Hope in Times of Economic Challenge

As a Healer I've never felt more needed. Things look pretty serious these days. Lots of people losing their jobs, retail sales are down, the healthcare system in America leaves most of us behind. Doom and gloom and fear peppered with the usual rhetoric from spin doctors seems to surround us. And, it's contagious! But... so is hope and creativity and caring.

As 2010 dawns I find myself very hopeful. Maybe it's because so many people made choices around the holiday season that were actually truer to both themselves and to the season. In contrast to other recent years, this year I heard significantly less complaints about the stress of getting everything done and meeting everyone else's expectation. Instead I heard about people making gifts and choosing to spend time closer to home. My clients overall reported having low key and relaxing holidays. I had only two clients come in in crisis. That's never happened in my 10 years as a bodyworker and spiritual healer. My client load usually goes up at the holiday season because of the associated stress.

You might be thinking, "Who can afford such things in this economic environment?"

I did see a somewhat alarming decrease in clients the week surrounding Thanksgiving. But my December client load followed the patterns of the rest of 2009. And really, I'm not talking about the number of clients. I'm reflecting on the relative stress level and emotional wellbeing of my clients in comparison with other years. So what's it all about?

I suggest it might just be that the economic hardships that at some level are hitting most of us, require us to evaluate what we do with our resources and how we live with the consequences of those choices. Could it be that this year we all had a really good excuse to stop going overboard at the holidays? Did it allow us to say "no" to things we've wanted to say "no" to all along? Did staying closer to home and spending quality time with our loved ones become an easier choice for us?

Yes, times are uncertain. The up side of that is we have an incredible opportunity to take a good look at how we walk in the world and to discern what's really necessary. And it gives us a glimpse into the true cost of the usual holiday madness, specifically the cost to our hearts and our souls. It also gives us extra motivation to stretch our creative muscles and to stop long enough to ask the important questions - and hopefully to begin to answer them.

In my heart, hope prevails. I, like anyone else, have days when I wonder what's going to happen and how much control I'll have - moments when I slip into fear. But I express them to close friends and let them hold me in my fear for a bit. It passes when I take a positive action to make my life better. That's when hope returns and when my heart is filled with gratitude for the friends and the resources that I have.

My friend Janis is "Going Zen in 2010". I think I'll join her.