This is inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert’s substack series called “Letters from Love.” I thought it kind of twee when I first heard about it, and dismissed it. But then I listened to one of the letters shared (by Megan Falley —you have to scroll down after clicking for the video— and was very moved. Decided to try writing one myself. A letter to me, from Love. My only rule was, I had to write it by hand, on paper. Here’s what came out. I’m including the whole thing, warts and all, so you can free yourself of perfectionism.
Please give this a try in your own life. The shift is palpable. You’ll see.
Dear Tina,
I have known you and loved you since the beginning. Since you were tiny, making sense of things, being perfect. I love all your dark corners. The ones you think no one sees.
(I think I’m gonna have to free up my hand because I keep stopping for long moments, trying to think of cool things to say. There’s nothing cool to say. There is only keeping the pen moving across the page as though I were Love talking to you…and even now I can barely keep my eyes open. Soooo sleepy. What is that?)
It’s okay sweetie. Be sleepy.
I love that you quilt. But I love you too when you’re procrastinating or even lying about why you didn’t “get to it,” whatever “it” was.
I love you.
You think maybe I just don’t know you, but I do. I know you crowd your mind with disasters, trying to rehearse how you might survive—or even rehearsing your own death and imagining the immediate aftermath, hoping they play the right music at your funeral, wondering if you should remind Tituss that he agreed to sing your Don’t Wanna Sing Hallelujah song at the funeral, and that you’ve designated Brian Whitted as his accompanist. Also, Mitch Watkins’ For the Creator, and especially ending with Jacob Collier’s World O World. . .so much planning for your death, and I am showering you—No. I’m just here, loving how hard you want everything to be just right.
I love every right and wrong thing about you. There’s nothing to invoke or let in or activate. It’s just always near you, like the clothes you rarely change from day to day.
I’m inside your little hand bones as you write these words. You couldn’t be outside my reach. Because your very capacity to run contains the strongest part of me. I am inside your beating heart.
I am inside your need to do things well. I am inside your rationalizations about why you didn’t.
I am lodged in the hinges that allow the door to swing open. Or shut. You think you have to walk through doors or shut things out or invite events in and it doesn’t matter what happens. My love for you was smiling from inside the hinges, pulsating in the paint on the door, my love for you is dense as the door itself;, thick, solid, real, tangible. It’s everywhere.
You, looking for a reason to relax into love, is like an octopus looking for water.
In the ocean. My honeypie. You are in the ocean right now.
There is nothing you can do, nowhere you can go that doesn’t contain me, that doesn’t sing my name, or yours, in joy. Nothing has to change.
You don’t have to accomplish anything for my love to wash through you.
There is no earning this.
Your little mind can make up all sorts of causes and conditions to stand in the way between me and you—and those very thoughts, those mental obstacles, those hoops to jump through ARE CONSTRUCTED with the building blocks of my DNA.
I’m trying to paint the picture of how thoroughly held and cherished you are.
I love you.
I love you no matter what.
I love you regardless of your station in life,
irrespective of what you’ve done or not done with your gifts.
I love you beyond ratings, or measurements, or charts, or graphs, or the counting of people who think well of you.
But what I’ve just said sounds sort of “nothing matters-y,” and I don’t mean it like that. I mean that every morning when you open your eyes, it’s my favorite thing ever. Check your phone. Scroll. (Love.)
Spend hours on instagram. (More love.)
Lie back down and pull the covers back over your head. (Love. Yes. More love.)
Grumpy? Stonefaced? (Even more love.)
That was as much love as I could take at the time, so my love letter stopped there—but I’m smiling because the Writer in me wanted to craft a proper ending, make it satisfying, worthy of a substack post. But this was a letter from Love itself, and so there was no need for any fancy crafting. I genuinely started feeling loved, no matter what.
Try this for yourself. Really. After the initial weirdness or shyness, you may discover an unexpected upwelling of sweetness you never knew you were carrying around.
Wisdom from Pema Chödrön
“You are the sky. Everything else is just weather.”
Comedy from Alyce Chan
Oh my God. She does this series: “If adults acted like kids.” It’s hilarious.
Hi Doreen. When you do, you’ll see what I mean. Sending waves of blessings
This was so touching and especially ... loving. I should try it.