This is a love letter that I printed up and then pasted the lines onto the pages of a book I made. A love so real.
7 Reasons
1. Sex: earth shaking, erotic, intimate
2. Talk: lively, illuminating, expansive
3. Mind: Intelligence and recall of useless information, clear headed understanding of complexity, penchant for zombies and
correcting the internet
4. Body: wild attraction to every inch of you
5. Laughter: So many layers from wry smile to laughing my head off
6. Life innovation: the full body squeegee move
7. Outlook: calm, grounded, compassionate, laid back
You are my center, my heart’s core, I love you deeply.
I see you.
I trust you and believe in your goodness.
I wonder if “unbreak” is a word. As in “Your love unbreaks me.” I think I am avoiding what I really want to say. As in “Your love heals me.” Your loving embrace of my body, spirit, sexuality, quirkiness and heart has made me whole.
With you I feel safe and seen and utterly myself. You give me that gift over and over again.
"Love is..." I remember the little cartoon panels that my friends and I used to share.
Here is my own memory of love and Valentine's Day.
Mama, tucking me in for the night on Feb 13, 1955. She takes my hands and whispers a bedtime prayer and “leaves the little light on” as I request. Those shadows…what lurks there in the mind of a four-year-old? Our over busy household is about to settle for the night. But just before she slips out my bedroom door, I call her back.
“Oh! Mama! When I wake up in the morning, there will be Valentines under my pillow!”
“What?” She asks.
“Valentines!” I smile with the confidence four-year-olds have in the world of magic. “The story said so.”
“What story, darling?”
“The one granddad read to me.”
“Oh?”
The grown up me realizes the panic I just sent my mother into. Our family had never celebrated Valentine’s Day. My older brother and sister probably made and exchanged Valentines at school. Maybe someone brought cookies. But this is 1955, my mother doesn’t drive, my father is hard at work for his private accounting clients in his home office, and stores don’t stay open late, especially in our smaller community. Mom spent the next hour or so scouring catalogs, magazines, places in the house where the odd piece of construction paper might be found, snatched a few lace doilies out of a cupboard, and put Valentines together with glue and a lot of love.
This morning, my daughters were texting one another because they live 300 miles away from each other. “Hey–I hope our Valentines arrived.” “Yes! Yours are late. We are disorganized. Should be there tomorrow!” And then my youngest daughter followed that up by telling me she had to wait until very early this morning to slip her daughters’ Valentines under their pillows so she didn’t wake them up. Still homemade, these Valentines. Made from love.
Ok, today is harder than I imagined it to be. Marking one year since breast surgery and also the days of the Big Lie. Not the lie about who the lover was. That was just a slap in the face; well, three slaps to be exact. I am not unaccustomed to physical pain or lies. I’m left red-cheeked from the embarrassment of believing.
Far worse is the lie of her presence at my bedside after being cut in a private place. (Oh the metaphors) Her smile, her tender demeanor have little to do with me, but exist because of a new lover I know nothing about. The assumption this shine is meant for me becomes excruciating knowledge later.
The baby step of falling in trust, a little bit in love, with the woman from 25 years ago. For two days, the valentine of her kiss once again tasted sweet on my lips, dissolving on my tongue, as the word “Sweetheart” slowly disappears, wholly as a communion wafer.
All those fucking words pressed into a billion pink, yellow, green hearts like emojis in a text, each one meaning nothing; common as houseflies. “Hugs” “Cuddle”“Friendship” “True” and the biggest, easiest lie of all, “Love.”
I have always hated the taste of those tiny hearts, hard as pebbles, pure sugar plus something unidentifiable that is not food, something hard to swallow, rattling like dice in little cardboard boxes which I liked, each candy engraved with machine pressed words I wanted to believe. “Pretty” words on the pressed lips of too-“Sweet” candy making “Promise(s)” you cannot and never could keep “Forever.”
