Me, loving every part of my narrative, even when they do me a concern. I borf in order to heal.
Heck.
Today is Day 100 in the Tender Year, and it is a Tuesday, a love letter day.
The Tender Year was created after the original 100 Love Letters project ended. That first project was life changing, and this project has been life changing, and that’s a lot of pressure on a day. As I thought about today and today’s contribution to the project, I really struggled. It feels so important. It felt like magic that Day 100 fell on a love letter day. And magic demands magic, right? The perfect love letter.
And I have another project happening – taking all of the writing I generated in that first project, and including interviews and other people’s love letters, and writing a book. I even bought a domain for it.
I thought the magic today could be finally setting that site up, spending some time on the book, writing a really good love letter and intro to the project. Officially announce the 100 Love Letters book project on Love Letter Day 100 of the Tender Year. That’s so good! Magic for magic.
But it didn’t work out.
It was messy, all the thoughts. I’m so irritated with myself lately. Hard to write a love letter from there.
And I couldn’t get logged into the domain, so that didn’t work.
And I’ve been sick for so long, I’m days behind on work, so I didn’t really have time to work on the book. Which is the case every day, and also, what kind of pretentious wank do I think I am, to write a book. Fuck.
But this project – I show up for it.
In whatever way that I can, even when it’s not magic. Even on Day 100 when none of the magic is working.
So I got out some chalk pastels. Messy and unfamiliar as a medium.
And I used my favourite drawing paper.
And I drew a thing.
And I labeled it 100 with my messy finger. Messy is welcome. Messy is uncomfortable, but it is okay.
Good job, me.
Dear Tiffany,
On the fifth try, you are allowed to take a break.
It’s okay that this love letter is small and prefaced with a whole bunch of type-and-delete. Sometimes love is showing up, and sometimes love is permission to pause. You did show up, and now you have permission to pause. Whatever you were trying to say will be there to be said another time.
Dear Tiffany,
Oh, these love letters.
You’ve been thinking about gifts a lot this week. I mean, obviously. Christmas. But also more personally, your own history with gifts, with extravagent and thoughtful gifts. With deeply personal gifts.
Remember dozens and dozens and dozens of jars of jam?
Remember planning Mega Dates, and that very first one with the handmade scrapbooked invitation? (Oh my fucking word, you are such a dork.)
Before that, remember shopping with your ex-husband, even before you got married? That year you painted dozens of little jewelry boxes for everyone? Stencilled them and painted them and stamped them. And the year you made napkin holders, scroll-sawed a set of them? The embroidered tea towels?
You used to spend months making gifts.
The Christopher Radko santa ornament for dad, and then a wooden box designed and built and stained and personalized, made to fit it?
And then this year.
You did all of your shopping on December 23rd. You didn’t make a single gift. The one big idea that you had didn’t work out, and you didn’t have or even attempt to come up with a Plan B. You just… didn’t give that person a gift at all. Awkward.
You haven’t painted anything in years.
You haven’t touched embroidery thread, your canning gear, your scrapbooking supplies, or a woodworking tool in years. Years.
I mean, approximately exactly as many years as fibro has been in the picture, but still.
That used to be your thing.
Big, thoughtful, personal, customized gifts.
Anyway, that’s not your life anymore, and you bought yourself this chocolate even though you didn’t buy gifts for most of the people you would normally buy gifts for, and I just want to say, because this is a love letter and not a shame letter, that it is okay to be sad. No, my friend, my self, use the word that comes. It is okay to grieve. To *grieve* the time, the energy, the creativity that you no longer feel able to pour into your gift-giving. It is okay that you bought yourself chocolate, too. You are allowed to give yourself things, even when you are not giving things to other people in the ways and at the times that you want to.
I don’t know what next year will be like.
I do know that you are not useless. You don’t own a scrollsaw anymore, and you never actually did learn how to carve, and most of your crafting supplies are still at someone else’s house, but you are not useless.
This year, you wrote Patreon posts for a bunch of people and those people generally really liked their posts. Those weren’t exactly gifts, but they were something you made, that you put months of thought into, that you shared.
You created a bunch of online resources even if you didn’t create a bunch of delicious jam.
