It's a new year. Looking out my window toward the sun, I await the storms coming to our fragile lemon and banana trees. The scene is lovely yet I feel sad. I guess it's a combination of last year being so difficult and my needing to let myself feel that. I don't know, maybe it's about living through my latest midlife birthday on Christmas Day with all the memories and losses of a lifetime flooding me.

It's also a looming sense of death from several friends becoming seriously ill coupled with the passing of my cat in December. My dearest friend, of all of my lifeblood pals, has ovarian cancer. I hold this knowledge in fragile balance, wanting confidence yet struggling to face reality. When we talk about hope on the phone, she says emphatically that she does not want to die. I wonder and grieve as I leave these conversations, "Why, oh why her?" She is a good person in a happy marriage. She makes every room light up when she enters. If I could give my life for hers—I would.

Another of my friends called a week before New Years. His father died and he's flying back East. Just like that. And here I sit. Powerless. Except to ponder what matters. Love? Community? Fun? I remember my parents' lives at the end and I wonder what they wished they could have done differently? Rattling the cage of my own bad habits, I think, "I'll have to do something brave or adventurous this year."

But I feel crunched to find my true goals. As I reach for my wishes, I feel confused. There are several voices inside me: One says, "Go away for a year, lie on a beach and eat bonbons." Another says, "Do something important, take risks, make a difference in the world." A last one states, "Only do what includes joy and laughter—life is short."

So, here I am with my cup of coffee in the morning, the one I still allow myself with my bran cereal for digestion—argh. That doesn't seem like the fun route. Then I ponder my tendency to multitask and I ask myself, "How would it be this year if I focus on one thing, not three? What if I live my life for me, not always thinking about others? Do I want to promote my book, expand my radio shows, get a day job, or find a way to retire and live more simply?"

I'd like to make a difference in the world, have humor doing it, make money and set my own hours. Is that too much to ask? I think it's bizarre in midlife that our jobs so resemble jail: a rigid schedule and two weeks off per year for good behavior. I mean I want my Social Security check like everyone else, but am I impractical, a dreamer? Or are most of us wage slaves of one type or another?

In my wild dream I'd love to exercise, have radiant health (I'm now surrounded by vitamins, herbs and multiple doctors who confuse me even more about my insomnia and upset stomachs). I know I'd like to work at something that matters, to succeed and even perhaps enjoy making a bundle of money—but how?

The only thing that really feels authentic, like me, is this hairball idea. I just want to vent all day. I even want others to do the same!

It's that I know I feel most full inside when people get together and tell the truth, however blue or rough, however ecstatic, because it's real. I wonder how to make a career out of that at a large worldball level?

Aren't we too isolated with our machinery, cars and cell phones? Are other people having midlife hairballs, technology hairballs, hairdo hairballs,aging and health hairballs?

Or, are some folks out there having a ball? At my age I still want to know how they accomplish that. Is it bags of money, a younger wife, spirituality through meditation, or blissful careers? I want to know my own life's purpose here.

Journal questions for the reader:

1) What matters most to you?

2) What footwork are you willing to do to see it happen?

3) Now go further. What is your deepest truth about what you want to have happen in the years ahead—this year in particular?

4) How do you want to feel when your "time has come?"

Katy Byrne, MFT

KatyByrne.com

ConversationswithKaty.com

It's in the newspapers and on TV. The great moneymaker and the wild Hollywood star are having a public brawl—a real hairball.

I mean, come on! Are they acting out the absolutely most primitive and immature parts of the human species? What I think is actually going on is that the negative masculine and feminine archetypes are at battle. Some of the most visible people in the world are picking on artificial, outer aspects of people at which to throw darts. What's up with that?

I see the patriarchy trying to put down the female in power. Yeah, I know, I know, fat is not in. But, neither is a wig on a man! Why does a man with that kind of money and power need to spend his time in this kind of activity? Putting down a female actress because she does not appear like a Barbie Doll?

First of all, he must be mad at a part of himself, so he's projecting hatred onto his own internal assertive female. Maybe he's just doing it for the attention—and the media is sure giving it to him—but why do we put up with it? So he can make more bucks at a woman's expense? What's up with that? Obviously, the collective human species is still out to get women who stand on their own two feet.

What is this telling us? Are women going to make themselves okay, no matter what their size, shape, age or race? Does the world still tend towards judgments, separation and finding someone to pick on? Is the dark masculine fighting the female? It seems we are all evolving yet still not far from the beast—though the animals are usually much more kind.

The regressive part in each of us is mean, disrespectful and intolerant of diversity. I remember in Junior High, Dave Dack used to accost me in the lunchroom. I wasn't good at asserting myself then, so my friend Louise stuck her nose in his one day—she stood about four foot two and looked square, strong and solid. She said, "Back off!" That was the last time I was bothered by Dave. "La, la, la," I strolled from then on, into the hallways and lunch hours.

