Thanksgiving comes early this year

I want to take just a minute today, though it is not yet quite my favorite holiday, to say thanks.

To my friends: you have listened, cried, angsted, advised, encouraged, pointed out my weaknesses and flaws, affirmed my strengths, and guided me to be a better Sarah. I could not have navigated the last year without my dear friends, without your honesty and tough love and support and admiration of me. I told Diana when I moved that I had to draw on the strength of my inner strong black woman – the Maya Angelou that lives inside of me. You all helped me realize Maya was in there, all along. Many of you have been with me on this journey since its inception, in the fall of 2005…. I am proud and delighted to have you, my amazing friends, who have accompanied me on this journey, believed in me, never gave up on the Essential Sarah. I have grown so fond of being me in the last few months – you just cannot even imagine the inner transformation you have helped create, and I am grateful to time’s end for it.

Thank you for your friendship. You each are incredibly dear to me. And I feel like this quote from Heather is so appropriate to begin this new chapter in life, I had to preserve it here:

My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maxe. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny....