May all beings be safe
May all beings be happy
May all beings be healthy
May all beings be content
May all beings love themselves completely
And with great kindness
Just as they are now
No matter what happens

1. I Dream of Pie from my beloved friend and teacher Laurie Wagner. “It’s been a year like that; the life before, the life now – how what seemed like a dream, an impossible way to live, has become so real. The masks, how we line up to enter a store, sometimes getting our temperature checked at the door, the way we reach out toward our screens to touch the people we love.” Check out her Wild Writing Family offering. The practice with her as a guide is magic, medicine.

2. Beautiful Writers Podcast. “Listen in as author Linda Sivertsen (aka Book Mama) brings together the world’s most beloved authors for monthly chats on writing, publishing, deal-making, spirituality, activism, and the art of romancing creativity.”

3. Writer Resolution 2021: How We Heal, How We Grow on Terrible Minds by Chuck Wendig. “So, the resolution for me, and maybe for you, is this year looking toward healing and growing — a rise and return. Not some PHOENIX burn where we go from PILE OF ASH to ANGRY FIRE EAGLE, but something slower, more measured, more deliberate.”

4. is it a resolution or is it capitalism by Anne Helen Petersen. “Americans love New Year’s resolutions because we are perpetual strivers obsessed with self-improvement.” I love Anne’s weekly newsletter and her list of links. From this one, I really liked Hard Lessons on Compassion and When Will We Be Able to Take the Indoors for Granted Again? She also shared a much longer list of her favs from 2020, “A totally unorganized, uncategorized list of writing for a year that felt the same.”

5. 7 Things You Definitely Won’t Need This Year (or ever again) from Be More With Less.

6. Good stuff from Austin Kleon: A Happy New Year’s message from our backyard and 100 things that made my year (2020).

7. Good stuff on Lion’s Roar: A New Year’s Blessing (“Zen teacher Karen Maezen Miller offers some words to help us all start the year off right”), and How to Establish a Daily Practice of Almost Anything, in Six Steps (an older piece I’ve shared before, but it seems like the right time to share it again), and Another New Year (“On the last night of the year, meditating with others is exactly what Natalie Goldberg finds she needs”).

8. Reading lists: The Ultimate Best Books of 2020 List and The Award-Winning Novels of 2020.

9. The 10 best films of 2020.

10. A Gentle Reminder That 2021 Isn’t Going To Be A Magical Cure For 2020.

11. Heart Wisdom with Jack Kornfield – Ep. 121 – Reflect on Gratitude. “Gratitude is a gracious acknowledgment of all that sustains us, a bow to our blessings, great and small. Gratitude is the confidence in life itself. In it, we feel how the same force that pushes grass through cracks in the sidewalk can invigorate our own life. This episode of the Heart Wisdom podcast is a reflection on gratitude.”

12. We Tried Oprah’s Favorite Emergency Kit, And We Love It.

13. Vibrant Botanic Embroideries Embellish the Dried Leaf Sculptures of Hillary Waters Fayle.

14. Robert Jones Jr. Is Son of Baldwin, and More on The New York Times. “The writer’s debut novel, ‘The Prophets,’ is the Black queer love story he longed to read.”

15. Atlanta Homeless Man Saves 16 Animals From Burning Building.

16. Colorado woman hikes 485 miles to challenge assumptions about race and the outdoors.

Image by Eric

1. How to Work with the Winter Blues on Lion’s Roar. “Perhaps,” says Sylvia Boorstein, “these days of less sunlight are opportunities for more contemplative time, more looking deeply to see what can only be seen in the dark.” Elsewhere, in related news, You Can Get through This Dark Pandemic Winter Using Tips from Disaster Psychology, and A Scandinavian local explains how to make it through winter.

2. Lily Diamond and Rebecca Walker: Your Creative Power to Write a New Story. “In this episode of Insights at the Edge [Podcast], Tami speaks with Lily and Rebecca about the power of the right question to move us in the direction of claiming our narratives and using the power of our imagination to create our future. They discuss the importance of telling our own stories in the ways only we can. They also explore how rewriting the stories we tell about ourselves and our world can ignite the alchemical process of everyday evolution, moving us in the direction of healing society, the Earth, and our own spirits.”

3. 5 Things 2020 Taught Me About Being a Highly Sensitive Person. “Let’s not pretend we’ll all emerge stronger, but there are five key lessons highly sensitive people can carry forward.”

4. On Being Krista Tippett. “For almost two decades, Krista Tippett has been asking questions about faith, grief, hope, and the human condition. 2020 has given her a lot to talk about.”

5. Recipe I want to try: chilaquiles brunch casserole.

6. Future Gazing: What If Care Was the Organizing Principle of Our Society? “With a challenging year soon to be behind us, we asked community members to share their vision of what they hope becomes of our city post-pandemic.”

7. Dear HSP With a Bad Childhood: There Is Hope.

8. For Ijeoma Oluo, Books and Bedtime Are a Perfect Combination on The New York Times.

9. TikTok discovered a Netflix movie hack — and it’s a game-changer.

10. How to Be a Dog, a poem by Andrew Kane.

11. ‘Solidarity, Not Charity’: A Visual History of Mutual Aid. “Tens of thousands of mutual aid networks and projects emerged around the world in 2020. They have long been a tool for marginalized groups.”

12. The Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2020.

13. COVID-19 related news: Doctor Who Recorded Final Days Battling COVID-19 Said She Had To Beg For Proper Treatment: ‘This Is How Black People Get Killed’, and Cause of Life on The New York Times (“The more than 300,000 people we lost to the pandemic in 2020 form a portrait of America. For this series of short films, we asked five people to celebrate the life of someone close to them”), and ‘My Bank Account Has $4’: Pandemic Has Left Millions Of Livelihoods In Limbo.

14. Cleo Wade’s “It is okay (a poem of validation for the year 2020)”. “The poet and bestselling author sends out a year unlike any other with the promise that it’s okay if your banana bread never came out right— and it’s okay if you’re not okay.”

15. The Best New Podcasts of 2020 on The New York Times.

16. Giant Fabric Butterfly and Moth Sculptures Hand-Crafted by Yumi Okita.

17. A Woolen Menagerie of Miniature Creatures by Natasya Shuljak Exudes Joy and Whimsy. Something you might not know about me: I love all things small and felted.

18. 25 Modern Love Essays to Read if You Want to Laugh, Cringe and Cry on The New York Times. “The popular column, which began in 2004, has become a podcast, a book and an Amazon Prime streaming series. Here are some of its greatest hits.”

19. ‘An absolute powerhouse’: Short film tells the incredible survival tale of Ada Blackjack. “A new Alaska short film tells the story of Ada Blackjack, an Iñupiat woman who survived alone on a remote island after an expedition gone wrong in 1921.”

20. The Art of Activism: Hard Conversations Book Club 2021 hosted by Patti Digh.