The world runs around and bucks you
Of your trajectory with minutiea that drive you
Up a wall, and down into darkness which blinds
Your senses that either gives adrenaline or freezes
You into a statue that’s blind, deaf, and dumb.

Your vision turns into bright starts that short-
Circuit your mind with blinding light whose sport
Is to suppress your logic, embracing emotions
That turn you deaf to all evidence against your passions.
Those then steal your ability to speak your mind.

As the world moves round and round, like a merry
Go round, so do you try to stave off the shocks that ferry
You into dismay as experiences are disillusioningly
Petrifying, with their obstacles and demands
On your taking a stand outside your comfort zones.

Stay the course.
Stand tall.
Savor each experience.
Strengthen your faith with failure or success.
Sever negative relationships,

And let your self-confidence emerge
A snow white pigeon of peace and verve of life.

©️ Malak kalmoni chehab ©️

Hide the light out of fright
Now I will shine bright
For the darkness
Comes the light
2024 with all my might
I have become the light
for all that is right
Casting light on the darkness
I will never loose sight

Dear Unsealed,
My goals for 2024 are somewhat different that in 1990 or 2007. I am 74 years old. I know my goals are different apparently because I am older and the fact, I survived long covid and the effects on my body and major surgery. I almost died April 2022. However, I am alive. I am a Virgo, Leo moon rising, born on the cusp of Libra. I shall talk about more subtle goals than I would have at 20, 30, 40, 50, 0r 60.
My goals are:
1. To remain healthy as possible.
2. To remain alive.
3. To continue my freelance writing and photography.
4. To continue to spread love and light.
5. To perhaps make a little extra money to help with bills.
6. To always see my doctor.
7. To continue my gluten free, lactose free diet as much as possible.
8. To walk more, swim if the weather permits.
9. To continue my meditation practices.
10. To analyze what I am doing and what another person means with their words as they speak to me or other people.
11. To cut back on clothes, shoe spending on Wish and Temu.
12. Be kind but not vulnerable the full 12 months of 2024.
I will wake up every morning to the sound of music playing through Google Mini or Alexa. I will remember my vivid dreams of people, places, things to write down the specifics of my dreams to create stories of inspiration, but to not forget that inspiration is a part of a negative experience to be brought out into the light. I will take care of my health and continue to think young. I will continue my political activist positions regarding human rights, women’s rights, LBGTQ rights, voting rights and democracy for all.
My goal to spread light, love and peace may sound repetitive to some people, but to me it is my most important goal for 2024 and beyond. Without peace, love, and light there would be continuous wars and evil wrongdoing in our society. So, there needs to be more people involved in this goal. Equality and human rights are not political as they are a humanitarian society procedure, not political.
I will spread light and love through my writing and photography with periodic checks of analyzing the good, the bad, the ugly in all facets of life on Earth.

Sincerely,

Vicki Lawana Trusselli
December 21, 2023

Living in shadows of my past

Roaming hallways of my mind

Afraid to turn corners too fast

And the memories I would find

Resolved to pause and change my stance

And shake the past’s dust off my shoes

I will give next year a chance

To see in color instead of blues

Those old walls become withdrawn

As fresh grass grows beneath my feet

This old year has come and gone

My new self I prepare to meet

This New Year I have a choice

My liberty comes with it’s dawn

A small change in my mind’s voice

To a positive antiphon

My New Year’s dreams are made of light

Washing tears and sorrow away

All I did was adjust my sight

To view a better, brighter day

Dearest little one-
We have lived in such agony for far to long
Dearest little one-
Don’t you miss-
Miss the feeling of solace that we are loved-
That we are enough?
The way sun kissed blue skies sparkle in our eyes?
The little things we used to share like the sound of gentle summer rains?
The little things we used to share like the euphoria of simple existence?

Dearest little one-
We have spent so much time loving others.
Loving others that could never love us.
Just so we could avoid ourselves existing in the same plane.

Dearest little one-
We’ve made so many empty promises to each other.
We’ve made so many harsh and unforgiving choices.
No more little one.
This year-
This year we have special achievements to uphold.
To love ourselves whole heartedly.
To do away with the passive aggressive malice to one another.
To no longer drown each other under the turbulent waters of our emotions.