You relaunched Possibilities and maybe that counts as much as embroidering a bunch of tea towels. (Okay, let’s be real. Those tea towels looked TERRIBLE. But A for effort. Seriously. Also those napkin rings. Wow. You are just a very enthusiastic amateur without a lot of patience for becoming proficient and, well. Enthusiasm is not nothing. But I’m glad you stuck with jam for long enough to actually get good at it.)
I just want you to know that I am trying to forgive you for this Christmas. And I know that we will swim through this shame swamp and past the fear monsters and we will come out the other side muddy but whole.
I know that gifting is part of how you see yourself, and how you love yourself, and how you show love, and I know that you feel like a slimy jerkface for how gifting happened this year. And for the last few years.
I know.
But just… let’s just breathe. And be sad if we need to. And grieve what we’ve lost without catastrophizing out into a future where we never have anything that feels as good again. We can grieve and still have hope. We can feel sad and still feel hopeful.
So yeah.
Merry Christmas, chickadee.
You’re not as much of a fuck-up as you feel. People probably still know that you love them. I’m pretty sure. Maybe we’ll send some letters over the course of this year to make sure. But let’s just trust, for now. Let it sit.
And maybe someday you’ll have a scrollsaw again, or you’ll figure out the next crafty thing to be terrible at.
And either way you’re not a useless lump.
I love you.
– Me
cw – discussion of suicidality
Dear Tiffany,
You’re sick again.
I love you anyway.
This afternoon, when you settled into the pups’ place, you had such a strong body memory of other times you’ve been here. This house has held so much joy for you. These pups are so playful and snuggly and sweet – Herbie and his love of walks, Charlotte and her love of being burrito’d in a blanket. This house has held some pain for you, too. These good, sweet, perfect puppers have snuggled you through some bad days.
Scott has also been here, in this house, with you for those hard times – walking the pups when your fibro was so bad a few years ago and you weren’t really mobile. Splitting the time over longer stretches so you can be at home with the kids some of the time. Even after you moved out. Even after everything changed in ways you hadn’t planned for. Still, Scott has been here in this house, helping with this delightful work of caring for these pups.
And, the surge of memory that came this afternoon, while you were sitting across the table from Scott, eating the traditional Delicious Thai “first day at the puppers” meal (pad see ew, tofu for you, chicken for Scott) – that one terrible spring and summer when you were making plans.
You said, “I will give this three months of sincere effort, and if I don’t feel better by then, I am going to end it.” Sitting at that same table. Sitting across from Scott. And Scott nodded. They are a solid rock in your life. An anchor.
You did give it three months of sincere effort and you did start to feel better and you did not need to end it.
I am sorry that you have felt so lost in your own life, so many times.
I am sorry that the threads you hang on by are so thin sometimes, so ephemeral.
I am thankful that you have support, internally and externally. Scott wasn’t the only one you told. You have multiple people who can be trusted with the gloomiest bits of yourself. Lucky one.
I am thankful that you are so determined, and that when it gets bad enough that you’re making plans, you make plans that include the opportunity to change the plans.
I am thankful that, although many things in your life have changed in the last few years, your love of animals has not.
I am thankful for these pups, and for this house, and for safe spaces (physical and relational) to fall apart.
Love,
Me
Just in case you missed the Queer Christmas in Cowtown Launch & Readings last night, here’s a video of me reading the first part of my contribution to the anthology. The video is not subtitled yet.
My piece was written as a love letter to my bisexual self, and was part of the #100loveletters project. There is more exciting news on the 100 Love Letters front, but that’s a post for another day. For now, there’s this.
If you’d like to find out what happens next (and read the rest of the amazing stories in the anthology, including work by L. Sara Bysterveld, M Jane Colette, Beatrice Aucoin, Tet Mlare, Erin Sneath – author, and many other fantastic queer Calgary writers) you can purchase the ebook at https://www.amazon.ca/Queer-Christmas-Cowtown-Jane-Colet…/…/.
Profits from the book sales support Calgary Camp fYrefly.
Dear Tiffany,
Today was an off day. An on and off day.
But here, a moment of gentleness and self-compassion. You are two days into a 14-day program of self-compassion. Give yourself what you are helping others give themselves.
