Dear Tiffany,
I appreciate the fact that, when faced with a challenging emotion, you have trained yourself to breathe, to put on your detective’s hat, and to go searching for the story.
I also appreciate that you are getting better at accepting those moments when the story is not immediately apparent despite your searching.
And I appreciate most of all that you keep all the threads of your undiscovered stories in a messy little bundle in your metaphorical back pocket, waiting for further clues to reveal themselves.
(I mean, we could talk about how you sometimes use this as a way to distance yourself from difficult emotions by wrapping them in a safe intellectualized bubble, but, you know, it’s cool. We see that precipice, we’re probably going to fall off it at least a few dozen times, we’ve got this handy rubberized resiliency suit, so it’s fine.)
Someday you’ll write your books. I promise. I don’t know if I’ll keep that promise, but I am making that promise.
Someday you will take all these stories, all these hard-won, intimately-known narratives, and you will stick them in the art blender*, and I don’t know – maybe blender level 2 and memoir the shit out of this. Maybe blender level 8 and write some fiction. I don’t know. I just know that you will.
And I know you’re so scared that you won’t.
You are not a failure.
You have not missed your chance.
I love you.
Keep going. Keep dreaming.
It will be okay.
Love,
Me
* Credit to Amanda Palmer for the art blender metaphor.