I wish every one of you a happy new year and seasonal greetings.

May 2026 bring you health, happiness and some creative thoughts, wherever you live in the world.

I wish you peace and love , whatever your race, ethnicity, age, language, ability, disability, religion, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, beliefs.

I look forward to a new year of further writing and of receiving your continued feedback about my work!

Linda 🙏🎄♥️

Edward Middleton Manigault, The Rocket, 1909. Wikimedia Commons.

“May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions.”

Joey Adams

*****

“I realize that if I were stable, prudent and static; I’d live in death. Therefore I accept confusion, uncertainty, fear and emotional ups and downs; because that’s the price I’m willing to pay for a fluid, perplexed and exciting life.”

Carl Rogers

Peder Severin Krøyer, Hip, Hip, Hurrah! Artists’ Party, Skagen, 1887–1888

“Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.”

William Shakespeare

*****

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

Simone Weil

Valerius De Saedeleer. Molenweg, c1900. Wikimedia Commons

“Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.”

Jane Yolen

*****

“Creativity takes courage.”

Henri Matisse.

The Two Friends by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.1894. Wikimedia Commons

“The greatest need of a child is to be understood and cherished for who they are. This need does not disappear in adulthood.”

Winnicott

*****

“Experiencing one’s own inadequacies and still going on in spite of them are two of the greatest achievements of adulthood.”

Pete Walker

Valerius de Saedeleer (Belgian, 1867-1941) – A winter landscape. 1931, Wikimedia Commons

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”

William James

*****

“Our painful experiences aren’t a liability—they’re a gift. They give us perspective and meaning, an opportunity to find our unique purpose and our strength.”

 Edith Eger, The Choice: Embrace the Possible

Valerius de Saedeleer. Spring at Etikhoven

“Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering ‘it will be happier’…”

Alfred Lord Tennyson

*****

“The aim of therapy is not to correct the past, but to enable the patient to confront his own history, and to grieve over it.”

Alice Miller

Valerius de Saedeleer. Rainy Day in Summer. Wikimedia Commons

“We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives…not looking for flaws, but for potential.”

 Ellen Goodman

*****

“How much of life have I missed, he wondered, simply by failing to look? Or by looking and not seeing?

Irvine Yalom

Marie Spartali Stillman. 1885. Love’s Messenger. Wikimedia Commons

“Nothing you love is lost. Not really. Things, people-they always go away, sooner or later.
You can’t hold them, any more than you can hold moonlight. But if they’ve touched you, if they’re inside you, then they’re still yours. The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart.”

Bruce Coville. Jeremy Thatcher – Dragon Hatcher, 1991.

****

“All therapy is grief work. A process of confronting a life where you expect one thing and get another, a life that brings you the unexpected and unanticipated.”

Edith Eva Eger

 Valerius de Saedeleer. ‘Village Under Snow.’ Wikimedia Commons

“I hope you realize that every day is a fresh start for you. That every sunrise is a new chapter in your life waiting to be written.”

Juansen Dizon, Confessions of a Wallflower

*****

“Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Krishna (Spring in Kulu) – Nicholas Roerich.1930. Wikioo

“The more one judges, the less one loves.”

Honoré de Balzac

*****

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

Marcel Proust

And finally…

Josephine and Mercie (1908) by Edmund Charles Tarbell. Wikimedia Commons

“Each new day is a blank page in the diary of your life. The secret of success is in turning that diary into the best story you possibly can. I wish you a Happy New Year and a diary full of best stories ever written in your life.”

Laozi

© Linda Berman