CHRISTMAS 🎄

THE PERFECT TIME FOR INTROSPECTION

My dear friends and readers,

I believe you know, especially the ones that have been with me from the beginning, that I love writing for you as well as interacting with you weekly and I hope you will forgive me that for a while I will not be able to continue the Change & Evolve Letter for personal reasons.

Sometimes life puts too much on our plates and I do need some time to figure things out, find my way back to myself, and take some long overdue inventory and introspection.

Thank you for understanding and I do hope you will stay with me until I return - and return I will, that is a promise.

If you do miss me, feel free to browse through my older issues or podcasts. And if you need a good laugh, here is one of my personal favourite podcasts…

Also, feel free to write to me anytime as I do appreciate staying in touch with you.

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🎶My Song

Of course, I will leave you with a fabulous song from the 1974 Album „Hard Core Poetry“ - Tavares with She‘s Gone…

For more good music, go to this Spotify playlist where you can find all the songs from the Change & Evolve Letters!

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📚My Poem

Is by Dorothy Parker (1893 –1967)

Inventory

Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye. 

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👀Impression

A morning impression from my balcony…

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With this, I wish you and your loved ones happy holidays, a peaceful Christmas time, and a wonderful start to the new year 2024 - may it be a good one.

With love

Tanja 🤗

Change & Evolve

And one for the road by John O‘Donohue (1956-2008), simply because it is stunningly beautiful.

For One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessings

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.