Third Mailing Letter to my friends

My friends,

This week I am just hurting.  I am missing everything.  I feel disconnected from the things I love.  I feel powerless to do anything to stop the hurting.  And that was before the riots started…

I don’t really have more words for what this weekend brought, and the interfaith poems I had intended to send today just seem too intellectual somehow.  Too careful.  Not raw enough to help with all this hurt.  So I decided to try something different.

A few weeks ago I was having a bad day.  I don’t even really remember what was so upsetting, but I found myself crying at odd moments and my children were all huddled around me at different points trying to comfort me.  Emma, of course, found a way to help.  While I was out on an errand, she made these little slips of paper with the word “hug” on them and she placed them everywhere around the house.  By everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE.  She taped them to the inside handles of the refrigerator and the oven.  She left them under my hairbrush and my toothpaste.  She slipped them in books and taped one to the inside of the dog’s food container.  She put them under shampoo and conditioner bottles and on top of the washing machine.  I eventually found one folded into some laundry in my closet and another under my pillow and one on the bottom of the salsa container in the fridge.  I think I was finding them for a week, and every time I found a new one I would smile and my chest would loosen a little.  I have asked her twice if she is still hiding new ones, which she says she is not.  I have my doubts.  :))

So my friends, today I want to share hugs with you.  I can’t sneak into your homes and hide them for you, but I can at least send them out to you.  Maybe you can hide them yourselves to find later, or tuck them into spots to be noticed again when needed.  Tape them to handles, slip them into books, slide them into the edge of mirrors.  My hope is that whenever you see one, you will smile, and your chest will loosen, and the pain will take a small step back, and you will know you are loved.  You are loved, and every one of us is loved.  Everywhere.  May this be the simple, powerful message we hear, may it be a living thing in our hearts, and may it be the message we bring forward.  Everywhere.

From mine to yours.