Why not a tiny box for jilted lovers full of “Lies” “Loss”“Heartbreak” (I know, I know..too much word for one little heart); a shot of “Grief” that burns, served with a “Broken” back.
Every time I step toward an “Exit” I find another “Valentine” in my clumsily decorated shoebox, where “Cupid” with wings, horns, and tail bows
the deadly arrow, making a target of my “Heart” “Again,” and again.
This is so beautifully written and so devastating at the same time. The last paragraph with the clumsily decorated shoebox is so vivid--so clear--and such a well described and heart wrenching metaphor. Thank you for sharing this. (And I feel the same way about those damnable candy hearts!)
Every Valentine’s Day I think of how when I worked at a grocery store I had a lot of regulars, and some of them were little kids who insisted their Moms go through my line, which to me is a high honor. Well one day one of them comes through my line sitting in the cart, and in the biggest expression he could muster, arms open wide says “Happy LOVE Day!” It wasn’t a holiday at all actually. His Mother laughed and said “I don’t even know where that came from?” To me it was one of the purest expressions of love that I have ever received. So now I call it Love Day in his honor. Happy love day everybody!
I tend to be angry. Not a shouting, sharp worded, aggressive anger but a banked fire. An eternal smouldering. It's fueled by love. People annoy me but i love humanity. Years ago I saw a post that said (approximately) "i love you, but you say i don't even know you. Well, if people can hate for no reason I can love." i read it twice and thought That's Me! I think many activists understand this as well. So here we are. I also love the house sparrows that sing when we put the feeders out, the river doing its thing, the way my pen pal blends humour and magic in their letters as we share our disabled adventures. I love my care team and my sons school, i love my little red car and hand controls. And the people that installed them for me. I love the passion my person has for his hobby, I love making my parents laugh and the way my uncles still call me Scooter. I love the women who work in our little corner shop who always ask about my son and his current favourite costume. I love my town and the neighbours sheep. I love it all and that love is the foundation of my fight for it all. I even love my nervous system and my immune system that's eating it. And that's the hardest one.
I was looking out the window and in the quiet I realised I forgot the egg guy. He has a wee stand he puts fresh eggs and we leave monies in the little box. If he's out we wave and say thank you.
In the quiet hours before sunrise, love awakens the world with a gentleness like a whispered prayer. In the unfolding of morning, I sense of presence that is both vast and intimate –a "divine heartbeat" that echoes in every birdsong, in every rustle of the waking earth. It is here, in the fragile beauty of life, that I encounter the truth that God is love.
Like a steady stream, love flows through our lives, carving paths and unexpected places. It is in the courageous acts of kindness and in the moments of wonder that we see the hand of God, ever-present, ever-loving. Whether in the night sky or in the intricate designs of a leaf, the sacredness of creation speaks to me, reminding me that we are cherished by an ineffable source of grace.
There is power in this love that transcends our human limitations and binds us together in communion. It is love that comforts us times of sorrow, the strength given to us to face the unknown. In every joy and in every struggle, the quiet assurance of God's presence is a constant guide.
This divine love calls us to be better, to see in each other the reflection of something transcendent... eternal? It teaches us that life is an invitation to join in the mystery where every breath can be a hymn, and every heartbeat a testament to the power of a love that is as boundless. In this dance of creation and grace, we are forever held in the embrace of a God who is, above all, love.
