What Has Happened to Empathy and Compassion in our Culture for Grievers?

I think I have the answers, so take a seat and get ready for a long VERY controversial post. I have tried for a long time to stay out of the realm of controversy, but I can't do it anymore. Our culture is completely out of balance and needs a good swift kick in the pants to get back on track. So let's start with the imbalance of religion and ritual, shall we?

Pro-Life

Take the sanctity of life for instance. There are religious people who will kill people because they are pro-life. There are "pro-lifers" that are for the death penalty. I have found that some religions lack support for parents grieving the loss of an infant. In some cases ritual and the rigidity around the rules of ritual even cause harm. For example, if a baby is stillborn into a Catholic family, that baby cannot be baptized because baptism is a rite for the living. That baby was living and for a religion that preaches, “Life begins at conception,” you would think they’d baptize any baby. Even if it is totally against their teachings or rules, I believe a priest or member of the clergy should do something, anything, make something up! Adapt the baptism to fit the circumstances, to comfort the parents. Don't you think that's what Jesus would do? He broke the rules of the sabbath after all!

Pro-Life

The flip side of the rigidity coin is a total lack of religion and ritual. That has become more and more the norm in our “fast food,” “drive-thru,” “microwave,” “instant gratification,” “3 days bereavement leave” kind of culture. It seems our culture turns to education, research and psychology as opposed to spirituality and ritualization when dealing with death. The problem is this approach completely removes the heart. I believe a major contributor to the issue is the commercialization of death. It's a business so we use words that desensitize us, like corpses and fetuses so it's easier to "dispose" of them in the same way we dispose of atomic waste and trash.

For weeks, I have been asking myself, “What on earth could be causing this calloused, non-empathetic treatment of the dead and of grievers?" I believe a lack of spirituality, life without rites of passage and rituals has created a lack of respect for the value of an individual life and has desensitized us to death. Political correctness hasn’t helped much either.

Which leads me to a very touchy subject, abortion! The argument of when life actually begins has created a serious quagmire for parents grieving after an early or midterm miscarriage and even for parents who have made the difficult choice to abort. The grieving that occurs for both sets of parents is profound but because of the political stances on both sides of the issue, the grief totally gets missed. Let me explain. The rhetoric used to justify “choice” refers to a baby as tissue or a fetus. If you are pro-choice and you have an abortion, it is not politically correct to grieve the loss or even have regrets because, God forbid, it give the pro-lifers ammunition to take away choice. Likewise, if you and your peers are pro-choice, when a miscarriage happens early, the overall tone, albeit unconscious, is that it was just tissue or a fetus.

In Remembering Well, Sarah York, a Universalist Unitarian minister, made a comment in reference to an infant that had died shortly after birth, that absolutely horrified me! She said, “He was not just a handicapped infant who never had a chance…he was a person who had spent some time in this world, and his parents needed to hold a service to remember him well.” The words seem benign but only to those who buy into the philosophy that “JUST a handicapped infant who never had a chance” who is aborted or miscarried, is somehow less valuable than one that lived for a little while. Four pages later she redeems herself by saying, “The physical remains, even of a fetus that has been aborted by choice, deserve a ceremony of committal. This honors…the relationship that existed between parent or parents and fetus.” On this point, I couldn’t agree more. A baby’s life in-utero in our culture, has been given less value, which leaves the parents on both sides of the issue communally unsupported. Remember the priest who preached pro-life but whose rules dictated that the baby hadn’t lived long enough to be baptized?

Unless you know me, it may surprise you to know that I am completely pro-choice. However, I believe that regardless of the circumstances, there is a very real relationship between the BABY (I am more and more offended by the term fetus than I ever could have imagined) and his or her parents. This is the entire basis of my work as a spiritual counselor and speaker.

Miscarriage

In February 2004, my partner Cindy miscarried a perfectly healthy girl at 8 weeks. We were devastated. Because of Cindy’s age, there was no time to waste: we had to try again immediately. It’s odd and yet very common in our culture that virtually no one really acknowledged our loss. Don’t get me wrong, people were sad for us but the general feeling I got was, “OK, that was sad
,
but let’s move on.” I must look deep within myself to fully grasp the effect my pro-choice views may have had on the way I handled the loss of our first daughter. In hindsight, I regret the fact that we didn’t do a ritual after that loss. I regret not naming her. I regret that she was discarded as “bio-hazardous waste.”

