A Letter from Danielle for November ’20
Hi Everyone,
I say it every year, but this year I’m not kidding!!! WHERE did the time go? I had a lovely Christmas with my children last year. I hopped over to France after the holidays for a few weeks, and then in February, I went back to San Francisco when my son got married—and we had a really beautiful wedding: handsome groom, beautiful bride. Then I was off to Paris with two of my daughters while they worked on Fashion Week. And everything seemed normal, with some rumblings about a flu in Italy, and rumors about a flu in China. The wedding was on February 22, we left for Paris the next day to go to fashion shows and enjoy and celebrate French fashion . . . .and holey moley, exactly three weeks later, the world caved in. My daughters ran for New York immediately, I decided to sit it out in Paris, thinking it would only last a few weeks, and the next thing I knew I was in solitary confinement for three months in my apartment, while the world disintegrated. And since then, we’ve all united in battling the pandemic.
ZAP, the year is gone and it is Thanksgiving. . . . Did I miss something? How did we get here? How did this happen? It’s like we all slipped down a giant waterslide and wound up underwater. Things got better for a while, and now the numbers are going up again. We are part of history, and suddenly here we are, at the holidays again, starting with Thanksgiving. I haven’t seen my family in nine months, and I have NO idea where the eleven months of this year have gone!! It’s given me a tremendous opportunity to do a lot of writing, and a lot of thinking, in these unnervingly uncertain times. The drumroll in the background is scary, but there have been blessings in it, too.
Maybe Thanksgiving is symbolic of where we need to be right now, and what our thoughts need to dwell on, rather than answers we just don’t have at the moment about when the virus will finally go away.
Maybe we need to stop right here, right now, and be thankful, TRULY thankful for the blessings we do have: our children and our families if we have them, our health if we are healthy, the people we love and who love us, our jobs (however uncertain), the place we live even if it’s not perfect, our pets, our friends, the food on our table, whether we have a turkey or not. As I write this, I am not sure if I will be with my family this Thanksgiving—if it will be safe to go home, if I can get there. But wherever we are, whoever we are with, no matter what we are lacking, no matter how different we wish things were right now—we need to stop and be grateful and thankful for every big and small blessing in our life. There is always something to be grateful for. I hope I will be carving the turkey with my kids and gorging on stuffing and all the yummy foods we have every year. But even if our Thanksgiving meal is not the one we expected, and we’re not in the place we want to be, or with the people we most want to be with, let’s be thankful for what we do have.
I am so grateful to you, my readers, for reading my books. I am thankful for you, for your kindness and kind words to me, and for your support. Let’s be thankful this year, most of all, and the world will come around again, and the pandemic will end. Let’s hold each others’ hands and be strong and grateful together. This is the year it REALLY matters to be thankful!! (I have always loved the Bible passage, “God places the solitary in families.” I really hope you won’t be alone this year, but maybe you can reach out to someone who is, which is really the essence of Thanksgiving. We all need each other.)
And if you want to have some fun, my new hardcover All That Glitters is coming out on November 17. I hope you LOVE it. AND if you need a boost, if you’re scared or sad and need a dash of courage or a good laugh, my quotation book came out a few weeks ago, in October. Expect A Miracle. They are all the favorite quotations I have gathered all my life, by famous people, children, anonymous people, taken from graffiti I’ve seen. Those quotations help me get through some tough times, and I hope they do the same for you. It’s a gorgeous little book and I love it, and I hope you do too. And it will make a fabulous Christmas gift: it’s a small book that packs a big punch, has an inspiring message of hope, and comes to you straight from my heart. I love that book and I hope you do too.
Let’s Expect a Miracle—we deserve one—and in the meantime, let’s be thankful for every good thing in our lives, however small. May you have a blessed Thanksgiving, wherever you are.
My love and blessings to you all, with my deepest gratitude.
All my love,
Danielle