Day 14: Sit Down, Write a Letter to a Friend About the New You, and Send It
I sat on this daily challenge for a whole week. My original intent was to write a letter to one of the members of my Board of Directors, thanking him for his inspiration and sharing more about the new me! However, it just didn’t feel right last week. I felt like I wanted to sink in and complete the full twenty-one days before sharing about my renewed sense of purpose and energy. I plan to draft this hand-written note over the weekend.
In the meantime, I received a beautiful gift. I came home today to a hand-written letter in the mail from my grandma on my mother’s side. She had written both on lined paper and on a postcard from Norway. She is from Norway originally, but hasn’t been there in over a decade, I suspect. She suffered a stroke in the early ’00s that left her debilitated on her left side. The postcard was actually from a desktop calendar that I had bought her as a souvenir almost three years ago while I was visiting her hometown of Kristiansand, Norway.
In her letter, she expressed her regret that I hadn’t received her early cards due to a wrong address. She then thanked me for a gift I had sent and for the flowers on her birthday. I hadn’t realized that these gestures meant as much as they did. She ended her note with the biggest surprise and the line that brought me to tears. She wrote – “Hope to see you and your friend soon.” I inhaled. I closed my eyes. I started weeping.
The friend my grandma was referring to is my fiance. And I was not crying because she didn’t say fiance or girlfriend or Renata. No. I cried because she had brought to me the thing that I hand’t yet brought myself to share with her – the fact that I have a fiance and that she is a woman. I had never shared this part of myself with my grandma, and even for those close to me that have known, I’ve never really opened up and expressed my feelings or desires.
I felt a deep sadness in my gut in reading my grandma’s letter that I had been too afraid – of being judged or perhaps my own judgments – to share this with her. I didn’t allow myself to be vulnerable. I didn’t believe that I could be me and still be loved by the people in my life. I felt ashamed that I had not shared, that I hadn’t been straightforward, that I had assumed the worst. By withholding and hiding from the people that love me, I moved further away from myself and created my own walls of protection. This letter knocked out a brick in that wall to shine a light in and encourage me to engage in my relationships from a truer place.
And so, cracked open like an egg, I picked up a pink pen and wrote a letter back to my grandma. I thanked her for her kind words and for expressing a desire to meet Renata. I included a photo of us. I felt joy as my pen flew across the card. My grandma had provided me with the opening that I needed to express my love and show up as me.
She gave me the chance to feel the pain of withholding and diluting connections. She gave me the chance to feel the relief of being seen. She gave me the chance to feel and express love.