And what does January hold? Clean account books, bare diaries. Three hundred and sixty-five new days, neatly parceled into weeks, months, seasons. A chunk of time, of life…those few first notes like an orchestra tuning up before the play begins.
--Phyllis Nicholson
Country Bouquet (1947)
Dearest Friend,
One year ends, another begins. The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke urges us to “Welcome the New Year” because it is “Full of things that have never been.”
I’ve been thinking about you a lot in the last few months. You might be approaching this New Year of 2025 with dread for the future and sorrow for what has or has not happened this past year.
However, when discouragement comes, I comfort myself by thinking of the long line of heroic women who came before us. For three decades, I have been writing about women’s lives in the 19th and 20th centuries. I’ve always been fascinated by the continuing mystery of why some women facing catastrophic challenges and devastating, life-altering circumstances gradually rebound with radiant resilience while others cannot recover.
We are not the only women who have known difficult times, survived them, and started over. I find solace in drawing upon the wisdom and strength of generations of women who died before we lived—our pilgrim mothers, the pioneer women on wagon trains, Native American mothers, enslaved African women who became freed African Americans, wild west immigrant homesteaders, migrant Hispanic women, European and Russian Jewish refugees, Asian mothers crossing the Pacific, and young Irish women like my Nana Rose, carrying a baby in one arm and a suitcase in the other while escaping the Irish Civil War of 1922. I think of my Kentucky Granny, Lucy Eliza Lyttle Donnelly, rolling out biscuit dough in her salmon-pink chenille bathrobe. The world could end tomorrow, but come what may, there would always be fresh hot biscuits for breakfast. These extraordinary women have come to represent grace under pressure in the archives of my heart. I return to their stories regularly. I collect new ones, like precious pearls, to be strung as a symbol of my inherited strength born of many mothers.
We need to remember that to be one woman is to be all women. That all women are endowed with blessed DNA—the genetic code of courage, ingenuity, creativity, perseverance, and determination. Our Destiny, Nature, and Aspirations are Heaven-endowed, so why wouldn’t we be given the spiritual wherewithal to fulfill them?
We have, and it’s called Spiritual Moxie. I want you to think of a woman’s Spiritual Moxie as an indomitable feminine strength hidden in the secret recesses of our hearts: small time capsules containing the seeds of resilience and restoration that grow best from the ashes of its previous existence, like the giant Sequoia trees in California.
I love the word Moxie. It’s great American slang—a noun that means grit, gumption, sass, pluck, know-how, nerve, and verve. I love its exhilarating combination. Originally coined as the brand name for a non-alcoholic health drink in 1885, Moxie was good for whatever ailed you, especially if you were shy and modest. And while at times we can feel fraught, frazzled, fragile, frightened, and worn to a raveling as we think about the future, Divine Grace always knew we would come to this turning point—the choice between giving up our dreams or going forward with just one tiny step. Accessing our own Moxie was designed for this very moment.
Think of Moxie as a feminine force that can only occur when two separate elements—inexhaustible courage and stubborn faith—are mixed. Through the spontaneous combustion of necessity and passion, they create an entirely new compound: steely determination. Now ponder an irresistible force meeting an immovable object, and you’ve got the Spiritual Moxie of your Authentic Self pushing through everything standing in the way of your happiness.
Only after we have been broken and emptied of all pretenses; only when we’ve faced heart-wrenching reckonings and impossible situations, only when the only opinions that matter are the Great Creator’s and your own, only when you remember who you were before the world shaped you into an acceptable version of who you should be, only then, do we become our Authentic Selves.
This is the New Year to gratefully take stock of what was working in your life and what wasn’t. Just before COVID shut the world down, I rewrote and updated for the women we are today a 21st-century version of Simple Abundance: 365 Days to a Balanced and Joyful Life. I wanted to help women, whether single or married, from eighteen to eighty, discover more moments of contentment than distress in this ghastly 24/7 “Breaking News” culture. Whether you want to step back from hectic lives or empty nests, we all want more contentment and serenity. I hoped we could encounter everyday epiphanies, still find the Sacred in the ordinary, the Mystical hiding in the mundane, and fully enter the sacrament of the present moment, whether it's meeting an impossible deadline or working a second shift tackling household jobs between the hours of seven p.m. and seven a.m.
However, because of the lockdown, I couldn’t tell many devoted readers about the updated version of Simple Abundance: 365 Days to a Balanced and Joyful Life.
This year will be different from any we have shared in the past. Hopefully, in the coming days, you will discover that everything in your life is significant enough to be a continuous source of reflection, reconnection, and revelation.
At its heart, Simple Abundance is the soulcraft of self-nourishment, which is every woman’s most pressing need. That’s why I’m offering for the first time a Simple Abundance Book Club for the next six months as we explore the magical, mystical adventure of Spiritual Moxie based on the six saving graces of Gratitude, Simplicity, Order, Harmony, Beauty, and Joy.
You will be reminded to seek and find what truly matters most for a few hours every month. And we’ll discuss your insights. Consider the Simple Abundance Book Club a personal tutorial between you and me. Or perhaps you could invite a few of your closest pals. But please, let’s think “Girls Night In” as we sift and sort through all the excess that buries our daily joy.
In this exclusive Masterclass, taught by me, we’ll explore how the year's shape can become a template for contentment and why acknowledging that you are an Artist of the Everyday is the firmament from which dreams soar. You’ll learn how to reframe time and space to work for you, how Spiritual Moxie waits before she steps in to change your life through powerful new choices, and how to change your To-Do list from the practical to the passionate.
I hope you can join me, and I look forward to talking with you soon.
Sending dearest love and blessings to you and yours,
XO,
Sarah Ban Breathnach
SARAH HAS BEEN DISPLACED BY THE EATON FIRE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. AT THIS WRITING WE HAVE NO IDEA OF WHAT IS HAPPENING AS SHE IS EVACUATED AND SAFE. OUR COURSE WILL BEGIN IN FEBRUARY AND ANY ONE REGISTERED WILL BE SENT THE SCHEDULE AS SOON AS SARAH IS SETTLED.
Hi, this is Maureen, Sarah’s sister and program administrator. I just wanted to take a minute to share the extraordinary gift that is being offered. To learn how to not only know the Six Graces of Simple Abundance, but to learn how to live them from the Master who brought Gratitude to our lives and introduced the concept of our Authentic Self is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
To learn more about the details, click here. If you are ready to change your life, sign up now. Space is limited, and as it is said, sometimes she that hesitates, loses an opportunity that may not come again.
