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Borrow another, from a cherished friend – “You’re pretty darn smart, and fantastic at what you do… and certainly not a weenie.”

Borrow another, from a beloved (prompted, and therefore goofy – you have a type, Gloom Faerie) – “You’re cute. You’re smart. You care about your friends, and you don’t stink. You shower regularly. Not daily, but, you know, consistently. Oh, and you’re passionate about what you do.”

Take those narratives, stitch them together, wrap them around the anxious part of yourself like a security blanket of love and acceptance and encouragement. Let encouragement become courage.

You did the thing*!

I love you,
Me

#100loveletters

* I bought a ticket to Melbourne. For a narrative therapy intensive. It would have made WAY more sense to go to the one in Vancouver, but I didn’t know I would be attending David’s talk or that I would find the gumption to act on my dreams of applying to the Masters of Narrative Therapy program, and I didn’t know that the intensive was a necessary prerequisite, and at the time a trip to Vancouver just didn’t seem worth it, so… well… I didn’t. So now Melbourne! We respond to our plot twist moments with as much humour and grace as possible, right? It’s all we can do. And I did it. KaPOW!!!

Things are still tough, yes, but you very rarely spin out into a panic attack these days – you’ve got the self-care triage down to a science.

You’re still overwhelmed and you’re still anxious a lot of the time, but you are rarely debilitated by it. And it’s even more rare for you to be completely at a loss when it comes to responding to your anxious and sad self.

You don’t have all the answers, but you have the right questions.

I think that’s cool.

The stories you tell yourself, and about yourself, haven’t quite caught up to this new reality and that’s okay. They will. You have those skills.

Love,
Me

#100loveletters

Keep being who you are, and don’t stop advocating for your communities (and the communities that aren’t yours but still need to be supported).

I love you,
Me

#100loveletters

Now, you should sleep.

Love,
Me

#100loveletters

And I’m really proud of you for that.

There is nothing wrong with quitting, and you wouldn’t be a failure if you did quit, but I am glad that you didn’t. I’m glad that you held onto the thread of that project. I’m glad that you let yourself send a late email (weeks late!) rather than just giving up. (I know which habits come back easy, and that’s definitely one of them, and you didn’t give in to that familiar pattern. That’s pretty great.)

I’m not trying to jinx it or anything, but I think you might manage to get up out of this hole without actually hitting rock bottom this time.

Imagine that!

A depression that flattens you but doesn’t, you know, *flatten* you.

And it’s not because it’s easier this time around. No. Tiffany – chickadee, Writer Girl, Gloom Faerie, self – it is because you’re more resilient, more self-aware, more self-compassionate, and you act with more intention these days.

You are learning new ways to be with yourself, and to be in the world. (And it’s not the first time you’ve done a major edit on your personal narrative, and I love you for that, too.)

This whole thing is just pretty rad. Good job.

Love,
Me

#100loveletters

It’s mostly because you doubt yourself and you get anxious because you don’t feel like you fit into an easily conveyed job description. Life coach? I mean… kinda? But also no? Not really?

But just keep doing your thing, even with all the doubts and the difficulty explaining it.

Keep doing it, because it’s good, and you’re good at it, and you love it. Mostly that last bit.

Carve that job description out of the marble and granite of your doubts. Make this thing real. (Top secret info: it is already real.)

Also maybe seriously start thinking about doing the networking and marketing you’ve been talking about and thinking about for almost a year now. It might be time. (More top secret info: you already have been. Give yourself some credit, chickadee!)

This letter is to say that you are a real self-care and narrative coach and that there is real value in that work and that you are doing that work.

You have Official Permission to do what you’re doing.

Love,
Me

PS – Also, you are a Real Writer and have permission to keep writing. You’re good at it.

PPS – Also, you are quite bad at art but you have permission to keep doing that, too, because you don’t have to be good at something in order for it to have value.

PPPS – I think everyone feels these doubts when they are trying to do something they love and feel passionate about. You are in good company.