My next question is, what has caused our culture to reject spirituality, rites of passage and rituals? The answer to this question is highly complex. In my experience, the people that come to my church or to me for spiritual counseling have been deeply wounded by organized religion and have thrown out all that is good (i.e. ritual) because they have been harmed by the leaders of said religion. I call it “throwing the Bible out with the bath water.” Ritual has also been used to abuse people by the religious leaders they grew up trusting. Further, in the age of information, there are no more secrets and the darkness that has been hidden behind church and temple walls is being brought out into the light. It is no surprise that a relatively conscious person would cast a jaundiced eye on everything linked to organized religion.

Starhawk said, "Rituals build community, creating a meeting-ground where people can share deep feelings, positive and negative…a place where they can sing or scream, howl ecstatically or furiously, play or keep a solemn silence"

What effect has the rejection of ritual had on our society? I’ll tell you… the loss of ritual in our culture has virtually eliminated a sense of real community, thereby isolating people, leaving them completely alone with their deep feelings. No one escapes loss and generally speaking, there are no safe places (other than privately or with a therapist) where people can release on a profound level, the kind of grief that is released and supported by communal ritual.

How on Earth did we get here? How is it that empathy and compassion around death and loss is going the way of the Dodo Bird? The answers to these questions surprised me and I found them in Crossroads: The Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage, in a piece called “Baskets at the Crossroads,” by Nouk Bassomb. Well, it was like finding the Holy Grail! Bassomb describes the rites of passage through which all thirteen-year-old African Bassa boys must go. He tells it beautifully. I hope that I can give it justice as I try to summarize it.

In the African Bassa culture, a grown man is expected to be “a firm, upright support for the entire village.” But that expectation doesn’t come out of nowhere. Boys are initiated and go through a series of rites of passage to become men. The first initiation involved Bassomb leaving his family behind, spending ninety days with twenty-seven other boys his age in a dangerous forest. The group of boys had one elder who was the initiator. The role of the initiator was to teach the boys the kind of reverence for God, culture, tradition and intuition needed to become a man.

Right there we can see several stark differences from our culture. First, Americans have very few elders and the elders we do have are not remotely respected. Second, because of the “melting pot” origins of our country, there is no one culture. Consequently most cultures within the United States have become watered down and homogenized. I have heard the phrase “the Americanization of the World,” and believe me, it is not being used as a compliment. Thirdly, there is very little reverence for God even in the most religious and spiritual communities because we are so busy trying to be right and make others’ beliefs wrong. Which, in principle, is NOT reverence for God, nor is it philosophically American. Last but not least, it is criminal that the men in our culture are not taught about the importance of their intuition. Is it any surprise that we are destroying our earth, attacking each other and bereft of values? I digress.

Rites of Passage

The African Bassa boys were taught about how to use what they learned to navigate the many “crossroads” they will encounter when put to the test. Bassomb states, “I learned that the crossroads are not only where people coming from south, north, east and west meet, but there also come together the old and new, the traditional and the modern, the archaic and the contemporary, the young and the aged, the visible and the invisible, the world or the living and the world of the dead.”

Within a few weeks, Bassomb was called out of his family home and told, “It’s time for you to depart, boy. Go! Now!” He is forced to leave his family, his home, his village with nothing more than a cloth wrap around his waist. The elders tell him that for the “next 18 moons” he cannot return to the village or communicate in any way with anyone in the village. As Bassomb, a thirteen-year-old boy, walked out of the village, he heard his mother shout, “Be humble and compassionate… and praise the Father each and every day. Don’t forget to put your baskets at the crossroads. And check them often.”

Which brings me to the most profound lesson we can learn from this beautiful man and his story. Nouk Bassomb wrote, “It is at the crossroads that we learn kindness, love, respect for the elders, protection of children, compassion for the weak and the meek. Being generous, compassionate, humble, hospitable, all help to fill our baskets. 'Check the baskets often,' Mom said. She is the one who taught me to pray, which is to say to put my basket at the crossroads, an empty basket.”