In 2021, right before the pandemic began and we were all wearing masks, staying inside and social distancing, I was diagnosed with stage 4 non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and given a 25% chance to survive the cancer. I was taken in almost immediately, despite the closure of some hospital serves due to staff being out. I'd been told some terrible stories about how people were treated in by staff in cancer units (I wouldn't call these caring comments). I was treated with such tenderness and love by the nurses who set up IV's of chemicals intended to kill the cancer. Following chemo, I had 18 rounds of radiation. All this exhausted me, and was hardly able to move due to damage to the lumbar spine, which required surgery. The cancer, however, did not leave. The second line of treatment was high dose chemo followed by stem cell transplant. The treatment was gruelling. Staff were so tender and kind, always attending to what I needed, talking with me about holding onto a vision of survival and a healthy life. My wife, despite her fears of losing me, was an angel of life, taking me to appointments, making sure I took the meds, and arranging for people to be with me when I would be home alone. I have never felt such love from people I didn't know and probably will never see again. This year on Valentines, I will pause to feel gratitude that I'm sitting here in my living room, writing as a member of this wonderful community, and thankful, when I can get out of my way, for every moment that I am alive.
We box love in with words and definitions, degrees and types and sizes when in reality, it is literally the entire essence of everything and therefore, the greatest power in the universe. In our human form, it "feels" a certain way. In our light being spirit selves, it just is.
I try everyday to be this more than feel it, or worse, trying to get it from some external source. My life completely shifted one day years ago when my mind and heart were opened and I was told that I could stop my search for someone to love me because I already have all the love I need because I AM love.
If you feel left out on Valentine's Day, try to remember who you are. If you forget, hit me up with a chat and I'll remind you, beautiful soul.
Valentine’s Day isn’t so much of a thing here in Oz, although shops still try to make 💰💰 out of the date.
Love is though. And love takes a lot of (hard) work, IMO, shouldn’t be taken for granted. Even, and possibly especially, love for self.
Somewhere I read this quote from Joni Mitchell, I added it to what I said at my son’s wedding: “With a long relationship, things die then are rekindled, and that shared process of rebirth deepens the love. It’s hard work though, and a lot of people run at the first sign of trouble - it’s unpleasant but if you can get through it you can get closer and you learn a way of loving that is different from the neurotic love enshrined in movies. It’s warmer, and has more padding to it.”
So I aim to keep working at it - seems worth the effort!
My husband has worked in the restaurant industry for our entire relationship, therefore Valentine's Day is not really a holiday for us. I don't exactly greet Valentine's Day with enthusiasm--I feel the same ambivalent grumpiness about Mother's Day. However, I love my hardworking husband. Here's a poem I wrote for him last year. (If you could see it on the page the way it's supposed to look, the lines would wobble.)
Wobble
I understood an uneven table
as an existential condition, like rain on parade day
So many passages and perspectives come to mind, but Rilke is always foremost among them for me:
“To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is — solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves. Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate — ?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another’s sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. Only in this sense, as the task of working at themselves (“to hearken and to hammer day and night”), might young people use the love that is given them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must save and gather for a long, long time still), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives as yet scarcely suffice.”
This gorgeous post. I think it is about love: https://joannapenncooper.substack.com/p/i-send-you-out
This is a love letter that I printed up and then pasted the lines onto the pages of a book I made. A love so real.
7 Reasons
1. Sex: earth shaking, erotic, intimate
2. Talk: lively, illuminating, expansive
3. Mind: Intelligence and recall of useless information, clear headed understanding of complexity, penchant for zombies and
correcting the internet
4. Body: wild attraction to every inch of you
5. Laughter: So many layers from wry smile to laughing my head off
6. Life innovation: the full body squeegee move
7. Outlook: calm, grounded, compassionate, laid back
You are my center, my heart’s core, I love you deeply.
I see you.
I trust you and believe in your goodness.
I wonder if “unbreak” is a word. As in “Your love unbreaks me.” I think I am avoiding what I really want to say. As in “Your love heals me.” Your loving embrace of my body, spirit, sexuality, quirkiness and heart has made me whole.
With you I feel safe and seen and utterly myself. You give me that gift over and over again.
Every day I am filled with gratitude for you.
Addendum: #8: Kisses, oh my god, the kisses
"Love is..." I remember the little cartoon panels that my friends and I used to share.
Here is my own memory of love and Valentine's Day.
