Dear Yvette,

You have so many items, like a checklist, twirling around in your mind, swirling, unrecognizable, colliding, fracturing any semblance of a short term memory that you might have had left and now, you don't know what to do with them all. You just don't know what to do.

You're so tired of multi tasking and never quite finishing any one thing before ten other things spring into place. You yearn for time and quiet and yet you clamor for attention and noise and laughter and even, chaos. The juxtaposition between what you need and what you long for is almost pathetic. For, ultimately, you're never going to be able to keep up with the demanding, incessant need that you have to try and find "fufillment." Truly, you found everything that you wanted as a young girl and yet you still want more; you still want that thing that escapes you, that holds the key to your happiness. But what your real problem is, you don't know what that key is and honestly, you probably never will.

For a while, you thought it was God and then school and then love, family, children. At times you've thought that being at peace meant that you could look yourself in the mirror and not frown or not wish that something was different about your face or your hair or the inevitable wrinkles that, interestingly enough, are a genetic gift from your father. Other times you've sat alone, in the dark, letting the tears come, wishing for an entirely different chance; a life very unlike the one you've created. Lately, you've felt enveloped in challenges and a desire to want to help others through charitable work or, through your own work. You've begun to want to make a real difference and yet, your own children are suffering from a lack of guidance on your part. You are not strong enough to be in three places at once, to take on ten things at once and complete them all successfully so you're going to have to choose. And the choice that you make is going to dictate the outcome of the lives of the people you love the most, including your own.

More often than not these days, you feel selfish and reckless and you make feeble attempts to live life to the fullest without really accomplishing that from the safety and insulation of your home. Maybe you need to heed your own advice and make the notion of "stepping outside the box" more than just a saying that applies to what's safe and instead ask yourself the harder questions. Instead of wishing and waiting for change to happen and then complaining when it doesn't, maybe you need to accept that you and those others whom you so readily criticize, have faults and issues and that ultimately, it takes time for real change to occur; real, meaningful change.

You know what it is and you know why. The holidays always seem to bring out the best and the worst in you; the melancholy and the joy in your heart. Gift giving and sharing and spending time with the people who've cared for you in some way, all of your life, it's well, it's wonderful and exhausting. Spending money that isn't there and wanting more for everyone and, at the same time, wanting less for your spoiled children who, incidentally, got that way because you spoiled them. Maybe it's time to just accept that it's the time of year when you allow yourself a moment to reflect and to consider what you want for the next year or phase of your life. Because, in the end, it is yours for consideration, regardless of what brought you here or how long it took or who is involved in it now.

Maybe happiness isn't a goal worth seeking because so far it has eluded you. Certainly you've had moments of clarity and peace and wonder, of joy and love and gratitude and, happiness. But the kind of happiness you seek is one in which you find peace in your heart. And Yvette, your heart is restless; it is the glass that is half empty instead of half full and as you continue to chase your tail, trying desperately to find the other "half" of fulfillment, you are letting more time slip away, time in which you could be accepting of what you have and where you are and who loves you instead of wanting other things. You need to take a long look at yourself and imagine how you would be without those things and those people and those moments and, despite already knowing the answer, imagine what that picture of life would bring you. Maybe that is what you are doing, right now, as you write away.

Try harder to feel the positive and not dwell on the negative. Try to see the good in situations, even where there isn't much there. Try to be more forgiving of yourself and of others whom you secretly criticize because you think that they don't somehow live up to your expectations. Try to be honest with yourself, even when that means that you judge yourself the most harshly and, for God's sake, try not to be so easily swayed by what could be and instead focus on what is. If for nothing other than your children who, in case you haven't noticed lately, need you more now than ever before, in a variety of ways and, if you don't see it soon, you will continue to fail them as you continue to fail yourself.

Try to see it from my point of view...

YLH