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I had a full day of full moon companionship with Stasha Huntingford and Nathan Fawaz, my Tender Year collaborators. We shared stories and tea and art supplies and pastries and laughter and time.

I am grateful. It was amazing.

Saturdays, we generate affirmations.

Dear Tiffany,

Happy Halloween, Gloom Faerie.

Love,
Me

Dear Tiffany,

Your course has launched, and you are so excited about it.

And Possibilities ran tonight, and it was fantastic.

Sometimes the love letter comes to you unexpectedly. This is perfect, as I think about what it means to take a break, to swim inward and flow outward.

(Plus, being gifted poetry in a love letter is the absolute most romantic thing. Why wouldn’t I give myself that gift?)

17/365

#100loveletters #tenderyear #dailypractices

Robert Kaplan

October 17, 2017 ·

Mary Oliver

Five A.M. in the Pinewoods

I’d seen

their hoofprints in the deep

needles and knew

they ended the long night

under the pines, walking

like two mute

and beautiful women toward

the deeper woods, so I

got up in the dark and

went there. They came

slowly down the hill

and looked at me sitting under

the blue trees, shyly

they stepped

closer and stared

from under their thick lashes and even

nibbled some damp

tassels of weeds. This

is not a poem about a dream,

though it could be.

This is a poem about the world

that is ours, or could be.

Finally

one of them—I swear it!—

would have come to my arms.

But the other

stamped sharp hoof in the

pine needles like

the tap of sanity,

and they went off together through

the trees. When I woke

I was alone,

I was thinking:

so this is how you swim inward,

so this is how you flow outward,

so this is how you pray.

Dear Tiffany,

You did a lot today.

You did enough today.

You did good work today.

You did the right work today.

You are tired now, and there’s more work to do. It feels like there is always more work to do. (Because there is always more work to do.)

Someone said to you, today, “there’s always another bad guy to battle, it’s never over” and someone else said, about something else, “that’s a project for another day” and both times you thought “yes, that is how this game goes – it never ends, you’re never done, until the end, and then you’re done.”

And sometimes that feels hopeful, and sometimes it feels exhausting, and today it feels both.

You did a lot today.

Maybe you could do a little less another day.

Maybe the day after a migraine and in the middle of all this body pain – maybe not the day for quite so much to pile up on the plate.

But then also, when? If not today, when? Tomorrow? Tomorrow will hurt, too.

You’re in your office right now, and it’s very cluttered because you don’t have enough shelf space yet and you haven’t had enough time to get it organized and everything is everywhere and it’s supposed to be calming in here (and it is! sometimes! but now is not one of those times!). And the piles of things in your peripheral vision are making this feel worse. Whoosh, the panic.

Start again.

Dear Tiffany,

Take a deep breath.

Sit up a little straighter.

Drop your shoulders down – yes, good.

Drink some water.

Come into this moment. This is all you have to do right now. Reframe this moment.

This love letter is not written so that you can check it off your to-do list for today. That feels frantic and overwhelming, and that to do list got a little out of control sometime around 1 pm when you thought you’d add just a few loose ends and straggler projects, and now it’s an overgrown beast of a thing, and this love letter is on it, but let’s just pull away from that for this moment.

This love letter is written because you have committed to a year of attendance, to a year of tenderness, to a year of tending this life and this self – every self within this self. Tending, tenderness, attendance, attention. Presence. Balance. Gentle, compassionate care. Love. Space.

Keep breathing.

The work you did today was good.

The work you will do this evening will be good.

The work you will do tomorrow will be good.

And you are good, whether you are working or not.

Just breathe for a minute.

Remember how it feels to be present, and then be present.

It is okay.

Let it be what it is, messy and overwhelming and good.

Good job.

I love you.

– Me

#tenderyear #100loveletters #dailypractices

Dear Tiffany,

You did a lot today.

You did enough today.

On Fridays during the Tender Year, the prompt is “reflections.”

It is a welcoming, expansive prompt.

You can reflect on (and in) mirrors, like Stasha did earlier today. Those pictures are gorgeous – the sky, the trees, all the beauty that she showed her mirror and caught with her camera. Amazing.

You can reflect on your day, or your week.

“You” can do whatever.

But this is my first Friday in the Tender Year, the Year of Sacred Attendance, and what do *I* want to reflect on?

I’m sitting in my office as I write this. My new office – still cluttery, missing bookcase space and in need of a table. I’m wearing my Avatar t-shirt (both Legend of Korra and The Last Airbender – I wanted to remind myself to stay balanced, and that there’s power in both goofiness – Aang – and stubborn perseverance – Korra). I took a picture of me, in my “remember to draw on every element, remember to find balance” t-shirt, in my office, in a mirror, holding my cherished little gem tree that always makes me feel like magic, and is where I imagine the fae folk (who must surely visit me) sit and have tea.

This morning, I woke up and the full moon was pouring in through my window and I felt welcomed into my day. I am still feeling reflective about that Mary Pipher passage I read yesterday, about how balance is when the pain of facing reality is not more than the joy of connecting with the beauty of nature.

This tender year feels good, so far. Less than one week into it, but I can feel the potential for it to be beautiful, to be heart-healing, to be a daily reminder to check in with myself, with my world, with the world around me, with my people. It is self-care in a way that feels a little familiar and a little foreign. It is uncomfortable, in a good way. It is intimidating, in a good way.

I’m going to start keeping count, inspired by Nathan. I didn’t keep count with the #100loveletters project, because I was afraid to be tied to the numbers.

I’m going to keep count with this project, and give myself permission to miss days and to sometimes fail and to sometimes forget. Maybe I can track it without being trapped by it. Maybe I can hold some space for reflections on when I feel obligated and when I feel invited, and pay attention to how the numbers feel.

So anyway, this is 6 out of 365.

Onward!

#fridayreflections #tenderyear #dailypractices

(It’s the first Tuesday in the Tender Year, and the Tuesday prompt is a love letter, allowing the 100 love letters challenge to continue within this new project.)

Dear Tiffany,

Today, you were so tired.

Dear Tiffany,

Tomorrow is the last day in the original #100loveletters challenge*, and then the new project starts on the 1st.

That’s pretty amazing.

Dear Tiffany,

You feel very slow and unproductive. You have a to do list as long as some very long thing, and your head is fuzzy and your body achy and none of your work today was enough.

You imagine an alternatiffany who wakes up, sprightly and refreshed and full of great ideas and energy, and packs lunch for the kids and makes breakfast and then tidies the kitchen and sits down at their desk and journals, and then does some stretching and maybe has a shower and then gets so much writing done! Like, wow! That Tiffany is just on a frickin’ roll!!!! Also, they do a lot of marketing and have a very successful coaching business. They host writing retreats regularly. They BAKE BREAD LIKE YOU USED TO DO.