Mama, tucking me in for the night on Feb 13, 1955. She takes my hands and whispers a bedtime prayer and “leaves the little light on” as I request. Those shadows…what lurks there in the mind of a four-year-old? Our over busy household is about to settle for the night. But just before she slips out my bedroom door, I call her back.
“Oh! Mama! When I wake up in the morning, there will be Valentines under my pillow!”
“What?” She asks.
“Valentines!” I smile with the confidence four-year-olds have in the world of magic. “The story said so.”
“What story, darling?”
“The one granddad read to me.”
“Oh?”
The grown up me realizes the panic I just sent my mother into. Our family had never celebrated Valentine’s Day. My older brother and sister probably made and exchanged Valentines at school. Maybe someone brought cookies. But this is 1955, my mother doesn’t drive, my father is hard at work for his private accounting clients in his home office, and stores don’t stay open late, especially in our smaller community. Mom spent the next hour or so scouring catalogs, magazines, places in the house where the odd piece of construction paper might be found, snatched a few lace doilies out of a cupboard, and put Valentines together with glue and a lot of love.
This morning, my daughters were texting one another because they live 300 miles away from each other. “Hey–I hope our Valentines arrived.” “Yes! Yours are late. We are disorganized. Should be there tomorrow!” And then my youngest daughter followed that up by telling me she had to wait until very early this morning to slip her daughters’ Valentines under their pillows so she didn’t wake them up. Still homemade, these Valentines. Made from love.
Valentine Anniversary: Candy Hearts
Ok, today is harder than I imagined it to be. Marking one year since breast surgery and also the days of the Big Lie. Not the lie about who the lover was. That was just a slap in the face; well, three slaps to be exact. I am not unaccustomed to physical pain or lies. I’m left red-cheeked from the embarrassment of believing.
Far worse is the lie of her presence at my bedside after being cut in a private place. (Oh the metaphors) Her smile, her tender demeanor have little to do with me, but exist because of a new lover I know nothing about. The assumption this shine is meant for me becomes excruciating knowledge later.
The baby step of falling in trust, a little bit in love, with the woman from 25 years ago. For two days, the valentine of her kiss once again tasted sweet on my lips, dissolving on my tongue, as the word “Sweetheart” slowly disappears, wholly as a communion wafer.
All those fucking words pressed into a billion pink, yellow, green hearts like emojis in a text, each one meaning nothing; common as houseflies. “Hugs” “Cuddle”“Friendship” “True” and the biggest, easiest lie of all, “Love.”
I have always hated the taste of those tiny hearts, hard as pebbles, pure sugar plus something unidentifiable that is not food, something hard to swallow, rattling like dice in little cardboard boxes which I liked, each candy engraved with machine pressed words I wanted to believe. “Pretty” words on the pressed lips of too-“Sweet” candy making “Promise(s)” you cannot and never could keep “Forever.”
Why not a tiny box for jilted lovers full of “Lies” “Loss”“Heartbreak” (I know, I know..too much word for one little heart); a shot of “Grief” that burns, served with a “Broken” back.
Every time I step toward an “Exit” I find another “Valentine” in my clumsily decorated shoebox, where “Cupid” with wings, horns, and tail bows
the deadly arrow, making a target of my “Heart” “Again,” and again.
I can taste the truth under the candy hearts: Love is fucking hard. And so vulnerable. Your heart, and your voice, is brave. Carry on.
Thank you Angela.
This is so beautifully written and so devastating at the same time. The last paragraph with the clumsily decorated shoebox is so vivid--so clear--and such a well described and heart wrenching metaphor. Thank you for sharing this. (And I feel the same way about those damnable candy hearts!)
Every Valentine’s Day I think of how when I worked at a grocery store I had a lot of regulars, and some of them were little kids who insisted their Moms go through my line, which to me is a high honor. Well one day one of them comes through my line sitting in the cart, and in the biggest expression he could muster, arms open wide says “Happy LOVE Day!” It wasn’t a holiday at all actually. His Mother laughed and said “I don’t even know where that came from?” To me it was one of the purest expressions of love that I have ever received. So now I call it Love Day in his honor. Happy love day everybody!
