Soul Food – SURRENDER
Reflecting on 2025, I, like many of you, look forward to a fresh start. The new year is an untouched canvas—like my Buddha board by the reading chair. Each stroke with a water-dipped brush is a fleeting intention, destined to dissolve into emptiness, inviting me to begin again. I use it whenever I seek stillness, letting worries evaporate like water from the board.Unfortunately, this past year, I regret to say, I’ve hardly spent any time in that chair. That’s going to change for 2026. This past year, I’ve been a firefighter in a city of burning buildings I never built—battling bureaucratic blazes in government and children’s services. These relentless infernos have stolen more nights of sleep (and I don’t even live in Seattle) than I care to remember.
I’ve learned you can only control so much in your life and almost nothing in others’—even raising a teenager requires care and gentle guidance, they have a mind of their own, and then some.
I’ve squandered too many precious hours on things that will evaporate like morning dew, irrelevant in the grand tapestry of my life—a life I’ll someday review from a distant cloud.
As long as I’m reflecting on 2025, and realizing I wasted too much time on:
- Wasting minutes, hours, or days scrolling my phone on non-sensical things, fake news, and other people’s glorious or disastrous events
- Checking notifications on my phone every other minute
- Reading countless unsolicited emails from who knows where
- Getting upset over petty things, frustrated with my PC, or annoyed at the indifferent store clerk.
- Giving my power away to every Tom, Dick, and Harry
- On HOLD on the phone for HOURS, and NO, this is not an exaggeration.
- Searching for information and forgetting why; does it even matter?
- I’m sure I’ve missed a dozen more. (Add your own to the list!)
The thread running through this tapestry is:
If we could truly trust in a higher power, whatever name you use, we would experience more happiness, peace, gratitude, and actually have more time for what truly matters:
- Spending time in that chair in my room to read
- Reading all those Astrological periodicals that are gathering dust as I speak
- Going to the Rec Center in winter, even with icicles on my nose, to get a walk in
- Getting out in nature each day, even just sitting in the car, admiring fresh snow in the Metroparks
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- In Spring, Summer, and Fall, we have no excuse not to get outside at least once a day.
- GOING FISHING! I’ve fished only twice in the last 2 ½ years. My excuses are just that: excuses.
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- Cuz I don’t know what I’m doing when I’m flyfishing.
- I’m afraid I’ll fall in the Rocky River (it’s called Rocky for a reason)
- I don’t want to look like I haven’t a clue (which I don’t)
- DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! (an art form I seem to fumble, as if trying to catch smoke with my bare hands)
Shifting focus, here is what I’ve done differently in 2026 (notice this as if these changes have already been accomplished):
I SPENT MORE TIME:
- Surrendering (let go, let God)
- Doing what I love, because I turned off all phone notifications (What did we do before cell phones?)
- Actually scheduled time to READ each & every day.
- Drank a cup of tea each morning, doing absolutely nothing else but that
- Meditated each & every day
- Spent at least 10 minutes in nature daily—more is good, but everyone can manage 10 minutes.
- Made someone’s day, at least 365 times in 2026. Spreading kindness is a pebble tossed into a pond—the ripples are effortless, and I wonder why everyone doesn’t make a splash?
- Read periodicals when they arrive (or at least within 24 hours)
- Walked every day (even in minus 7 windchill—there’s always the heated Rec Center)
- Write in my Gratitude journal EACH & EVERY day.
- I at least made notes on my dreams each morning before getting out of bed. As a self-proclaimed oneirologist, I know that unrecorded dreams are like butterflies at dawn—impossible to catch if you wait too long. Long dreams drift away, much like my meandering conversations, voicemails, and texts. Sorry, I’m working on this.
- FINALLY, coloring in the half-dozen Mandala coloring books I have
I have a couple of books that come to mind (actually 50+) that I’ve read and would like to share with you for 2026 (these aren’t new, but they deserve a read). Email me at [email protected] & I’ll send you my .pdf copy.
Stay tuned for the Full Moon blog coming out in a few days.
Blessings,
Rosie & Eva Starr