Dearest little one-
This year our mission is growth.
To grow from the cracks left from our past.
Hold my hand little one and stand with me a while- so together we may mend our cracks with gold.

Your fire is what I admire, what I desire. You light a fire in my soul and fill the bowl in my chest with passion my mind can’t even ration. I must be in a daze or maze, trying to run and hide but every corner I turn your fire still burns. I crash into wall after wall getting burned and even then I wouldn’t want to return. Because a life without passion is something most people lack in. Even if you burn me to ashes and leave me with unhealed gashes i would still run into your maze, even on my saddest of days. I hope you never lose your fire and allow it to burn bright even on the darkest of nights, when you wanna give up the fight. Because once you start to touch people with that flame it’ll catch like match, batch after batch and soon the whole world will be on fire just like the girl I’ve always admired.

Often times when we think of a new year resolution or new year goals for the upcoming year we usually have a big goal we want to accomplish like getting a new job, a new house, to meet a partner if we are single, have a child, buy a new car, but what if we were to change our mindset and also see smaller goals just as big as the big ones.

This upcoming year I am dedicating myself to look forward to the smaller things like finding peace, doing the things that make your heart feel whole like sharing a laugh with loved ones, taking a walk outside and breathing the fresh air, or maybe even making time for a hobby that you neglected due to being so busy with work and your personal life.

My ultimate goal for next year is to be PRESENT. Life is often so fast-paced that sometimes we may forget to be present in the moment and take every moment in. I want to be present with everything that I do. Even the simplest smallest things like cooking a meal and sharing a meal with friends or family or even by yourself. Taking in that specific moment that you can never get back in time and have the blessing to do so is something I want to take in and be present with. I want to be able to be present and really taking everything in life in. A goal of mine is to be present with myself. Taking the time to do things that make me feel a spark, like writing a poem, reading a book, meditating with music that makes the soul feel good.

Although I want to continue to blossom in my career as a Marketing Specialist and want my business to blossom, most of all I want to continue to grow into the person that I am meant to be and continue to find my purpose. The person that I am right now in this moment, writing this letter about what I am most excited about for the next year, will be a different person reading this the same time next year. Which is why I am so focused on being present every day. I am excited to see the Woman that I am going to become next year, the peace I will continue to find in myself, my loved ones, and places. The laughs I will be able to share with loved ones. The meals I will be able to eat. The new people I am going to meet. I am most excited to see my life change transform and prosper. I am so excited to see how much my relationship with God is going to flourish. Every year there is a new version of yourself, you are never the same person each year, you go through joy and pain, different transformations that make you a wiser person.

Next year I dedicate time for myself to find a spark in me that I never knew I had, to move and flow through life with good intentions, better environments, intentional friendships, intellectual individuals, creative people, broken people, joyful people. Take every negative and turn it into a positive and have more faith over fear.

This upcoming year I am dedicating myself to nourish who I am, love who I am, and be present and sit with myself and appreciate everything that I have and never take a second for granted. Perhaps when you are reading this, it may seem like a person letter to myself, maybe it seems to fit more to my future self then what I am most excited about, but this year was a year of self-realization that happened at the speed of light. Next year I am most excited to live in the PRESENT moment every day.

Cheers to a year of living in the present moments!!

Dear Ideal Rachel,

I hope this letter finds you well. I am writing this to you in a tough time. It is October 29, 2023. It is a cold, sunny Sunday. The whole weekend I have been upset; I do not know why. I think it is because I am in a perpetual state of loneliness that I cannot seem to escape. In my ideal world I would not feel this pain, this loneliness, this urge to scream and yell at everyone that has ever wronged me, but without this urge and pain, I would not be alive.

My ideal self is someone who has improved. Someone who has gotten better every day. I hope that I am ideal in the future. I hope that everyday makes you smile, I hope you are happy and proud of your life, proud of me.

I do not know why life is this hard and I wish you could write back to me and tell me what is going to happen or tell me what to do with my life, or at least tell me if anything I am doing will pay off. I know you cannot, and it hurts to know that there is a possibility that I will end up sad and alone, living a miserable life. On the other hand, it inspires me that every day is a new chance. I have hundreds of days left to love, to live, to get better.