I tend to be angry. Not a shouting, sharp worded, aggressive anger but a banked fire. An eternal smouldering. It's fueled by love. People annoy me but i love humanity. Years ago I saw a post that said (approximately) "i love you, but you say i don't even know you. Well, if people can hate for no reason I can love." i read it twice and thought That's Me! I think many activists understand this as well. So here we are. I also love the house sparrows that sing when we put the feeders out, the river doing its thing, the way my pen pal blends humour and magic in their letters as we share our disabled adventures. I love my care team and my sons school, i love my little red car and hand controls. And the people that installed them for me. I love the passion my person has for his hobby, I love making my parents laugh and the way my uncles still call me Scooter. I love the women who work in our little corner shop who always ask about my son and his current favourite costume. I love my town and the neighbours sheep. I love it all and that love is the foundation of my fight for it all. I even love my nervous system and my immune system that's eating it. And that's the hardest one.
Love your precise noticing!
I LOVE what you have written so beautifully and all the details you include in this piece. Thank you for sharing it.
I was looking out the window and in the quiet I realised I forgot the egg guy. He has a wee stand he puts fresh eggs and we leave monies in the little box. If he's out we wave and say thank you.
How divine! Sticky Valentines! Oh, how I wish I'd expanded my classrooms appreciation of love in such a manner!!
Love...wish I could find more
Syrupy, thin, honeyed, like stcky waffles
Thin, runny, watery, like joyful tears
Hard hugs that squish flesh to bone!
Soft touch like a butterfly's wing
How to hold love long enough to give it away
Happy, happiest, valentines day.
💫💞💫
Unconditional love is the key to harmonious relationships of any kind.
I'm loving this post and the comments that go with it! I'll just contribute this one short and simple quote:
"Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place."
~Zora Neale Hurston
Here's to no more hiding.
Shine on!
She is one of my favorite writers. I am not familiar with that particular quote, so I am happy to know it now. No more hiding
Out here in the desert,
I have no cards with hearts
or doilies
just the wind and the sound of coyotes singing you a love song
Not a Valentine love... something bigger.
In the quiet hours before sunrise, love awakens the world with a gentleness like a whispered prayer. In the unfolding of morning, I sense of presence that is both vast and intimate –a "divine heartbeat" that echoes in every birdsong, in every rustle of the waking earth. It is here, in the fragile beauty of life, that I encounter the truth that God is love.
Like a steady stream, love flows through our lives, carving paths and unexpected places. It is in the courageous acts of kindness and in the moments of wonder that we see the hand of God, ever-present, ever-loving. Whether in the night sky or in the intricate designs of a leaf, the sacredness of creation speaks to me, reminding me that we are cherished by an ineffable source of grace.
There is power in this love that transcends our human limitations and binds us together in communion. It is love that comforts us times of sorrow, the strength given to us to face the unknown. In every joy and in every struggle, the quiet assurance of God's presence is a constant guide.
This divine love calls us to be better, to see in each other the reflection of something transcendent... eternal? It teaches us that life is an invitation to join in the mystery where every breath can be a hymn, and every heartbeat a testament to the power of a love that is as boundless. In this dance of creation and grace, we are forever held in the embrace of a God who is, above all, love.
