Finding our way + ideas for Valentines Day
We are living in a time of rapid change and uncertainty. How are you finding your way amidst the overwhelm?
I am grounding myself with two practices.
My attention. Attention is the beginning of devotion, Mary Oliver teaches us. I’m increasingly mindful of my attention. I’ve removed all apps that scroll (news, email, social media) from my phone. While I still engage with this content, I am choosing when and how much rather than losing myself in a spiral of doom and reactive response.
My hope. I’m devoted to a hope discipline, as Mariame Kaba conjured a practice of hope. I’m holding grief and rage on one hand and choosing to imagine another future is possible. I’m ever grateful to have finished 2024 with the community who joined the #100DaysofHope program. (Add yourself to the Hope Course waitlist if you’d like to join the community when I open registration soon.)
Find low-lift, repeatable ways to center yourself as the world swirls around you. Grounding ourselves is key to accessing our empathy and resourcing ourselves to create change.
Create community connection with love notes for all for Valentine’s Day.
And just like that, it’s February! It’s Black History and Valentine's Day.
I fondly remember the Valentine’s Days of my childhood—mailboxes made of recycled orange juice cartons sitting on our school desks and homemade construction paper cards brought to school tucked inside paper lunch sacks in our backpacks. My mom insisted we make a card for every single person in our classroom, no special cards or leaving anyone out.
Valentine’s Day is next week. How might this spark you to bring more love to your world? The world is craving the ripples that come from giving and receiving small reminders of our worth and humanity.
Here are two examples of how one person sparked massive connection rituals using love notes within their community.
Cheese Plus, a corner market with “all things delicious” in San Francisco’s Polk Street neighborhood, hosts an annual month-long love note-writing installation in their windows.
Customers write notes on the LoveYou2 love note templates provided near the front of the store. Completed notes are hung in the window on ribbon and affixed with clothes pins.
By the end of the month, notes are several thick facing both to the exterior and interior, featuring hundreds of notes from and to the community. This small space overflows with love as people make the invisible visible over four weeks.
Valley Oaks Elementary in Houston hosts a “Week of Love” each year.
Spearheaded by art teacher Kim Lamb, students are provided the LoveYou2 love note templates and invited to add their notes to the window display in the school’s common area.
Students write gratitude notes to teachers. Friends acknowledge each other’s acts of kindness and bravery.
As this event has become a part of the school community over many years, a fifth grader began her love note-writing campaign and wrote long-form, anonymous notes of admiration to school community members throughout the year.
Host your own love note event.
Are you inspired to host your own love note installation at work, school, or in community? Or perhaps you’d like to make this Valentine’s Day one to celebrate all the many forms of love that is in your life?
Check out these tips for love note-writing events. Download love note templates in six languages from the LoveYou2 online store. If you are a school or a nonprofit and cost is a barrier, please email me and I will send the note templates to you at no cost.
A box of love notes for you.
I have installed a mailbox full of love notes to our courage at Bird and Beckett in San Francisco’s Glen Park neighborhood. I love an independent book store and Bird and Beckett also hosts concerts and poetry readings, a delightful combination.
If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, head by Bird And Beckett to say hello to Eric, pick up a new or new to you book, and take a love note for your courage.
Here’s to our courage and our love for each other.