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Dear Tiffany,

You are so effing enthusiastic.

Even when you’re exhausted, you’re still whipping out your notebook to jot down that idea you had for a book club in the fall, or noting something to follow up on for one of your (many) projects, or you’re picking up another book on sensory processing to help with the kids and then adapting the exercises for your clients.

I really love that about you.

So much.

But it is okay to have moments when you’re not enthusiastic. I will still love you if sometimes you are not enthusiastic. I will still love you even if sometimes you are not working. Even if sometimes you have an idea and do not write it down. Even if sometimes you don’t have an idea!

More importantly, you are still loveable when you are not enthusiastic. It’s not just that I will love you. It’s also that you will still be fundamentally loveable. Other people could still love you, even in moments when you lack enthusiasm.

In fact, other people have already demonstrated that they will love you in moments of unenthusiasm, and I know you feel like you need to do penance for those burned out years by being On! All! The! Time!

You don’t have to do penance for those years.

You can just be human.

You can be enthusiastic and loveable in your enthusiasm, and you can be unenthusiastic and still loveable.

(It might even be possible that you will do a better job in your many projects if you allow yourself some time and some space and some generous permission to just plug along even when you aren’t feeling enthusiastic. You don’t have to always be on fire. Sometimes you can be a slow cooker.)

Love,

Me

#100loveletters

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Today was a love letter in motion – a love letter in the form of many hours spent creating and consuming. The best way to your own heart is through your own stomach, so they say. (Or so they would, I’m sure.)

Today’s love letter reached down to deep roots – you have always loved the kitchen and the kitchenwitchy magic of food.

There are stories here. Cherished, treasured stories.

Drafting menus and serving dinner restaurant-style to your parents. So many memories of time spent designing menus and coming up with outifts and making plans with Domini.

Junior high, and a five-course meal prepared with two friends – menu design and shopping and prepping and cooking and probably not really cleaning up (sorry, Sue Maxwell).

Learning how to make bagels.

Broccoli cheddar soup for friends on lunch breaks in high school.

Getting up early to make pancakes for breakfast, so your boyfriend could stop by before work. (Sour cream pancakes with berry syrup.)

That ridiculous birthday dinner, planned and prepped and served candlelit in the middle of a half-painted room, drywall dust on the floor.

The dinner-and-movie club, with theme meals (remember all those pies when we watched Waitress, Sarah-Jane?)

All the jam made with Jay. So much jam! Jars and jars and jars and jars of jam. Peach vanilla bourbon jam, strawberry lime, sweet pepper jelly, blueberry basil jam, cinnamon apple jelly.

And the first jam ever, crabapple jelly with Laurie.

That ridiculous(ly delicious) peanut butter banana cream pie for Scott.

These roots are deep.

And then there was fibromyalgia. There was exhaustion. You were just so tired, all the time. And then depressed. So sad. All the time.

And those years of just not eating, because what was the point – all that work with your counsellor to get to the point of keeping a granola bar in every bag. Granola bars are not “menu planning, meal prep, presentation.” Granola bars are survival.

These roots are not about mere survival.

These roots are about deliciousness. The deliciousness of planning, and the deliciousness of preparing, and the deliciousness of presentation, and the deliciousness of consumption.

Today you are pretty sick and kinda sad and definitely tired and you still, because you have deep roots and you have not lost them, you still planned and prepared and presented and consumed. And I love you for that.

For all these endless strawberries, and the sharpness of fresh sage crisping in butter, and the careful presentation on a plate.

I love these roots.

They are strong, and deep, and good. And tasty.

#100loveletters

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#100loveletters

Remember that time you spent a year with one lung infection after another and you thought you were going to die (for real, not even hyperbole) and you spent so much time in bathrooms sobbing and coughing and completely despondent?

I know you remember, because I’m in your head. Well, it’s my head.

But anyway, just because you’re suddenly coughing like that again, does not mean you’re going to have another year like that.

And I know, that year coincided with a terrifying depression. It was a bad one. We almost died.

And, I know, after that year, fibro. Did that year of lung infections cause the fibro? Did decades of depressions cause the fibro? Did you cause the fibro by being an evil person who deserves to be punished with pain and exhaustion forever? Who knows.

(Not that last one. We know that.)

Anyway, anyway.

