Welcome, Yule! All things will be new.

As I sit on this icy morning (when no one should be on the roads, and judging by the absolute silence outside, many agree), drinking coffee, enjoying the quiet and my lovely Christmas tree lights, I realize that it’s up to me to make a new start. No one else is going to do it for me: not my friends or my boss or my family or the incoming president. I’m afraid it’s up to the fink in the mirror.

And I’m not even waiting until 2017. How about now?

I confess I’ve been in a terrible funk since Tuesday, 8 November, and I haven’t wanted to write. My entire energy store was depleted just trying to be civil and keep my head up about the horrifying reality that smart people about whom I care deeply thought that a monster with one thing on his mind (the “one thing” definitely not being the welfare of our country, but the enriching of his personal wealth, brought to bear in no uncertain terms by his selections for the sham of a Cabinet that will be with us for at least the next four years), and whose savagery included regular, unmitigated attacks against women, minorities, and anyone who looks, talks or thinks differently than white male was somehow the right choice for leader of the free world.

I confess I’ve struggled with actually *wanting* things to go south, just so I could say, “This is who you wanted, and now we all bear the reap of what you have sown.”

But, dah-who doraze, that ain’t gonna cut it. That makes no one miserable except me. And it’s not nice; it wasn’t the way I was raised. I’ve gone on record in writing several times about absolutely hating mean people, and here I was, being a mean person but calling it something else in the name of righteous indignation. Nah. It was just meanyheadedness. So I need to cut that out.

I can’t wear the responsibility of the entire world as a hat. I need to just be a good person, and love my family and friends, and be secure in my faith and my humanity that I’m doing everything I can to make life around me better — or at least to not make it worse. I need to be the best wife, mom, Grammie, sister, teacher and friend I can be. I need to make being around me NOT a chore.

It’s easy to be hard, ya know. Easy to be cold. I tell my choirs all the time, “It’s easy to sing poorly; many, many people do it, and with no effort at all. It’s difficult to sing well, but that’s what I want for you.” Mama needs to heed her own advice and apply that epithet to the rest of life.

Serenity amidst turmoil — if you can swing that, you can do just about anything. That’s the focus from today forward.

Christmas day will always be, just so long as we have we.

I’m glad I have all of you Whos.