As I wrote the title of this post, a scene from the movie Pretty Woman popped into my head: “Welcome to Hollywood! What’s your dream? Everybody comes here; this is Hollywood, land of dreams.”

Those words have stuck with me over the years (please don’t judge my addiction to pop culture) and at random times, depending on the mood and situation, I can be be heard blurting out those famous last lines from the character listed in the credits as Happy Man.

“What’s your dream?”

Today, as many of us enjoy the benefits of a national holiday—no work, no school, a sale at Babies “R” Us (oh, is that just me?)—I’m reflecting on my own dreams. Not those created by the false promises of Hollywood, but the ones rooted in faith.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” MLK had a big dream. He dreamed of a day when sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners would sit down together at the table of brotherhood.  A day when his children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. A day when black children would join hands with white children. A day when all people could say free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

I see Dr. King’s dream today. It is alive and well. I also see how it remains a work in progress. Most dreams—the ones worth having and the ones worth stepping out on faith for—are like that.

So, friends. What’s your dream?

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How’s that for a New Year’s Resolution? It’s easy to keep a goal like this when you’re lying face down on the massage table getting a 90 minute prenatal massage.

Lalalalalalala! (That’s my pretend opera voice singing the sound of heaven). When you’ve spent the past eight months lying on your left side and then get on a prenatal massage table, you may find yourself contemplating cutting a belly-shaped hole in the mattress of your own bed. Just sayin’.

Last year, my resolutions centered around some pretty big life goals.  The focus was on the “doing.” This year, my focus is on “being.” I usually resist the exercise of choosing one word for the year, but when my friend Becca wrote a post about the word she chose, I felt inspired to play along. When I tell you my word, you may think I took the easy way out. The definition is broad. But that’s my style: I like to have room to breathe, to evolve and grow. So my word for this year is:

Live.

This is the year to be in the moment. To stop putting off the things that really matter until later. To continue building on the personal and professional goals I’ve set for myself while being open to the parts about life I can’t control—the things I can’t plan. When I was at the spa, I felt relaxed, of course. But I also noticed how I could feel the blood circulating through my body. I felt alive. That’s the opposite of what I feel when I’m just going through the motions.

This is the year of NOT going through the motions. This is the year of eyes wide open.

Live.

Of course, I’ll weave in some practical goals, like being on time (I perpetually run 15 minutes late), drinking more water and remembering to wash my face before I go to bed. But even these simple things will contribute to lowering my overall stress level and boosting my health and wellness.

It’s 2012. Let’s live it, friends.

How do you plan to “live” your year?

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photo thanks to moreloveletters.com

In Friday’s post, I introduced you to Hannah Brencher. At 23, she’s figured out something that took me a decade in a career as a TV news anchor and reporter to realize. Today, I share the rest of my conversation with her. 

In NYC, Hannah Brencher is known as the “love letter writer.” She understands that for her website & blog The World Needs More Love Letters to succeed, it has to look like and operate like a business. But dollar signs and the bottom line don’t drive this work. It’s fueled by the “compassion of others and my own faith that others will latch onto the cause at hand,” she says.

Hannah and her team write and mail notes to strangers all over the world. Encouraging them. Reminding them that their life is worth fighting for. Reminding them that they are loved. “I never thought to call it a movement but that is what everyone around me has called it. And to that I say, well if it is going to bring more love, more compassion, and more intentionality into the world, then let it move. Let it rock. Let it roll and plow the way that it’s meant to, and I will guide and steer it from the background.”

Brencher has a day job, working at a leading non-profit for children. “One day, it would be nice to move into a more full time role with the love letters or writing but, just as this whole thing has unfolded, I trust that this opportunity will also unfold in time.”

At 23, she already gets it. She understands she’s a person who can’t be fit into a box. “I cannot define what I want to do on a daily basis, much less my whole life.” But she knows this:

“I am successful. Without a doubt, I am successful. I would not have said that a few months ago, when I was defining success in terms of ladders and climbing them. Today, success, to me, is doing something each day that I know I will be proud of in one year from now. Success is finding a way to be a blessing to other people. If I get to the end of a day and I cannot look over the hours and say, I was good to that person or I found a way to value that person, then I better just head to sleep and try harder in the morning. I’ve found that when I wake up with that being my sole purpose, to be a blessing to other people, life is so much easier.“

The world needs more love letters. Yes. Yes it does. But it also needs more people like Hannah Brencher, don’t you think?

If you’d like to join me in The 12 Days of Love Letter Writing, click here. And if you’d like to subscribe to my blog, click here.

You may notice my blog posts in the coming weeks don’t expend a lot of brain power. So much of that energy is going into the book right now, and when I step away from those pages I need to “fill up” — whether it’s through laughter, spending time with people who bring out the best in me, listening to playlists or reading inspiring quotes.

And my goal, here in this space, is to share all that good vibe-y-ness (I believe I made that up) with you. Because you make me laugh, bring out the best in me and inspire me.

These are pieces of a birthday card I received in the mail yesterday:

Now talk to me. What “speaks” to you? Which words of wisdom do you struggle with? Which ones do you embrace? 

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I wrote this post exactly one year ago for Hybrid Mom. I read it again the other day, and it made me smile. Happy Labor Day, friends.

(ps– I borrowed today’s post title from one of my favorite songs by the Indigo Girls)

It’s Labor Day, a holiday which honors American workers and symbolizes the end of summer. Tomorrow, my son will start 4K, and this will be his first go-round with attending school five mornings a week. When he met his teacher last week he said, “My name is Dillon. D-i-l-l-o-n.”