I know the coughing hurts, hurts your head, hurts your chest. But I know the coughing isn’t nearly as bad as the fear, because that was a really, really bad year.

It’s okay.

And hey! Not once today did you call your lungs violent and misogynist names, which is a significant improvement on that year. Your good work learning to accept your body is paying off.

I love you, coughbot.

– Me

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You know what makes it super hard to write yourself 100 love letters? Years of shame, doubt, and self-hate. I’m compiling a resource for those of us in the #100loveletters challenge who are struggling, and I’d like your help.

How do you get past self-hate? How do you find ways to act out of love even when you can’t feel that love?

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Dear Tiffany,

You’re the Little Engine That Could, and I love that about you, but when you get this tired, maybe try being the Little Engine That Could Take A Break.

Make some tea. Cut up some strawberries. Watch some Netflix. (No multitasking.)

Love,

Me

#100loveletters #1000todolists

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I just spent the better part of an hour noodling around with Joseph‘s new Shotbox, which is a fancy photography accessory (so I can finally take pictures of small scenes without all the clutter in the background! And with lighting! It’s SO FANCY!!!!)

So!!!! If you would like to see these fancy photos, you can subscribe to the #100loveletters email list, because an email will be going out tomorrow with some of the results of my noodling.

http://tiffanysostar.us16.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=3c400335fd57acf5716460825&id=8757c06a2a

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Sometimes a love letter to yourself is a mirror, and you allow your own clear and compassionate view. And sometimes a love letter to yourself is an echo, and you let yourself see with someone else’s clarity and compassion.

And so, today’s contribution to the #100loveletters challenge includes something said to me by someone who’s know me a long time.

–

Dear Tiffany,

You are brave.

You think of yourself as ‘anxious’, and you read a subtext of ‘fearful’ into anxious, and you read a subtext of ‘cowardly’ into fearful. ‘Anxious’ is one of your core narratives. And that’s okay – there is nothing wrong with being anxious and your anxiety is such a valuable part of your story and your sense of self.

Anxious does not equal cowardly.

Your anxiety does not make you a coward.

But you forget that, and so when you act in ways that are particularly brave, it shocks you.

So when Ash responds to your shock at your own bravery, listen. He is right when he says:

‘You have always been brave.

This is merely a new expression of your courage.’

You have always been brave. You are still brave. You are so anxious and you are so brave.

Love,

Me

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Dear Tiffany,

The thick green leaves around the base of your centrepiece succulent have all suddenly drooped, and the jade tree is dropping leaves in sad and dusty resignation, and you’re congested and achy and sad and this first official love letter in the challenge was supposed to be upbeat and set the tone for the next hundred days but it’s not. I mean, it’s not upbeat. It might be setting the tone, but let’s not dwell on that.

It was supposed to be handwritten, artistic, something to be kept in a box and brought out every so often. “Ah, yes, remember that very first love letter in the project? So good. So good!”

But what about this, my sad and ambitious self. What about this. What if you could start out on the wrong foot and still keep going? Because you will. Because that’s what you do, and I love that about you.

What if it was okay to set your expectations high, and then fall short, and still be okay with it? Because even though you won’t – you won’t be okay with it – you know that it’s possible to be okay with it, and I love that knowledge in you.

What if you write a love letter every day and you don’t end up with a box full of gorgeous art, because you never manage to make anything artistic in a whole hundred days of love letters?

What if you kill that new plant, the one you spent $9 on instead of the usual $3 for your fairy garden plants? (What if it dies, and what if you take a clipping from the jade tree and put it in that spot?)

What if you don’t have to get it right the first time?

What if it’s just okay to do it and forget about it being “right”? (Yeah, I don’t believe that either.)

But still! Look at this! A love letter anyway.

This is what I love about you – you can see the more wholehearted way to be, and even when you can’t reach it, you don’t close your eyes to it. You can see the path that you will maybe someday be on, and even when it’s disappointing that you’re not there yet, you still keep moving forward.

You are always looking for the contrast. The sparkle in the dark, without denying the gloom.

Go on with that dark and sparkly heart. You *do* have what it takes. You do have the sticktoitiveness and the resilience. You will keep going. I love that about you.

Maybe tomorrow, something artistic.

Today, something disappointing and real.

Love,

Me

#100loveletters