Welcome to the new blog for Pain Health News. Although I still have a lot of work to do setting it up, I'm rushing ahead to kick it off this last day of 2008 so that you and I can welcome in the New Year, 2009, together.

It's lovely to think that we have a brand new year in front of us, like a glistening field of fresh snow just waiting for us to wade in and make our mark. But like so many lovely thoughts, this one is a fantasy.

The reality is that 2009 comes to us trailing the debris of 2008, a year filled with fears and frustrations, a year that sent the entire world into a tailspin. It will take more than the blowing of horns and the popping of firecrackers to chase away the troubles of the year now passing.

We will not wake up on New Years Day to a completely new world, nor a completely new life. Each of us will find pretty much the same struggles and challenges waiting on our doorstep as we step out into our new year. And yet, there is cause for celebration, and for joy, because at the very heart of our New Year a celebration is the most profound and powerful of all human emotions.

There is hope.

To look at the world as it is, to look at ourselves as we are, and to patiently trust and expect that things will be better is the source of true magic, for once you choose hope, anything is possible.

Hope is the source of all courage, of all creativity. Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who kept going when they had nothing left but hope. Hope is, as Emily Dickens wrote, "the thing with feathers-That perches in the soul-And sings the tune without the words-And never stops-at all."

When trust has been broken, when confidence has been wounded, when dreams have been shattered, hope is indeed the thing that sits in the soul and sings the tune without words, the tune that assures us life not only can be better but will be better.

There was a time in my life when I was in despair, when pain seemed never ending and people seemed not to care. But hope sat in my soul and the song it sang gave me the courage and the ambition to push on, to prod, to nag and demand and search.

It was hope that told me there was healing. And hope did not lie.

Tonight, after the horns stop blowing and the firecrackers stop popping, I will go out into the still night, into the quiet and listen for the bird-like voice warbling in my own soul the joyful tune. I invite you to listen to the song inside your own soul, then join me here to share your hopes for the New Year.

### Bonnie Boots publishes Pain Health News to provide information and motivation to people living with chronic pain.  You can stay in touch with her by typing your email address into the subscribe box in the upper right corner of this page.