Yes, I’m pretty sure he’s ready. Watching him embrace the change makes it easier to let him go. I’m excited about all he’ll learn this year, and I marvel at what he already knows. Kids are pretty amazing like that.

What I enjoy most about being a parent is what my children teach me. Scrolling through Facebook this weekend, I saw this photo in my news feed, posted by my husband:

September 2010

The caption read: “Big Day at the Country Club.” It’s obvious our boys aren’t at a country club. They’re whooping it up in a plastic swimming pool on our front porch. But they don’t seem to mind, or even notice, the difference.

Children don’t know much, if anything, about the concept of the American Dream. They don’t understand how their parents work to help them have a “better life.” And when I look at this photo, I ask myself, “Better than what?” This looks like a pretty good life, to me.

The most important thing my children have taught me is how to be happy, no matter the circumstances, no matter where I am or what material things I possess. Children have it figured out.

Kids don’t need a holiday to celebrate. They’ll beat the drum any day of the week. As my sons grow up and forge their own dreams for a “better life,” I hope I can return the favor and pass the lesson back to them. As they venture out into the world in search of happiness and opportunity, I’ll show them this picture and tell them they have everything they need to succeed in this world.

I’ll remind them that even at this young age, they were already so, so wise.

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We’re off to complete our wand collection, so please enjoy one from the archives. Have a great holiday weekend, everyone.

I love this photo of my son. He’s showing off his Harry Potter wand, boxed for safekeeping. Harry Potter is his new fascination, and I’ll never forget how he gasped when he entered Potter’s Wizarding World at Universal Studios.

Gripping his new prized possession, he made a point to tell his dad and me the wand wasn’t really magic.

“It’s fake,” he said.

Even at this young age, he seems to understand the difference between the real world and the one of make-believe. Except for that time shortly after Tom and Jerry was added to the regular TV rotation, and he told us Jerry was riding on his shoulder.

“Because Jerry doesn’t even have a bike,” he explained.

“Son, do you see Jerry?” My husband asked.

“No, silly! Jerry’s not real. He’s just pretend.”

“Okay. I just wanted to be sure.”

So I’m glad my son knows the wand won’t make Oreo cookies magically appear. But fake? That felt a little harsh.

“It’s okay to use your imagination,” I said.

Recently, I watched an interview with J.K. Rowling on Oprah. After years and years of writing stories, Rowling explained that at age 25, while riding a delayed train from Manchester to London, an idea flashed in her mind. From that idea, the world of Harry Potter was born.

Years ago, when I went to the movies and watched Sue Monk Kidd’s bestselling novel The Secret Life of Bees come to life on the big screen, I could barely contain the tears. I was amazed a story so beautiful — born of one woman’s imagination — had become bigger-than-life and was being projected before my eyes. Before she ever wrote the book, Kidd says images of bees swarmed in her head. They followed her. The story inside wouldn’t let her go.

She made her own magic.

Rowling did, too.

We’re not all meant to have our stories broadcast on big screens. Our creations may not inspire theme park attractions. And we may not all become billionaires.

But I believe we’re called to make our own magic. Do you?

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Dillon loves to check the mail. In the old house, the mailbox hung outside our front door. Determined to complete the task, he’d order me to stay inside as he balanced on a rocking chair or dragged a bar stool out of the kitchen to retrieve the stash. I held my breath and decided his determination surpassed the slim chance he might fall and crack his head open.

“It’s just junk,” he’d often say, as he handed over the crumbled collection of fliers and credit card offers. Where on earth did he hear that? I wonder.

In the new house, our mailbox is attached to a post near the street. And still, he insists on standing on tip toes as he digs around. For weeks, I found stray envelopes in the back of the box and scattered across the lawn. My patience paid off, and today, he gets every piece safely inside.

His persistence paid off, too. “Mommy! There’s something for me!” he exclaimed one day, waving a postcard from my friend, Andra Watkins. Andra sent the boys a few postcards from her travels this summer, and to Dillon, these notes are definitely not junk. They’re like gold, hanging proudly on our refrigerator. Sometimes, the postcards disappear, and I find them in the back of a Tonka trunk. The treasures have become imaginary playmates.

Recently, Andra wrote about why she does this. When she was about Dillon’s age, her next door neighbor sent her a post card from Niagara Falls. “I still have it,” she writes. “Both the American and Canadian falls strutted there, finally giving me an idea of what in the world a waterfall was.” She goes on to explain,

Whenever someone sent me a postcard, I salivated over it like it came from outer space…

And now, a few decades later, my children are reaping the benefits of a next door neighbor who traveled to Niagara Falls. Andra concludes her story by saying,

Whenever I go somewhere, I send postcards to all the children in my life. They’re paper seeds with pictures, enticements to be inquisitive, to dream about people who are different, to embrace the joy that can come from getting lost in a foreign place. I hope a few of them bear the fruit of finding me shuffling to my mailbox someday and pulling out an old timey postcard from a place I inspired. Live life, little ones.

Thank you, Andra. A gift to my children is a gift to me.

Do you remember when you first discovered how big the world must be, and it filled you with a sense of wonder and possibility? 

Please support Andra Watkins as she travels her own uncharted road — working to fulfill her dream of becoming a published novelist. Click here to like her author page. You’ll thank me later when you’re standing in line to get your autograph copy.