This week is Thanksgiving; being thankful. I started the year with a big lesson. Slow down. Release ancestral survival mode and nourish my soul. I'm thankful for the opportunity to have had the lesson because the alternative would not have been good. The ups and downs in life are opportunities for lessons to be learned.

This week, with Thanksgiving coming up, the word that came up was cleaning. If we're going to have company and people in our home, I think we might need to clean a little bit more, organize a little bit more, put things away a little bit more. Now, it doesn't mean to shove it in a closet. It just means let's go tidy up a little bit.

This week the word that has been rolling around in my mind is anticipation. We are at that time of year where we are anticipating everything – the holidays, the gatherings, the events, the meals, the traditions – the list is long. But here's my question since we always live with anticipation of something, are we living the moments in between?

This week there is one word that's been floating around and it's the word brave. And this one question has been popping up in every aspect of my life. How brave are you? Have you ever thought of going to war? We have a friend who just made all the arrangements and went to Israel to help in any way that he could.

This week, a prayer keeps coming to mind. It's called the Serenity Prayer. It goes like this: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. I think we all pray and our prayers can be simple. As simple as thank you for that parking spot or thanks for all the green lights.

This week I want to talk about our bucket list or what I'm saying, our bucket list. We all have this list of dreams and ideals and travels and things that we wish to accomplish in our life. But you know what? Life changes. We change as the decades roll on. And why are we holding on to something that could be 20 to 30 years old? You know what? It creates frustration and possibly a sense of failure.

This week I want to go back and really look at our toolbox. I want to go over some things because it's the end of the year. I think it's been a reflective year for us. And let's just go over our tools and our toolbox because I feel like more and more each day, we really need to reach into our toolbox to manage what's going on And having these tools at hand when we need them is so helpful. It's like creating a muscle memory.

When we're unsure of something, we ask others. We ask Alexa or Siri or Wikipedia. But here's a question: Do we ever stop and check in with ourselves and ask ourselves? This is an ongoing project for myself. It's a test of our intuition. It's a test of trusting what we're feeling. And once we kind of get used to it, the correct path always kind of shows up when we ask ourselves, how do we know the difference between a yes and a no?

This week I was going through my bookcase and I found something that's kind of special and I didn't really forget about it, but I haven't looked at it in a long time and I wanted to share it with you. I wrote a little book when I started becoming an aunt. My sister has three children, my other sister has two. And so I wanted to create a book for each one of them. And so I want to share that book with all of you because it's kind of nice.

. This week, I want to talk about the fall. It's such a wonderful time of year. It's so colorful, cool and crisp. And it truly is a time of transition. This is the time of year that nature begins to move inward, storing its energy, dropping its foliage and conserving energy for the cooler months. This change, whether we're aware of it or not, it affects all of us.