/reader

A song I’m loving (one that was on repeat in my house growing up):

I woke up under the weather, which isn’t abnormal for a parent of a four-year-old, but I still find myself wanting to write to you. It feels good to want to write to you. It’s foggy out the window, the time of morning where dozens of seagulls start flying across the sky to their next place. My daughter just performed a check-up on me with her trusty doctor bag before heading out the door for a scooter ride around the neighborhood with dada.

Life has been tenderizing me and I’m thinking about love, as I often do. Do you let love in when it’s available? Do you allow care to seep past your protectors and be truly felt? I’ve been asking myself these questions as I notice love permeating the places that once didn’t know how to truly welcome it; when my spine tingles with warmth while my daughter checked my ears and blood pressure with her little tools, while my body registered her precise actions and her widened eyes filled with care, it’s a gift to get to answer “yes”. It’s a gift to notice when love is available, and to let it in.

I am longing to double down on my love practice — on the reality that it’s the practice I want to orient toward most while also being the most tender practice to let ripen as widely as it’s asking to. There are so many layers that can get in the way, often at no fault of our own; it feels like an act of maturation to be willing to sift through those layers with intention and reverence.

I want to share some ways I’m sifting, some practices to let love and care in and out amid the rising darkness, alongside the descent toward winter, right in the middle of the murky unfolding of life:

— Say yes to bids for care… even when they come in the form of play. Notice how the hairs on your arms raise when you feel yourself being cared for in the smallest of ways. Let the noticing signal to your body: this is for me. I get to have this. It’s real.

— Ask yourself, what is my rage on behalf of? When I move closer to the center of my answer, how might I also be moving closer to love?

— Let saying sorry be a practice of love instead of a deepening of shame. Let yourself have the grace for not always getting it right, and let this truth not be a place of punishment but a place of learning, of recognition, of coming into fuller congruence with yourself and those you love.

— Follow the breadcrumbs of your longings. Let what you want point you toward what you love. Let what you love direct you toward what you need next. Let your needs be symbols of what you care about instead of signs of your too-muchness.

— When you feel stuck in your own head, your own story, your own neuroses, your own spiraling… turn outward and ask how you can help. Helping helps us see more clearly. Helping helps us come out of the hole we might fall into from time to time. Helping embeds us in something bigger than ourselves. Helping is medicine.

— Be in the practice of receiving compliments, admiration, gifts, and praise with more openheartedness. Trust that the practice of receiving won’t inflate your sense of self when you see it as a practice of intimacy; trust that the practice of receiving is actually never only about you, but is also about letting others engage in their own practice of generosity and love, too.

— Sit with these words from bell hooks: “To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending.”

— Get to know the birds that frequent your yard/neighborhood/ecosystem. See them as part of your family, as part of your belonging.

— Let others see you in whatever ways they need to, while not letting their gaze of you shape your own gaze of yourself.

— Extend your gifts outward; let what you have to offer reach the hearts and bodies and minds of those who need them; see the sharing of your gifts not as a way of bolstering your own ego, but as a way of more deeply connecting you to the wider world through generosity, through care, through love.

— Make soup. Make extra. Text someone you know is holding a lot and ask if you can drop off a batch on their porch. Maybe add some herbs or flowers or a homemade card to leave with the soup. See it all as loving.

— Take your time. Follow your pace. Stay with yourself.

— Be tender when you notice yourself coming up against the ways you’ve learned to keep love out, the ways you’ve learned to be skeptical, the ways your hurt has shaped what you let in. Let this noticing feel more like gentle permission than ripping off a bandaid that might still be needed in some ways. Let this noticing inform your longings; let it be a place to return to when you’re wanting to remember.

— Feel the way your grief for the world’s hurts is a direct pathway toward your love for the world. Feel the way your grief is inherently tethered to what you love. Feel the way your grief is a map of love, a stamp of love, a longing for love, a missing of love, a remembrance of love. Feel the way staying in close contact with your grief is just another way of letting more love in, and then more, and then more.

— Look for love everywhere and watch how it shows up in unexpected ways when you’re open to seeing it.

— Trust there is a never-ending capacity for love’s presence… that there can never be too much of it… that the more it’s allowed, the more it extends outward… that the more it extends outward, the more we can be mirrors of it for one another… that the more we can be mirrors for love, the worse anything but love looks… that the worse anything but love looks, the more power love has.

— Let loving be so small, quiet, and subtle: letting yourself mean it when you say thank you. Asking for help as a symbol of intimacy. Saying keep the change to a small business. Seeing someone’s dignity. Letting someone merge in front of you. Withholding judgment. Staying curious. Helping a neighbor. An extra long hug. Stirring the soup. Tidying your home as an act of care instead of a chore. Reaching out to say hello. Standing humbly in a forest. Looking up at the stars. Sharing what’s stirring in your heart. Writing a poem. Calling representatives. Softening your shoulders. Giving yourself a massage behind your ears. A genuine smile. Allowing sadness. The willingness to be wrong. Singing. Crying. Dreaming. Imagining something brighter than you see. Let it all be love. Let it all be love. Let it all be love.

Thank you, as always, for being here.

△ Currently reading this stirring new collection

△ Can confirm, watching this film will rearrange your heart

△ Healing is making us mean

△ The way this essay brought so many tears (The New Yorker)

△ A mystical ornithology

△ “When I used to focus on the worries, everybody was ahead of me.”

△ An existential guide to making friends

△ California November with my loves and the moon

With care,
Lisa

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