You’re facilitating the course, but you need it as much as anyone else who signed up.
And in the off moments, this feels like failure. Today was an off day, there were many of these moments.
But it was an on and off day. There were other moments.
For a while before you recorded the video today, you read back through your Year of Self-Care posts. In 2013 and 2014, you undertook a major project to learn how to do sustainable self-care. You did a good job. You have valuable skills, insights, experiences, knowledge. You do. I promise.
There were other good moments today, too. Family moments and friend moments.
An on and off day.
This picture is of some street art in Melbourne, Australia. It feels hopeful and gloomy in the way that you are gloomy and hopeful, Gloom Fairy. The moon, the dark forest, the raven heart. Gloom and glimmer. You don’t need to excise the gloom. You don’t need to become anything other than what you are.
On and off and onward.
Love,
Me
64/365
#tenderyear #100loveletters #dailypractices
Image description: A page from a book, with art drawn over the words. A figure is sitting with the back to the viewer, face turned to be in profile. Their torso is full of an image of a forest and a crow or raven is flying. In the upper right of the page, a yellow crescent moon. The page is signed Jover.
Dear Tiffany,
There are moments when you are with people you love and who love you – online or in person or over text or phone call. And there are moments when you are eating food that nourishes you, breathing cool fresh air into lungs not anxiety-constricted, drinking Joe’s coffee with maple syrup or a London Fog or a chai latte (half sweet) or a Phil & Sebastian mocha. There are moments of sharing a show with a friend or making plans for community activism or finally making progress on a post that’s been impossible to write.
These are good moments.
May you have more of them, more intentionally, more joyfully, and more shamelessly.
Love,
Me
#tenderyear #100loveletters #dailypractices
58/365
I was struggling with today’s Tender Year prompt. I felt like, despite my #oneweekofeasyanswers intention, I *should* write some kind of really fantastic love letter for today. I mean, I’m in a new country! I’m around the world! I came here because I chose to act on a dream and take steps towards my goals! That’s deserving of a ‘real’ love letter. And this is the only Tuesday I’ll be here! My only chance!
But actually I just want to be asleep.
And maybe the actions leading up to today are love letter enough. Maybe? Maybe.
When we have dragged ourselves up from rock bottom, sometimes we struggle to let ourselves off the hooks that hoisted us.
Commitment. Follow-through. Dedication. Determination. – the hooks that pulled me up. The hooks that sometimes now restrict me.
Anyway, I wanted to be asleep an hour ago but I couldn’t give myself permission until I got this done and I couldn’t get this done because my brain is fried.
Chickadee, maybe stop spinning sooner tomorrow, hey?
#tenderyear #100loveletters #dailypractices
Image description: purple ink. Text reads – Dear Tiffany,
Very often, love is action. Sometimes love is permission to not act.
‘Rest’ is also a verb.
Go to sleep.
Love,
Me
Dear Tiffany,
What love letter do you need this evening?
Something gentle and easy – quick (to make the gap between now and bedtime smaller), but real (to make the gap between compassionate intention and compassionate action smaller).
A shrink ray of a love letter, then.
Something that makes gaps smaller.
Something that bridges gaps.
You are a stress cadet – Joe said today that you’ve been promoted to stress admiral, and Liz said that sounds like an accomplishment but not the good kind.
So, given that, let’s bridge a gap.
Tiffany, Stress Admiral in charge of Project Australia, Elf Commander of the Entrepreneur Ship, Not-Quite-New Stepparent collaborating on Team Hawkstrid, there is a gap between what you are doing and what you are giving yourself credit for doing.
Let’s make that gap a little bit smaller and acknowledge that you are doing quite a lot, and you are doing it quite well, and tomorrow you will get as much done as you can and it will be enough, and Thursday you will get on a plane! Going to Australia! Wow!
It’s a lot, chickadee.
It’s good.
Good job.
Now, sir, might I suggest a final cup of tea to round out the evening and then bed. Leave the rest of the to-do list for another day. You’re allowed to stop working without beating yourself up for the choice. It’s called self-care. Ooo, zing! I say this with love, truly.
And a bit of sass.
But mostly love.
Probably mostly love.
Love,
Me