It's New Year's Eve and the temptation to look backwards at 2017 and recount all of the loss our little family has endured is strong. 

But the time for the listing of past sorrows is gone. 

I must look to the future and honestly friends, my future is... well, more sagaciously unknown than ever before. And while none of us has a crystal ball with a clear line of sight into 2018, I'm dancing a slow but lyrical dance with Death right now and it is changing me.

Every performance of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert ended with the song "I Will Survive." And every night as I danced and sang my way through it, I would start to cry tears of joy. Those 3 words were already so meaningful to me after the August "incident"... and the wonder that I was still here and still able to perform that song was never lost on me in those final moments before the confetti cannon fired and the proverbial curtain came down.

Nor is it now.

I have good days and I have bad days. We all do, of course, but right now they feel like life or death for me... because they are. And certainly the only dancing I'm doing is in my head (where it always looks better than it does in real life). I am trying so hard to fight and to be positive and to be brave-- and the love and compassion and support you have expressed for both me and Derek is humbling and absolutely beautiful. You cannot know how profoundly grateful I am to learn so late in this life how very much I am loved.

Know this: I will survive. 

I will sing and I will write and cook and save animals and do all of the things that I've put off until now. I will even dance again. 

Heck, I may even take some lessons so it's less painful for us all.