I have Reiki and therapy and a massage this week, which is a bit much but also feels like a way to ramp things up so I can run and fly into 2009.

I’d love to know what your hopes, fears, dreams are for this year. My biggest fear is around money and being able to keep the house. But the hopes are just starting to tip the scale of the fears.