Hope.

Today, for the first day in a very long time, I am working from my laptop in the coffee shop. The sun is shining brightly, a hint of summer is in the air, for this afternoon, anyway, all is right with the world, and I feel something dangerously close to - dare I say it? - HOPE.

That’s not to say I haven’t felt hope at all over the last couple of years…but it is fair to say that it’s been playing a really good game of hide and seek with me. Most of you know my story and what I’ve been through with my parents’ illnesses (to catch you up, in case you don’t know: They were both diagnosed with cancer within one month of each other back in the Darkest Year, 2020), so between that and the soul-sucking despair of the never-ending pandemic, I haven’t allowed myself to feel pure, unabashed HOPE in quite some time.

But at Dad’s most recent doctor’s appointment, his cancer was undetectable; and Mom has been getting stronger over these past few weeks; and the pandemic SEEMS to be losing some steam; and I’m working at my table I haven’t sat at in the coffee shop I haven’t been to in two long years that has helped me give birth to at least four of my books. And today…I feel HOPE. Hope for the future, hope that maybe Mom and Dad will be okay, hope that maybe life is getting back to “normal,” hope that maybe, just maybe…a new and lighter and happier and better chapter might be starting. Not just for me, but for all of us.

That’s what this new evolution of my blog represents to me. A new chapter. I realized earlier today that I hadn’t even officially welcomed you guys to this little blog I call “Mandy’s Musings.” It’s called Mandy’s Musings because that’s exactly what it will be: my musings about life, and love, and friendship, and sometimes singleness, and maybe even a little about the books and movies I love…and everything and anything in between. I haven’t actively blogged in several years now, but lately I’ve been feeling the tugging toward starting it back up again…so here we are. I’m glad you’re here.

I wrote a new book that will be out in June that you guys have heard a little bit about called Turn Toward the Sun: Releasing What If and Embracing What Is - and it’s a book all about searching for the LIGHT. Letting go of the darkness of all of life’s many “what if’s” and stepping into the sun of what IS. And honestly, that’s what I want this blog to be about, too. Searching for the light. Turning toward the sun. And realizing that while darkness is very much a reality of life, it never, ever gets the last word.

Hope does.