LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Ella BakerSmith!

You have no control and you are important

Dear Lovelets,

I suspect it is a difficult time in history to be a young person. Maybe it’s always been difficult? But it seems like it would be especially hard right now to find meaning and enthusiasm within a world that seems to be spinning out of control on slick ice, heading straight for a ravine, and in that ravine there are hungry crocodiles swimming around in molten lava (I know, lava-proof ravine-dwelling crocodiles! It’s really scary!) — so how, if you are a young person, do you dream big dreams for your future, when all that is going on?

Maybe this is why I was so moved last autumn when I met Ella BakerSmith — who is today’s special guest. She was helping to prepare and serve food at a dinner party where Margaret and I, and a bunch of people who had already written letters from Love had gathered in Brooklyn, to celebrate the creation of this newsletter community.

Ella reminded me of myself at her age, 23. Like me, she had come to New York City to be a writer — from Utah, in her case — and she was so brimming with dreams and light and curiosity and a sense of adventure that my spirit was completely buoyed by her very presence in the room.

I thought: it’s still happening! Young people are still wanting to be artists! They are still leaving their hometowns behind, to chase their creative aspirations! They are still working a bunch of side-hustle jobs to support themselves while they build community in new places! They still dream of a world, a future, and their place within it!

It made me happy.

She made me happy.

So we invited Ella to do a letter from Love, and to share her word magic with us today.

Ella, we are so glad you’re here. Keep dreaming up the world. We love you for it, and we love you in it.

Love,
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know today?

Sweet cherry blossom, soaking wet in the rain: get over here. Remember how much you used to love it when your romantic partners would say that to you, with a special glint in their eye? Get over here. Get over here. Get over here.

We’ve been giving you a lot of advice lately. You’ve been needing a lot of advice lately. Earth School is a complicated curriculum, and sometimes it is the case that just when you think you’ve solved this whole living thing and that you understand how everything should go, the barometer dips, or the fire alarms start to sound, or the tornado warning comes, or the birds get quiet, or all the neighborhood dogs start howling at once, and the hair goes up on the back of your neck and you’re like, “Oh God, here we go again?” — and all you want to do is hide under the bed and quake at how intense and sometimes challenging life is.

What is it this time, indeed?

We don’t even need to know what “it” is, specifically, this time, to tell you that “it” is the same thing as always.

What’s going on? What’s happening? Things are happening. Creation is happening. Existence is happening. Human beings are happening. Life is happening. School is in session, and the only thing you get to control (sometimes! If you can keep your serenity!) is your response.

Why do you think that’s such a small thing?

Why do you think that a human response is one tiny little bit of dandelion fluff — insignificant in the greater tempest?

It isn’t.

A human response, my love, is enormously, ferociously important. A human response to life can be a work of art, an alchemical process of outrageous significance, an event, an exploding star.

Remember when you were doing the steps in your 12-step program, and your sponsor told you to pray for somebody whom you had harmed long ago — somebody who, she deemed, it would be unsafe for you to contact directly and make an amends to, because it would cause that person too much distress to hear from you again. Remember how she told you to set your alarm to wake up 15 minutes earlier than usual every day for 30 days, and to make a commitment that you were going to roll out of bed and get on your actual knees, and pray sincerely that this person would be safe, that this person would be happy, that this person would know peace, and that everybody this person loved would be well.

And you said, “That’s it? That seems so measly and insignificant, compared to what I did. Can’t I do more for them?”

She smiled at you with the compassion of infinite life and said, “Lizzy, why do you think your prayers are not monumentally important?”

Yes, my love. It was a good question. Why DO you think your prayers are not monumentally important? Anytime you wish somebody to be well, it matters.

There are so many things you do that are monumentally important. More than you could ever imagine.

Here’s another memory. Remember how moved you were that time in a 12-step meeting when you heard a woman share, in an attitude of complete peace and surrender, these words: “I am loved beyond measure by a higher power who has given me control over practically nothing.”

It is true!

You ARE loved beyond measure by a higher power who has given you control over practically nothing.

Yet, the woman went on to explain, the tiny measure of control that she does possess is monumentally important.

It is monumentally important to use that tiny bit of control with curiosity, with creativity, with courage, and with a commitment to remaining fully in the game of life. You have written entire books using the tiny measure of control that you do possess. You have had entire marriages using the tiny little bit of control you possess. You were born into this world because of the tiny bit of control your parents possessed — to choose each other, and to make a decision to bring forth life. Whole civilizations are built and sustained and collapsed because of the tiny amount of control that humans have.

So.

Your very best friend Mary Oliver (whom you never met or spoke to, and who likely never heard of you) once said that the most important question is this: what are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?

We want to refine the question further.

What are you, Lizzy, going to do today with the tiny, monumentally important piece of control that you have?

May we suggest an answer? You’re going to meditate. You’re going to make jokes with your friends. You’re going to go to that appointment about your colonoscopy (good self-care, little buddy!). You’re going to take Pepita for a walk in the rain, even though she truly thinks that going out in the rain means you’re trying to murder her. You’re going to make a tiny piece of art. And the whole time you’re making this tiny piece of art, you’re going to think about someone you love, and you’re going to chant their name as you make this piece of art — chanting love and safety into the art. And then you’re going to write that person a note saying, “I made you a tiny piece of art because I love you — here it is.” And you will send it to them in the actual human mail.

You’re going to eat dinner. You’re going to take a bath. You’re going to pray for everybody you know and everybody you don’t know. You’re going to go to sleep and have dreams that you can’t control. And you’re going to believe it when we say:

We are with you the whole time.

Love is with you the whole time.

You are monumentally important.

You are doing great.

We, Love, are with everyone.

Everyone is monumentally important.

Everyone is doing great.

We are here.

We are here.

And we never sleep.

Prompt

This week we’re going back to basics with the original oldie-but-goodie, the essential question that started this letter-writing practice for me all those many years ago. This week, let’s see what comes up when we pose this familiar and essential question: Dear Love, what would you have me know today?

Readers, mark your calendars! My next Onward Book Club selection is REMEMBER US, by the extraordinary Jacqueline Woodson. This book (our first selection from the genre of young people’s literature!) tells the story of rising 7th graders in 1970s Brooklyn, in a neighborhood that is changing as fast as they are, and it is all about those changes, community, loss, fear, and growth.

You can find this and all Onward Book Club selections at our partner shop, Rachel Cargle’s own Elizabeth’s Bookshop & Writing Centre. And once you’ve read it, please join me and Jacqueline over on Instagram for a live conversation about REMEMBER US on Wednesday, June 11th, at 7pm ET!