happy

Who's happy? You, I hope! Man, I know I am! I'm still floating on an Obama High, and I'm thrilled to see how many people feel the same way. Back a few months, when I had the gall to publicly support Obama on my own blog, the response was so darn ugly in some cases, I wondered (briefly) if I'd be smarter to just shut up about that I think, and switch to something safer, like shoes or favorite recipes.

As it turns out, I did lose a couple of customers over it, but I gained many, many more. And not only people who agreed with me politically - some didn't - but certainly open-minded, big-hearted people who know that we've come to a place where we need to speak our minds as well as our hearts, and work together for the common good, despite our differences. Those are the people I want to surround myself with, in my business, and in my life. I think some of the ones who left me might begin to change their minds now. That would be lovely on so many levels, especially for them, since they cut themselves off from the beads they love, hoping to teach me a lesson. In a way, they did teach me something - that it's best to be honest and real about who we are and what we stand for, and that I was right to speak up. I'm grateful, and I promise, if they come back around this playground, I will not neener-neener them. I'll give 'em a big smooch and say Welcome! We all missed you! Let's get together, yeah, yeah, yeah!

And now here we are, beginning again, full of hope and energy and a sense of community I haven't felt in a very long time. On this cold January day, it warms me to my very toes to see the proof all around me that as a nation, we're better than we thought we were, and together, we've got the stuff to keep on proving it, to ourselves, and to the world. Happy? That word doesn't begin to touch it.