#100loveletters

But there’s this lovely metaphorical thing – the way bitter herbs and bitter greens and bitter foods in general help with digestion. And how avoiding bitterness entirely, rejecting it, can make it harder to digest things.

It’s a good metaphor.

And you’ve long believed that envy is a valuable guiding emotion – it points you to your own unmet needs.

And anger is a valuable guiding emotion – it points you to injustices.

Both of those are equally shame-filled and unacceptable emotions, and you’ve chosen, intentionally and after a lot of thought, to reject (as much as you’ve been able) to reject that narrative of unacceptability.

And maybe bitterness is a valuable guiding emotion, too, though you haven’t quite figured out what it points to, yet.

Or maybe it’s not a guiding emotion, maybe it’s something different. Maybe it fits the metaphor more tightly, maybe it’s a digesting emotion. Maybe the things that make you envious and the things that make you angry or the other unpalatable things that tend to sit in your stomach uncomfortably, maybe they benefit from a little bitterness to speed the digestion. To perform the inner alchemy that releases the nutrition and fuels you.

Not too much bitterness, of course. Like anything, balance. Bring some awareness, intention, and compassion to this presence with your bitter self.

Let it be sharp on your tongue.

Let it be what it is, and then let it alchemize into something useful.

Love,
Me

#100loveletters

Like, quite a few things.

A lot of things, in fact.

You are doing them.

AND! You are doing them quite determinedly.

Quite a few things, being done, with sincerity and determination.

High fives, chickadee.

But also, I know there’s so much snark in this love letter, and a subtext of “yeah, doing so many things, ’cause you’re such a fucking ridiculous workaholic and you can’t even make yourself a mug of tea because you’re so fixated on the idea that if you do anything this evening, it needs to be work-related” (I mean, it’s some really specific subtext happening), so I just want to take a breath and pause and consider something.

It actually *is* worth celebrating that you do as much as you do. And you really do bring an awful lot of sincerity and determination (and even passion!) to your various projects.

And it is worth extending some compassion to the parts of you that are struggling right now.

You can’t spend so much time soaking in existential dread and expect to come to these letters not dripping with it.

You can’t spend so much time thinking about labour and capitalism and scarcity and violence and harm, and expect to access an easy ray of sunshine on demand.

But the *reason* you are grappling with these difficult issues, and the existential dread, and the many projects – the reason is that you are deeply, profoundly, eternally hopeful and you think that there’s good work to be done, helpful resources to be generated, answers to be reached towards.

And you also have so much hope for your own role in your communities, and in your own life. You’re reaching for that.

I know it’s easy to sneer at the work and to feel stupid for all your moments of failing to relax or failing to do the “right” thing at any given moment, but the sneering just hides your fear that you’re going to fail. There’s something truer underneath the sneer – there’s hope.

And hope is vulnerable and scary, but you’re so good at feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Hope on, little heart.

Love,
Me

#100loveletters

And I just love you for that.

You are fairly clumsy, falling into all these trauma pits, tripping over your anxiety and your depression. Your emotional proprioception leaves something to be desired.

But damn, friend. You claw your way back out of every single pit that you fling yourself, and are flung, into. You may not have whatever it is that buffers and insulates some people from experiencing difficulty as trauma, or from difficult emotions and the fallout afterwards, but you are resilient like nobody’s business.

There was a time when the sight of your own skin made you cry – when the coarse dark hairs on your skinny little arms made you queasy with shame and you heard that sneering voice calling you a monkey (it was one person who said that. One person! And it haunted you for years!) – and you are writing this in short sleeves and your arm hair isn’t even that noticeable right now because you have a tan! And the hairs are sun-bleached! Because you have been wearing t-shirts all summer!

And in the winter, when your skin is back to blinding white and the hairs are back to their coarse darkness, you will still wear t-shirts.

And that’s just kind of lovely, right?

Love,
Me

#100loveletters