In 2021, right before the pandemic began and we were all wearing masks, staying inside and social distancing, I was diagnosed with stage 4 non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, and given a 25% chance to survive the cancer. I was taken in almost immediately, despite the closure of some hospital serves due to staff being out. I'd been told some terrible stories about how people were treated in by staff in cancer units (I wouldn't call these caring comments). I was treated with such tenderness and love by the nurses who set up IV's of chemicals intended to kill the cancer. Following chemo, I had 18 rounds of radiation. All this exhausted me, and was hardly able to move due to damage to the lumbar spine, which required surgery. The cancer, however, did not leave. The second line of treatment was high dose chemo followed by stem cell transplant. The treatment was gruelling. Staff were so tender and kind, always attending to what I needed, talking with me about holding onto a vision of survival and a healthy life. My wife, despite her fears of losing me, was an angel of life, taking me to appointments, making sure I took the meds, and arranging for people to be with me when I would be home alone. I have never felt such love from people I didn't know and probably will never see again. This year on Valentines, I will pause to feel gratitude that I'm sitting here in my living room, writing as a member of this wonderful community, and thankful, when I can get out of my way, for every moment that I am alive.
beautiful.
We box love in with words and definitions, degrees and types and sizes when in reality, it is literally the entire essence of everything and therefore, the greatest power in the universe. In our human form, it "feels" a certain way. In our light being spirit selves, it just is.
I try everyday to be this more than feel it, or worse, trying to get it from some external source. My life completely shifted one day years ago when my mind and heart were opened and I was told that I could stop my search for someone to love me because I already have all the love I need because I AM love.
If you feel left out on Valentine's Day, try to remember who you are. If you forget, hit me up with a chat and I'll remind you, beautiful soul.
We are divine love. Knowing this, feeling this, and reflecting this far and wide, in everyone: that's my job. We're singing the same song, Marla.
This is beautiful Marla. Utterly beautiful..
Thank you... that is quite a compliment coming from you whose writing I so admire.
Also I love the name of your Substack!
Valentine’s Day isn’t so much of a thing here in Oz, although shops still try to make 💰💰 out of the date.
Love is though. And love takes a lot of (hard) work, IMO, shouldn’t be taken for granted. Even, and possibly especially, love for self.
Somewhere I read this quote from Joni Mitchell, I added it to what I said at my son’s wedding: “With a long relationship, things die then are rekindled, and that shared process of rebirth deepens the love. It’s hard work though, and a lot of people run at the first sign of trouble - it’s unpleasant but if you can get through it you can get closer and you learn a way of loving that is different from the neurotic love enshrined in movies. It’s warmer, and has more padding to it.”
So I aim to keep working at it - seems worth the effort!
❤️🧡💛💚💙💜❤️🩹🤗
My husband has worked in the restaurant industry for our entire relationship, therefore Valentine's Day is not really a holiday for us. I don't exactly greet Valentine's Day with enthusiasm--I feel the same ambivalent grumpiness about Mother's Day. However, I love my hardworking husband. Here's a poem I wrote for him last year. (If you could see it on the page the way it's supposed to look, the lines would wobble.)
Wobble
I understood an uneven table
as an existential condition, like rain on parade day
or 5 o'clock traffic. Just one of life's
problems to be endured. You always had them
in your pocket, little rubber
polyhedrons you called wobble wedges.
If there was a wobble at our table,
you jumped up, dove under, and plugged the gap.
I would find them in the morning
piled with the other tools of your trade:
corks and corkscrews, pencil stubs,
silver crumb sweepers,
the folded towel that spent all night on your arm
while you poured other people's wine.
I was drinking
at our son's birthday party
when the slinky got stuck in the basketball net.
And the time our daughter
locked her new purple suitcase
and forgot the code.
I drank while you untangled.
I drank while you
deciphered.
There you were,
with your pocketful of solutions,
waiting for me to find
my balance.
beautiful! love 'pocketful of solutions'
Sarah great poem. I love the image of those wedges. Nice metaphor for life.
Thank you!
So many passages and perspectives come to mind, but Rilke is always foremost among them for me:
“To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is — solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves. Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate — ?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another’s sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. Only in this sense, as the task of working at themselves (“to hearken and to hammer day and night”), might young people use the love that is given them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must save and gather for a long, long time still), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives as yet scarcely suffice.”