Someday, I hope to be in your shoes right now and write a letter to my even more ideal self. Maybe your ideal self is someone completely different, and I love to think about that. I also would love to be that person. I hope that you are living by yourself, something I have dreamed of for years. Hopefully, we will still have a cat, preferably the one I have now. I want to stay in Washington, we have always lived here, everything we have ever loved is here.

Usually, people send these letters to get advice, or to ask for something. I am sending this to you to let you know that I am struggling. The world seems to hate me, and it often is kicking me down. I often break down crying because I do not know where I am, what to do, or wonder why people cannot love me the way I love them. It is heartbreaking to live like this. Even so, I have never felt so alive. I have never been this content in my life. Something about crying, realizing my mistake and what I can do to fix it, and moving on, is so rewarding. Hard days or not, I am proud of me. I am proud of me for not ending my life two years ago. I am proud that I saved myself. I am proud to be alive for you. I am proud to be alive for me.

Have a wonderful life, I will see you.

Best wishes,

For most of my life I have smothered myself beneath the ideals of others.
These expectations pushed me into boxes where I did not fit, but I tried to contort and carve away at myself to appease the “rules.”
I thought if I broke them, I would be broken. They were unyielding, so I yielded my will to their commands.

And then one day I stretched out of my box. I worried what others would think, what would become of me, what of the people who were depending on me to be “the good girl” they knew?
But as I stretched, I discovered that parts of my heart were sore.. and some were so weak from lack of use. So much of myself had remained unseen and untested in my box, and do I decided to slowly explore.

I began to see that the ideals I’d chased–
Perfect job, perfect shape
Perfect family, perfect place–
Weren’t what I really wanted.
The fact was, I didn’t know what I really wanted!
But even still, letting go of them was so hard.
Allowing myself to change my expectations was met with a lot of internal resistance.
It was easier in my box, safer.
Don’t make a mess, don’t rock the boat.

But would I ever be happy living someone else’s life? Someone else’s idea of “perfect?”

Dear Me,
I hope you know that YOU are ideal. Right now. As you are.
You don’t have to measure up to anyone’s imaginary lines on the wall. Life isn’t about how tall you are, how skinny, how fat. Life isn’t about collecting diplomas or six figure incomes. Life isn’t about what your family looks like, how many rooms are in your house.

Take up the space you need to. Even when you want to shrink yourself down.
See your beauty, inside and out. Even when the world spins negative commentary on how you look.
Value the lessons you’ve learned, and the ones that will come. Even when conventional school might not be your route.
Know that you do not need another person to complete you. Hold on to the hope that you will find someone whole, who will see you as whole, too.

When I picture you, I don’t see specific features or physical parameters that I need to meet. Life hacks or goal markers that I have to achieve by certain deadlines. Instead I feel a sense, a reassurance that you are someone who has let go of the weight of measuring up. Someone who makes choices based on kindness and light and love, not for the applause of the world.. but of the people around you. The ones who know that you are worthy of love now, not after passing tests or checking off requirements.

There is no standard of perfection. You are perfection. Simply YOU.

Love, Me.

The plan…the
what..
should have. could have
been type of plan…

And here we sit—
as none of that
exists these days.

The plan..
That life
Those goals.
Who are we—
you—
me—
…now?

Kill it with kindness
they say.
But where has that
gotten me?

30 on 30
The Golden Year
or so I’m told—
Yet here we
stay—
sit—
stick—
…stuck?

T-
minus..who?
Tried.
Failed.
Had the comeback.
But now…
what?

Who sees you these days
more so nights—
sitting alone
on rocks—
in oceans—
under moons?

Keep it together…
they—
it—
those—
remind you.

Golden.

T-…
minus..who?
me?
you?
us?

30 on 30
1/3rd down
…or so they say.
Deep breaths—
in—
out.
Sit. Be.

30 on 30 was the
supposed to be.
So
We—
flip the script.

And now
we have a
new plan.

The now. The new. The plan. The story.
And the supposed-to-be
Of being.

Cause age is just a number
As so is the rest of life
and beings.

And nothing is
unless you
want it to be.

And nothing was.
unless you
need it to be—
too.

30 on 30 looks different
this time
around..yet a blessing in
that disguise.

Here I am—
watch
me
go.

Cheers to me.
..wish you well.
—xoxo A