We wish all the very best to our readers for 2016, and apologies for the delay in getting out what should have been the last blog of 2015. We saw out the end of the year with a group the week before Christmas with some snacks, some funny videos and messages of hope for one another as this can be a particularly difficult time of year for some people navigating family or loss and what can be a generally reflective period making difficult situations more poignant. Our group has a new book called ‘Walking on Sunshine 52 small steps to happiness’ by Rachel Kelly. With the author, we reflected on the following poem by Emily Dickinson remembering that, like the winter weather we too can feel bleak, overcast and gloomy, but that these slumps are both natural and transient:
The sky is low, the clouds are mean,
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.
A narrow wind complains all day
How some one treated him;
Nature, like us, is sometimes caught
Without her diadem.