The boys of that culture are taught to fill their baskets with “stories and experiences,” not material goods. This rite of passage empowers these boys and not only turns them into men, but good men. In my youth, it could be argued that my peers and I were taught about the baskets, but we were taught to fill them with recognition, achievement for the sake of self, and money. In our culture, that is what defines success. Experience, wisdom and stories are of no value other than entertainment at a party or a juicy “tell all book.”

American teens and children are being robbed of the gift of empowerment. The more they try to fill their baskets with “gold and silver,” the emptier they feel. The emptier they feel, the more our teens turn to drugs, alcohol, violence, sex and video games to numb out to their emotions or present circumstances. Without rites of passage and ritual, we are raising generation after generation of people incapable of being present enough to do their own grieving, let alone have compassion for someone else who is in grief.

Our children and even adults need to be put in situations that give them opportunities to find God (the Divine within), themselves and to stay present, in the moment to survive with no time to numb out. That will create a “village” that comforts the grieving, that walks with them through the process. A village that doesn’t label grief in stages, or diagnose grief as a neurosis, and provides a place where an elder’s story of loss can inspire the younger generations.

“Are You a Man or a Mouse, I mean a Woman or a Wouse?” (Name that quote)

I’ve been thinking a lot about fear lately and wondering if it serves a spiritual purpose. In the past, I have mostly experienced fear as a paralyzing force. As a singer, for example, I used to suffer from massive stage fright. I had 15 years of formal classical vocal training with one of the top teachers in the world. My expectation was that I should be perfect. Since no one can be perfect, the fear of making a mistake kept me from singing in front of people for many years. If I sang in front of a friend or family member, I would turn my back to them or make them sit in the other room.

It took a huge amount of courage to put together my first one-woman show and perform it in front of 75 of my closest friends and family…in the same room with me facing them. I was terrified! My prayer was “God forbid I make a mistake!” Not only did I make one mistake but, I made tons of mistakes. You see, it turns out I am lyrically challenged. Even if I have been singing a song for 20 years, I am notorious for forgetting the words. So I will always be challenged to face my greatest fear: imperfection. But you know what? I survived!

What I learned from doing that show and the shows that followed is this: making mistakes made me real and it made the show very funny because I embraced my humanness. Facing the fear built courage in me. Courage I never would have accessed had I not had the fear to begin with. Now when I feel fear, I draw on my previous experience to conquer it.

“A Course in Miracles” says, “The opposite of love is fear,” and only the love is real; therefore fear is not real. I believe it takes real courage to choose to love. We can’t develop courage without the existence of fear. So the road to the land of love goes right through fear city. I now understand that fear DOES serve a purpose and it’s a very noble purpose, to build our courage. Mark Twain said, “Courage is not the absence of fear. It is acting in spite of it.”

I recently heard a lecture by Caroline Myss. She said that everyone has a set of archetypes, one of which is “The Victim.” At first glance, victim implies something negative, but it is only through embracing the victim and choosing to face our fears that we become victorious. Overcoming fear requires an action and that action is to face the fear head-on, don’t deny it, accept it as a gift and an opportunity to be victorious and build self esteem.

Do We Really Have a Choice?

Sometimes I wonder if our lives are predestined or if we really have choice. Often it seems the universe conspires to lead us in a particular direction, and no matter how hard we fight it, we are going there whether we like it or not. I had a very specific vision of what my life was going to be; let’s just say it doesn’t remotely resemble the life that has unfolded (and continues to unfold) before me.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that my life’s work would be about grief, death and how death can teach us to live. But as I examine my life, this is where I have been headed from a very young age. When I was six years old, my stepfather died of a massive coronary. From that point forward, death and loss became a major theme, so my mother’s and my unresolved grief became the foundation of my most formative years.

Many losses and years later, a newly ordained minister, the very first “official” service I did was a memorial service of a friend who had committed suicide. The first words I spoke were, “I could never have imagined that when I met Robert six years ago, one day I would be a minister, and that his Memorial Service would be my very first.” Not two years later, I was standing at the same pulpit for my brother’s memorial giving the eulogy; three months after that, I conducted the entire funeral service including singing “The Lord’s Prayer” for my oldest and dearest friend, Doris. Two short months would pass before I was once again at the pulpit after my daughter’s passing. I wasn’t just a mother in front of her family and friends; I was a staff minister in front of her congregants. I felt their eyes watching as they held their breath. I saw the way they looked to me as a leader in their community to see how I would handle the weight of all of these losses.

