Welcome to your Sunday LoveGram.
I’m grateful that we have this time together, week after week, to make room for what’s on our minds and also in our hearts.
You inspire me to see more, feel more, and experience more of the whole range of being human.
Today, I send you the warmth of being inside when it is cold and windy out.
I send you a sweet voice that sounds like cinnamon.
I send you the joy of meeting a new friend for chai tea.
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Today’s LoveGram was recorded while walking around my mom’s neighborhood, shortly before leaving to fly back to San Francisco a few days ago.
When I turned on the recorder, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to talk about. I just knew I was feeling a whole swirl of things and wanted to talk to you. I wanted to feel like I was at our virtual table together.
What showed up in the moment was gratitude for the time with my mom. Also, sadness about leaving. There was love for my home in San Francisco. And there was a longing to somehow be in both places at once.
Have you ever felt that?
You know, that you can love the life you’ve created and yet still can also miss the people who live far away from it?
When I first visited San Francisco, I fell in love with the city almost the way you fall in love with a person. I remember writing in my journal, “This is a place where a girl could wear hats.”
What I later understood that to mean was: This is a place where I could be myself.
And yet, here I was at my mom’s in Ohio, so far from San Fran, wishing I could keep on having breakfast and coffee with her, sitting on the porch, and sharing those ordinary moments that feel so precious.
The sadness of leaving carries so much of the sweetness of being together.
Sometimes grief feels to me like love in motion.
I know I often share my practice of focusing on gratitude when I feel grief or sadness. And I do feel grateful. But I’m also seeing that the sadness wants a little room, too.
But you know what? As I walked around the block near my mom’s house and as I talked to you, something shifted.
Giving words to all those swirly feelings made them easier to carry. I felt more connected to myself, to you, and to this very human experience of holding more than one feeling at a time.
We can be grateful and grieving. Happy to be going home and sad to be leaving another home.
There can be room for all of it.
I share more on today’s audio about these bittersweet moments—and how listening to a small inner nudge helped me find a little more spaciousness, a little more peacefulness.
Click here to listen. Scroll down to the purple box at the bottom of the page.
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Thank you for being on the other side of this virtual table. Being able to share with you means so much to me. It really helps!
What complex or contrasting feelings are keeping each other company in your heart today?
If you’d like, write back and tell me. I may not always be able to respond, but I read every email.
Whatever you’re carrying, I hope you can offer yourself a little spaciousness and gentleness. Maybe let someone sit beside you and listen. It sure helped me! YOU helped me!
Seek celebration — even in dark corners,
xo Sherry