“This is the year I stop pressing my nose up against the glass, wishing for another life.  This is the year I love with banshee strength.  This is a year without fear.“-Tama Kieves

These are the some of the opening lines to a book that can literally open a door through which you can step into a new year and a new life. How exciting and exhilarating can that be?  How simultaneously scary?  Harvard educated attorney turned career coach, transformational speaker and three time author, Tama Kieves has faced both ways of being and much prefers the first. Her initial  books: This Time I Dance!: Creating the Work That You Love and  Inspired and Unstoppable: Wildly Succeeding in Your Life’s Work weave the tales of how she made the career and personal transition into a life that has taken her from ‘soul-starved’ to soul nourished. She acknowledges writing  A Year Without Fear for herself as well as for readers.

Lessons learned about what success meant, had Kieves focused on fear mislabeled as “being practical”. For many who open these pages, that way of living will sound all too familiar. When she faced the limiting beliefs she held onto that really held onto her, she was able to take the leap into a miracle drenched life and safely land with practical tools and tips for herself, clients, students and readers.

Reading this book, as has been the case with the other two as well, has me feeling as if I am sitting comfortably with her over a cup of tea. Because she has gone the ‘healer, heal thyself’ route, the language is familiar, as if coming from the reader’s own mind. An ‘oh, yes, of course I get it,’ sensibility is inherent in the explanations of how we arrive at a place of trepidation and hesitation when life offers us gifts to open. Everyone needs a cheerleader and Kieves waves the proverbial pompoms as she invites readers to be their own yaysayer as well, when the temptation remains to be a naysayer.

So, what is one key to releasing fear?  A simple four letter word L-O-V-E.  One of her inspirations is A Course in Miracles from which comes a guiding principle that everything is either love or fear. Also from ACIM, my favorite definition of a miracle is a shift in perception. Wouldn’t moving from fear to love feel pretty miraculous?

There are a few ways to use this treasure of a book. Readers can go page by page, since it is in calendar form, beginning with January 1st and moving in a linear fashion, or they can open to a page randomly and see what message speaks to them. Each lesson that comes with an affirmation as well,  can be a meditation or writing prompt. Topics range from doing everything with mindfulness and devotion, to allowing for all emotions to emerge, even if they feel painful, from taking inspired action, to sharing our gifts with the world.

This book provides practical tools for personal interior design. If you could paint the walls of your life with beautiful hues and shades, throw open the curtains and let the sun shine in, and do a ‘makeover’,  know that A Year Without Fear provides the paintbrushes. It’s up to you to pick them up and splash away. You will be astonished by the masterpiece you can create.