14 months ago I started writing love letters to anyone and everyone.
It’s been one wild ride.
I’ve learned to release expectations. To be the love in the room even if I don’t get it back. To sow seeds of beauty everywhere I go because that’s who I’m here to be.
And to take each interaction and relationship as a learning experience, not a shaming experience, because I’m me and they’re them and we all see the world differently.
I can’t force anyone to live the way I live, nor should I want to. The key is to act with grace and keep it moving.
I’m learning to stop depending on others for validation before I feel good about myself or the work I’m doing. I still get caught up in vanity metrics more often than I’d like (ahem), but it’s much better than before, so yay.
I’ll always be in flux and vulnerable to criticism and/or crickets as long as I depend on others to feel good, but the more I learn to separate my self-worth and contentment from external validation, the more I learn to accept and love myself as I am while I grow into more of who I came here to be.
I lie to myself less. There’re still times when I fudge the truth just to make myself more comfortable, but even then I’m like, “Girl, you know you lying.”
It’s a challenge to keep it real all the time, but if I’m here to live out loud for real, then I gotta be the same person in public and behind closed doors.
If you’ve been reading me for a while, you’ll know that I struggled to write my love letters to other people with no strings attached.
I mean, I had to learn to love hard and deep without being sure I’d get anything back? Whyyyyyyy?
Here’s the thing, though: Feeling loved and nourished in my soul is an inside job.
I gotta write from the overflow of love in my heart, not write to get love in my heart. I gotta write to share joy, not to demand joy from the other person.
See how that works?
So when I finally get the memo (’cause your girl was kinda slow on the uptake), I become proactive about the kind of snail mail I wanna get and start writing myself love letters.
I call them “heart mail” because they’re mail for the heart and they hit the spot every time!
I write Bible verses, poetry, and permission to vault forward even when I feel small and afraid. The more I write — 195 and counting! — the better I get at knowing what works and what doesn’t.
It’s getting easier to know what I need to hear and where I’m holding myself back from being, doing, and giving my best.
There’s nowhere to hide on the blank page, and when I show up as I am, I learn to embrace being vulnerable while I’m becoming more of who I’m here to be.
When I feel timid and adrift, I reread some of my personal heart mail to remind myself that I’m loved, I’m strong, I’m a Queen, and I’m a rock star creative with sooo much to give.
Writing 355 love letters changed my life because it forced me to clean up my toxic habits and recognise my toxic relationships.
It forced me to face up to destructive, abusive patterns camouflaged as love, and I was like, “Girrrlll, that ain’t love and it ain’t healthy! Let it go!”
I didn’t change overnight. I didn’t wake up one day and cut loose a bunch of people all at once, but I learned to face the truth and stop taking the abuse weighing me down, messing with my heart, and making me sad and anxious.
It’s impossible to stay the same when you commit to real love, and you can’t help examining your heart when you write honest love letters to yourself.
It gets real when you’re constantly checking in with yourself about how you’re loving other people and how they’re loving you.
I’m not the same person that I was 14 months ago.
I love harder now. I write deeper. I challenge myself to show up and do the work even when I just wanna slack off or binge on Instagram.
I’m not perfect. I still make mistakes and fail to protect my boundaries, but you know what?
It’s all OK because I’m not aiming for perfect.
I’m aiming for real, raw, and vulnerable.
I’m aiming for loving with my heart wide open and my soul on fire.
I’m aiming at living for real and doing what I say I’m going to do.
I’m aiming at living out my beautiful dreams and designing my dream creative life so I can grow into it.
So it’s OK to write 160 love letters to other people and only get a fraction back.
It’s OK to keep writing even when there’s no guarantee they’ll write me too.
It’s OK because it’s not about the numbers.
It’s about the love.
It’s about joy.
It’s about hugging hearts and sparking smiles and making people cry happy tears.
It’s about reaching out to people because I genuinely care, I want to celebrate them, and I want to see them win.
It’s about them, not me.
Yeah, it’s dope to get snail mail from my pen pals and online thanks from peeps, but it’s even more dope to start the conversations that matter, to be kind, loving, and generous just because.
I’m learning that people just wanna feel seen, heard, supported, and loved, and the more I do all that, the deeper my relationships and art grow.
It’s not a gimmick. I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone.
I’m just being a beacon for the kind of love I wanna see in the world and be more like Jesus. Because really, isn’t that why I’m here anyway?
What’s next for my love letters?
I’ll keep writing ’em as long as I can. I’m pleasantly surprised I’ve lasted this long because I thought I’d stop after a couple months or something, but God had other plans!
It’s become my favourite thing to do to spread joy and sprinkle beauty on the page, and I feel like I’m just getting started.
I love heart mail and I think it’s here to stay, but we’ll see.
Wanna know what my heart mail looks like?
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Sometimes I do giveaways for personalised love letters, and who knows, the next one might be yours!
Thank you for being here.
I see you and you are beautiful.
Now go love up on somebody and hug them tight!
First off I want to say excellent blog! I had a quick question in which I’d like
to ask if you do not mind. I was curious to know how you center
yourself and clear your thoughts prior to writing. I’ve had trouble clearing my mind in getting
my ideas out. I do enjoy writing but it just seems like the first 10 to
15 minutes tend to be wasted simply just
trying to figure out how to begin. Any ideas or hints?
Cheers!
Hello! Thanks for the compliment! 😀
I find it really helpful to capture all my thoughts in a daily journal (I use an A4 notebook) because it shows me what’s on my mind and what I can do about it.
It’s normal to spend the first few minutes of any writing session warming up because you’re switching from another task – email, social media, meetings – to writing, and it takes times for your brain to catch up.
I write like I’m having a conversation with a friend, so instead of thinking what to write and how to write, I just write like I’m talking to my best friend. It takes the pressure off having to be brilliant from the first word (that takes lots of practice!) and just lets you have fun discovering what you have to say that day.
Make a date with yourself to write for a few minutes every day. Ask yourself what you’re thinking, why you’re thinking it, and what you can do about it. It’s a conversation with your mind, and you don’t even have to show anyone else if you don’t want to.
See how it goes when you show up every day for 30 days or more. Sometimes we get stuck in the first few minutes because we don’t have a consistent practice or we don’t write long enough to dig deep into how we really feel.
Let me know if this helps! 🙂