_I know life hurts sometimes. I know you want to hide. I know you want to stay quiet while words war inside your heart and head.

But the world carries so much hurt of its own, it needs your warrior's heart, wide open.

The world needs your truth. Demands your truth. Can survive on nothing less.

The world needs the gifts you bring, the ones you are hiding behind some buried shame.

The words are there but you are terrified to speak them; I was once just like you.

You think no one could possibly understand. But someone somewhere does.

Someone somewhere is struggling with the same exact thing. Someone else's heart is breaking.

Break the silence and you don't just heal yourself; you heal us all.

If you can't grab a friend or regale a stranger, put your pen in hand. Let it all out.

Don't hold back. Now is not the time to stop the flow.

Declare your heart's manifesto; pump your fist in the air and swear never to shut your heart again.

Swear you will always seek the smallest seed of courage in the face of your fear. Promise you will always try.

Remember your face when you were two, three, four. Do it for her; and ask for more.

She deserves the world; give it to her, one day at a time. Feed the child in your soul with all your love and all your heart and tear down the walls to let it all in. The tender-hearted are resilient, strong; hearts broken scar over and grow, grow, grow; walled hearts shrivel and die.

Love sews up broken hearts with magical golden thread; but you only get this magic if you're willing to be broken. Take off your mask and your bullet-proof vest. Be willing to step out beyond the edge, trusting in the uncertainty.

Life is a mystery, no single moment beyond now is guaranteed. Walk fully into it anyway.

You are a warrior. Let that truth shine a light into your darkest corners. Gather your strength, rise up.

Every day greet the world and write your manifesto across the hearts of those you meet. With a touch. With a smile. With the truth.

(To quote John Mayer) say what you need to say.

Your heart needs to speak, and someone's heart is aching to hear it.

You have taken the first steps to freedom. And once you've tasted freedom, you are always free, whether in your whole being or in the smallest part of you.

You are a warrior, you cannot be caged. Love rushes in to raise up your courageous heart.

_I guess I am still being a bit of a New Year's rebel. Instead of fixing my life, I find myself really wanting to savor it.

Give up the striving. Stop the need to be smaller, smarter, softer (in all the right places), firmer (in all the others), faster.. stop needing to be anything other than what I am right now. Do we ever sit still long enough to find out who this person is? Without squinting with digust and slapping a label of "Before" on our current image of self, while knee-deep in the striving toward the image of "After"?

My word for 2012 may be Yes, but a lot of those Yeses need a counter-balancing No.