Every new year, I start out just the same as everyone else: determined, with goals tucked neatly under my arm, to climb the highest mountain and claim victory at the peak over partaking too heavily in crappy food/caffeine/alcohol, getting through all of my work assignments with ease and efficiency, and whipping this holiday-infected body into Shape magazine-like goddessness. Every new year, I fail and pretty much end up where I began.

Sometimes I wonder if there was ever a time that I didn’t believe in a compass that could help direct me; I think these times existed. I’m almost saddened for the former me who couldn’t take solace in the ebb-and-flow of life, and the deeper meanings that came with depression, anger, resentment. The wish for it to all be over, and yet thinking it would be with me for the rest of my life. It certainly is hard to be optimistic when all you have in your hands are those biting, diminishing feelings.

I sat there reading, at a loss. Wanting to give her the right words, the right tone, the right feeling. ‘I should know some answers by now,’ I thought. ‘I should have the perfect tools ready.’ Instead, all I could give was some mustered-up love. It’s hard, when what you do for a living is guide people on living a healthy, balanced life, to not have the answers. It’s funny, or ironic, or something, that I received my friend’s email, filled with the pain of loss permeating every world, just as I was editing the first chapter of an e-book I’m working on about how to live holistically.