The New Year, 2018, is upon us and many of you have battled ferociously in 2017 with tumultuous events in our country and on the world stage. Political trends have held sway and have enveloped many in a reoccurring sense of foreboding leading to a constant teeter-totter between anxious alarm, fury, dismay and exhaustion, as forces, seemingly out of our control, have moved our country in directions never imagined. We require a way to sustain our inner balance and resilience as we weather the destruction of values that many have relied on as a democratic world-view.

I am inviting you to turn inward – in contrast to our current externalized way of life – as we are catapulted insistently toward outward preoccupation. We are pulled, dragged, mesmerized by the outer world: the constant stream of input, night and day – either by choice or by our propensity for distraction. Our brains fire up as we flit from topic to topic, picture to picture, posting to posting, until we feel fragmented, as we disintegrate into pieces of information and the emotions they fetch; up and down, in and out, we run like a wild merry-go-round – but a not so merry one. Then exhaustion and depression hit; we are drained.