The weight on my shoulders was great and I chose to be very honest about my descent into doubt and hopelessness. I stopped giving sermons and I stopped seeing my spiritual counseling clients. I could no longer help a desperate person find hope with the same shallow teachings and platitudes that I had been taught because I knew they were false. I had to find deeper meaning.

I read books, tried individual psychotherapy, group therapy, mediums, spiritual counseling, and finally The Grief Recovery Institute. I got a lot from each of these approaches for the loss of my brother, but none of them helped me completely with the loss of my infant daughter. I even went to Compassionate Friends, a bereavement group that helps families after losing a child. As I sat in this group and heard story after story of how this baby died and that woman miscarried, and how nobody understood, all I felt was traumatized, not supported. I knew grieving for the loss of an infant was different because of a lack of a perceived relationship between the parents and an unborn child or a baby under the age of one year. Doctors have even been known to say things like, “You can always have another,” or “At least you lost it sooner rather than later.” As if to say there was no connection between the parents and infant. I noticed that people either focused on the death scenario or simply refused to acknowledge it at all.

That was the impetus of a study I have been conducting for the last six months. I had hoped to uncover the missing piece to completing grief after losing an infant. At the beginning of this study, I wasn’t sure what the remedy could be. I thought it might be a simple “Five Easy Steps to…” What I learned was that each case is unique, because grief is not the same for everyone. I discovered that the existing paradigms are helpful but incomplete, that so many of the resources available to grievers are psychologically-based, religiously-based, just one person’s experience or completely “woo-woo” psychic-type stuff. Again, these can be helpful, but I realized that there is a lack of spiritual (NOT religious or “woo-woo”) help for grievers who may have lost their faith. Further, the religious material out there for grievers is filled with judgment and threats. Not good!

The most important gift I received from this study was the understanding that grief recovery must include the story of the relationship. I could walk into any funeral of an adult today and people would be crying and laughing but most importantly, they would be telling stories. Stories about their loved one’s life, not just the circumstances surrounding the loved one’s death. That is what I would call complete grieving.

But what happens, for instance, if you have a baby that is stillborn? If I walked into one of those funerals, I am willing to bet, there wouldn’t be laughter and stories about the baby’s life. And that, my friends, is the most important missing piece to grieving the loss of a baby. I have found in my study and in my own experience that healing occurs more completely when the grieving parent tells the complete story of the relationship they had with their infant, of both life and death.

I had a very real relationship with my daughter while she was inside my partner Cindy’s belly. I read to her, I sang to her, we even bought a Doppler to hear her heart beat every night. Later in the pregnancy when Cindy was on bed rest, we had weekly sonograms in which I got to watch every stage of growth. Later still, we lived in the hospital for the last six weeks of pregnancy where Cindy was hooked up to every monitor you could imagine twenty-four hours a day. During that time, we literally heard every beat of her heart, every movement of her little body; we could tell by the accelerations and decelerations of her heartbeat whether she was hungry, sleeping, uncomfortable or happy. Her kicking told us a lot, too! Mostly she would kick to either applaud my singing or to shut me up… I never quite figured out which kick was a good review and which kick was a bad review. This was a seven and a half month relationship that started the moment we found out Cindy was pregnant. The story of her birth and death only covers nineteen hours of that relationship.

I do believe one needs to acknowledge the crushing blow of an infant’s death; as a result of this study, I have created a workshop for parents who have lost an infant called “Birth Write: The Write Way to Grieve ©” which will help parents document through writing the story of the LIFE they had with their baby. I have also developed another workshop called “Finding Your Way Back to Faith” for grievers who have lost their faith as a result of their loss. I am really grateful for the wisdom I gained from this study. I believe it has brought my life’s purpose into sharper focus and provided me with a very real direction. I am currently writing a book that will include my new grieving method and the material that comes out of the workshops.

And so, this is the life that is unfolding in front of me. During many of my past loss experiences I have felt broken. Shattered. But now that I have made peace with the fact that this is what God or Spirit wants me to do with my life, I actually feel more whole than I have ever felt in my entire life.

If you find yourself in a life that doesn’t look like the life you imagined, like you don’t have a choice…you do. You can choose to stand idly by as your life unfolds before you, or you can take the unique experience and wisdom that only you have, make peace with it, and boldly live your life purpose.

