A little shameless self promotion here: I AM that person who writes on napkins, post-its of all sizes and colors, yellow legal pads (ask my kids and close friends), backs of checks and receipts, paper towels, cut up pieces of scrap paper, food wrappers, coffee cup cozies…all for the sake of not losing an insight that comes when “I’ve fallen and I can’t reach my phone” fast enough! The only place I don’t have access to something to write with is in my bathroom. I’m having no shame about that. And my kids won’t believe me yet but I really do aspire to get better at riffing my thoughts onto my phone using the notes, reminders or even my video feature on the phone. (I’m going to ask you non-Boomers to let us be that swing generation that mixes some old school with the new to bring out the best of both, you feel me?) Now that you know my obsession about not missing something juicy arising in me, you need to know that I got here because I had a conversation with someone who at the time was vortexing super hard into the woes of being left behind. Every coaching tool, introspective insight, leadership training, mentoring cadre in my being at the time was checked out. I pulled out some big guns and then, I had the board-upside-the-head moment and I blurted (a highly recommended skill steeped in intuition) “Write them a letter!! Lay it all the heck out!! What you want to know, what the unanswered questions are, what you are dying to tell them about how things are and what is true for you. Write every bit of it down!” This was met with resistance: “I am not going to send them a letter! No way!” To which I said “I didn’t say send it, I said write it.”
Don’t know if they ever did. Didn’t matter. A few days later as I reflected on our conversation I thought “Dang!!! I have a letter I want to write and not send. I have a few letters I want to write and not send…” And so it began. I’ll never tell which edition of my books my letters are in, by the way. That would defeat the whole anonymity that is critical to the success of this journey.
It is so crucial to understand that this is not going to be a book about letters we “should/better/ought to” send. Nope. Different book and not interesting to me right now. Remember I mentioned the concept of closure?? Well, this is not for closure either…do you understand that? You may have some relief, a sense of “wow, it felt so good to write that to this person,” but this is not about closure. This is about intentional non-closure. Conscious non-closure. Because, why not? Because let’s expand what we can “be with,” which I also mentioned in my earlier post. Your letter is first and foremost for YOU. I’m inviting you to treat yourself to this experience and then anonymously share it with me/us. The story I make up is in the sharing, “my heart breaks for what breaks in yours” and correspondingly, “my heart sings for what makes yours sing.” This kind of connection, I am convicted, is the elixir of life at a time when we’ve never needed our shared humanity more.
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