Isn't it time women stand up? I don't really care what Rosie's like. My life is too busy to be bugged by such silliness from Hollywood. But I do think the symbolism of this happening, once again in the limelight, is a woman being patronized by a man. As if we didn't have enough of this with Clinton and Lewinski. Like our President didn't have more important business to do than Monica in the oval office. While the entire world ball depended on him, he was busy using his balls in all the wrong places—excuse the pun, but this is a hairball. So I say, "Go Rosie!"

Katy Byrne, MFT

I have to put my cat down tomorrow and I'm so tense. This is the third appointment with my faithful vet that I want to cancel. But this time, I need courage. My mother had it—she knew when to let go and when to fight. She was a strong woman. I am talking to her tonight, begging myself to possess enough of her robust nature.

This cat has a unique story, maybe they all do. Aristotle appeared in my bed at three in the morning, in the days when I left the cat door open all night. Waking up, I thought it was my other cat with similar markings. I was startled when I turned on the light and saw it was not my cat! He curled up in my armpit and purred so loud you could have heard him around the block. Well, he stayed for five years. I never learned where he came from. He had no collar or I.D. He knew where he wanted to be. He strutted through the house and back yard after that, as if he owned it, joined in with the other cats and dogs quickly and loved his morning treats.

We've had a wonderful time here in this house, Aristotle and the rest of my menagerie of pets. It's really not true—they do not fight like cats and dogs. They scramble, and amble and relax together. But now this lovely one is waning, and urinating everywhere, barely able to walk. Still, I dread this decision. I wish I knew what he wants. I watch his eyes, his eating habits. We're tiptoeing around each other, and I know he senses what I'm contemplating.

I remember my mom taking her darling Caesar—probably the largest cat that ever existed on the planet, since she fed him fresh liver every day— and having him gently laid down days before her own death. She knew what was needed.

The question of dying, when it is time and who has the right to decide, will be argued forever—into infinity—because it is so hard to be certain. All I know is that if I can save him suffering, if I can care for him to the end, with the least pain and most warmth, that is love.

I fear my own suffering when he dies. I can see it coming—the loneliness at night, the empty bowl, the questions about my own responsibility, the doubts about diagnosis and treatment. I comfort myself that as long as I take care of the voiceless ones, and see that they are not left in the cold or caused anguish, I am doing my best.

As my vet said, when I put my precious dog Harold to sleep after months of resisting and watching him linger: "I hope when my time comes, I see a field of wildflowers." What a difficult job he must have, and how tenderly he holds me whenever he sees my eyes full of tears.

Tonight as I write in my diary, Aristotle has passed gently and calmly—the way he lived his life. He had a wonderful morning with fresh tuna. I saw him sitting in the sunlight all afternoon, hardly taking his eyes off me. He knew.

I carefully patted the huge, cuddly blanket around his body and eyes as I took him to the doctor. He lay so easily in my lap. We had to wait ten minutes, trying not to become agitated.

Aristotle went quickly after the injection, and snuggled in his blanket, I brought him home and laid him in my bedroom. I sat with him for hours talking to him, encouraging him to join my mom and Einstein and Harold, wherever they all have found themselves after death. Then the oddest thing happened, which I have read about it, but never seen before: our little dog, who had never gotten along with Aristotle, suddenly threw herself on the cat's body lapping and licking it, especially Ari's paws.

As the evening wore on, my pooch did not budge. She usually loves to run around the house, eat, and climb under the sheets to visit, but she sat there with eyes staring straight at us each time we entered the bedroom where the kitty's body lay. She was earnestly trying to heal the cat with her snuggling, protecting him from harm and trying to revive him. Finally, my partner gently picked up the cat, as we were about to take my visiting mother in law out to dinner, and the dog growled seriously, with fangs you could see for a mile—not easy with a Chiawawa. I sensed she was serious about biting.

As my kitty lay in repose in front of the lovely fireplace, I talked to him as I went in and out of the room. He seemed ok. I guess it's those of us still living, truly, that have the struggle.

I have been trying to understand if there really is a God, and wondering, if there is something after we leave our bodies. As Aristotle left his body, I had an experience that I had when my dad died. I could feel something around me, something divine. In the thick space between my body and the air, I felt another life energy, a palpable beating of my heart—an essence of some kind, not easily defined.

I always felt that talking of spirituality was a bit corny. But, isn't there something going on the way my cat came to me unexpectedly, sought me out, lay in my bed in the beginning and never left my house? Aristotle mysteriously picked my house out of the block. (If only humans could make such sure choices.) He was wise. We loved him completely for years. How is it that, after all the reading I do, the meditation, retreats and classes, in the end, I learn more about relationships and God from cats?

As I wind myself around this hairball, writing tonight, moved by my innocent pussy cat's years of constancy, I ponder the world, the losses in it—the insane fighting, the lack of respect and care, the light and the dark. I try to hold onto the possibility that love is really what we're here for and that the ugly impulses in each of us come from pain and powerlessness.

With the wars that rage, the breaking dikes and the tidal waves everywhere, can we rid ourselves of mistrust, hatred and grief, and learn tenderness from our animals?