Driven to Distraction!

Have you ever been on the verge of success and then totally sabotaged yourself? Some people say it’s a fear of success, others say it’s a fear of failure. I say it’s a fear of living life to the fullest.

Over the course of my life, I have had many opportunities to co-create and become God’s greatest expression of myself. As I have stood at the precipice of that greatness, without fail, I allow something, someone or some event to come along and knock me so far back that it seems I am further behind than when I started.

As I have stated in other posts, when I was a teen, my ultimate dream was to sing. I had the opportunity to perform in many large venues with my stepfather, Peter Marshall, who, by the way, is a great singer. Anyway, after he and my mom separated, he started dating a gal who was also a singer. There wasn’t room for the both us on stage. Since I was my mother’s daughter, Peter’s new gal didn’t want me around, so I got the axe. That was the first time that I stood at the mountaintop with a clear vision of my future, when a swift kick in the teeth sent me tumbling into that place where dreams don’t come true. I wouldn’t sing again for years.

On my way back to the top of the mountain, I found a new way to be God’s greatest expression of my self; to write a book helping skeptics find their way to a spiritual path. My writing partner was the skeptic and I was the spiritual teacher, and things with the book were going great. As I stood at the mountaintop with a clear vision of my future, the relationship with my writing partner shattered into a million pieces, and I found myself once again tumbling into that place where dreams don’t come true. I let go of the book, giving all rights to her.

Have you ever felt this way? Like you’re about to achieve your goals, or your dreams are about to come true, and then BAM! You’re back to square one.

I have always taken those kinds of experiences and said, “Well, I guess it wasn’t meant to be.” Maybe it wasn’t, but did I learn from those experiences? Yes, I learned never to partner with a crazy skeptic because you can’t trust them. Oh, and I also learned that just because your stepfather’s latest fling replaces you in a duet, that doesn’t mean she’s a better singer and you should stop singing. But if I learned what I was supposed to learn…then why does this kind of thing keep happening to me?

It happened again this last week. I stood at the mountaintop with a clear vision of my future, when I was kicked in the teeth by very self-destructive thoughts and behaviors. Except this time I faced them head on and confronted them. And this time I wasn’t knocked backward, I was knocked forward. I finally got it! First and foremost, I am responsible for the circumstances in which I find myself. Second and probably most importantly, all of the sideshows that happen as I am trying to make my dreams come true are simply distractions.

[**Jesus Alert** Do not panic, I am about to reference Jesus. Please note: I believe that the parables, stories and symbols in the Bible hold amazing teachings, and that the Bible is not necessarily meant to be taken literally. So please don’t let the reference turn you off.]

Jesus said, “The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single [eye on God], thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil [meaning ‘the absence of God], thy body also is full of darkness.”

What I take from this is simple. If I keep my eye on God (Spirit, Higher Power or whatever you want to call it), I will have all the light I need to find my way through any darkness or distraction. But if I look closely at my distractions, and give them unwarranted attention, I will find myself tumbling down the mountain and will be consumed by the darkness where dreams don’t come true.

This time I choose to keep mine eye single. I choose light!

If you find yourself distracted and are in a situation where your success is in the balance…keep thine eye single. Choose light and leave the darkness behind.

My Near Death Experience!

I have been thinking a lot about death lately. I recently completed hospice training and it was an awe-inspiring experience that brought me to the realization that my life’s work is death and helping people understand what death can teach us about living.

I had a near death experience a few days ago. I was walking down the stone steps in the picture on the left, I wasn’t in the proper shoes and I slipped. My feet went out from under me so fast. One second I was standing there watching my family by a beautiful river and the next thing I knew, I was eating leaves. In truth, this was but a mere “life’s most embarrassing moment,” not an actual NDE (near death experience), but replace those leaves, that cushioned my head, with rocks and this piece becomes my obituary, not a humorous little spiritual piece on my blog.

I was lucky. I walked away with a bruise on my hip, an achy right arm and shoulder and a very bruised ego. Thankfully, my family will always have a ridiculous image of me lying on the steps plucking leaves out of my hair rather than the alternative.

So what did I learn from this? First of all, always choose your footwear wisely. Seriously, life can change and even be over in an instant. And do you really want to die in the wrong shoes?

Metaphysically speaking, the right side of the body (the side that I injured) represents doing or taking action. My feet (the part of me that faltered) represent my understandings. When I clearly understand what I am supposed to be doing and ignore or choose to take the wrong action, I am sure to lose my footing and get hurt.

Life is too short to let fear of falling on my face or fear of getting hurt, stop me from knowing and living my purpose. You may be wondering, “What is my purpose?” It’s really quite simple. We all are given a set of gifts and experiences that we are meant to master. When we learn, understand and combine our gifts with our experiences, we are then able to help others heal and evolve. Knowledge plus experience equals wisdom.

I can look at my life and know what Spirit wants me to do by looking at the gifts I have (the gift of gab and a gifted voice), combine them with the knowledge I have gleaned from my life experience (which includes having to repeatedly deal with death, loss and overcoming a fear of singing in public) and voila, there is my purpose. To use my voice in all of its capacity to help people grieve, understand death and as a result, live life to the fullest.

What are your gifts? What has your life experience taught you? If you combine your gifts with your life experience, what is your purpose?

Don’t wait to get knocked on your ass before you start living the life you were meant to live. The trick is to put one foot in front of the other. Just make sure both feet are in the right shoes and on your path!

Tune in next week to learn how to overcome your fears.

Her Holiness, the Dolly Lama

I have often said that before I found God I found Dolly Parton. I’ve mostly said it tongue-in-cheek, but when I examine my teen years, she really saved me. While all my peers and I were in teenage angst, they were doing drugs, doing each other and getting into anything and everything. I, on the other hand, was doing Dolly… wait, that didn’t come out right. I was getting into anything and everything Dolly… oh, I’m not so sure that sounds good, either.

Let me start over. I was 13 when I got my first Dolly Parton album titled “Here You Come Again.” That album changed the course of my life. Her music lifted me up, she inspired me and the music gave me a focus. That year I started the first of twenty-five years of vocal training.

As most of you know, my stepfather is Peter Marshall, host of the original “Hollywood Squares.” When I was 13 he arranged for me to meet Dolly. I was fortunate enough to develop a fairly good connection with her. My relationship with Dolly gave me the strength to believe in myself. If I could forge a friendship with a person as special, kind and BUSY as Dolly, there was probably nothing I couldn’t do. I learned that if I had a dream, and was willing to take a chance on making that dream come true, it would.

When I found God, the course of my life changed again. What I mean by that is, that I found in me, the Divine spark that lives in each of us. After many losses, false starts, and failures, I learned that inspiration has to come from within. The focus for me has to be on Spirit. If I can forge a relationship with Spirit, there is nothing I can’t do.

I think that’s what I saw in Dolly. She is so deeply connected to that Divine spark in herself that there is nothing she can’t do. Except maybe wear a size 32 A bra. No amount of inspiration could make that happen. I digress.

To this day, the sound of Dolly’s voice, her incredible spirit, just makes me smile from the inside out. I love this song. It says it all.




If you have a dream, let yourself be inspired by Spirit. Connect with the Divine in you and be willing to take a chance on making that dream come true, and it will.

Out With the Old…?

Nearly ten years ago, I co-created a television show (that got optioned but never sold) about a woman in her forties going back to college. The lead character wanted the full college experience, which included living in the dorms and rushing a sorority. The production company made us change her age because they felt it was too far-fetched for a forty-something woman.

As usual, Hollywood was wrong!

Next week, I, Gabrielle Michel, a forty-two-year-old woman, am going back to college to get my BA in Religious, Spiritual and Holistic Studies. While most of the program is done online, I will be attending a nine-day residency in Vermont where, yep, you guessed it - I will be staying in the dorms. Not once, but two times per year.

I remember a story of someone saying they couldn’t possibly go back to college to fulfill a dream because they would be fifty years old by the time they finished the four-year program and graduate. A wise person said, “You’ll be fifty in four years anyway, you might as well be fifty with a degree.”

It’s never too late to follow a dream, to finish a project, to go back to school, to meet someone and fall in love, etc. I can hear the “yeah, buts” already. Yeah, but I’m too old, young, poor, rich, tall, short and so on. Well, you might as well be too old, young, poor, rich, tall, short and happy, right?

So my wish for all of you in 2009 is that you not only dream big, but that all of your dreams come true.

Happy New Year.