After reading this morning’s prompt, I went to the kitchen to start my coffee. My father-in-law came hobbling out of his bedroom, left leg dragging slightly behind the right as he steadied himself against the half-wall that draws a straight line from his room to the kitchen.
“Well,” he started with a heavy tone, “Lola passed about six this morning.” I walked toward him and put my arms around his crooked body.
“I’m so glad you went to see her last week,” I said. He had made the four hour trek across the state several days ago to spend time with Lola, his mother’s best friend who had had a stroke and been moved to the hospice wing of the nursing home she resided in.
“I’m glad I got to hear all those ‘I love you’s she said to everyone,” he said wiping a tear from his cheek.
When he had returned from seeing her the other day, the thing he highlighted the most about his visit was that Lola was in a constant state of saying “I love you” to everyone who walked in the room. I asked him if it felt like an absent sort of rote statement or if she was genuinely present with her words (I’ve never met Lola and was trying to get a sense of both her as a woman and the extent of the stroke).
“Oh no,” he had reported, “she meant it every time.”
So I’ve been sitting with this the last few days. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Approaching the gate of death, as Lola knew she was doing, made one thing clear to her: she was in love with everyone and everything in her life. And in a moment that could have easily been met with fear or dread or overwhelming sorrow, she opened to love and got to share that - shower that - with all her loved ones who came to hug her one last time.
What a tender gift… to remind everyone who will be grieving in your wake, that what they are experiencing is being loved.
Thank you. After my favorite, dear Aunt Jane died, I had a vivid dream of her. She was coaching me to write thank you notes to everyone she knew: mailman, teachers, family and friends. She wanted to make sure that I didn't leave anyone out. I could feel her love of everyone in the dream, and I shared the dream at her memorial service. She loved us.
The Sunday newsletters always hits hard. When Suleika said 'I'm done' and Jon kicked in, i cried so hard. What a beautiful love. Thank you for sharing. This prompt reminded me of when I broke my foot in 2021 and had to be cared for by my daughter. What should have been 6 weeks on crutches ended up being 5 months due to complications. I lost my mind and my mental health, but she kicked in high gear and was my life-saver. On a side-note, can we talk about how texturized and full our journals are getting with this 30 day project? The maps and collages..I've never loved my journal more than this one. Thank you for showing us new ways to journal by adding crafts and various mediums, and textures. Happy Sunday everyone!
I agree I love this special journal…where we all create in isolation and bravely share with the compassionate world. Small gentleness… slower intentional movements… and long luscious silences to nourish listening with our hearts. Imagine and live in peace.
Yes, all you say! I never expected the abundant richness that is blooming from these prompts. And also (being new here), the beautiful community that you all are. And btw, last April I tripped on my dog, knocked myself out, required the ER and emergency surgery and my darling daughter and then my darling sister came to my rescue (and also a whole cast of others, including my neighbor, my ex, etc.), which has given me gifts of appreciation I hadn't known were possible.
permission gratefully received to stop, lie down, tear up the list. If you can rest and care for yourself so thoughtfully, and I"m still not sure how the hell you rest and still pour forth endless juicy creatively in the midst of medical treatments, I can too.
I've been actively working on giving myself more grace in times when I'd ordinarily be hard on myself for not showing up in some idealized manner. Several members of my immediate family not only voted for the current administration twice, but continue to support it. I've been carrying this awful heartsickness, trying to figure out how I might be able to pierce the web of lies. What good am I in helping to turn the tide if I can't even reach my own family? I know directing anger and judgment at people only causes them to dig in deeper. I know approaching them with curiosity is the way, but I just can't. I can't even fathom that plane of equanimity let alone act from it. I get so upset. There's so much pain and suffering, so much gaslighting and hypocrisy. I can't have a calm, curious conversation about it. I just have to step away. I'm trying to give myself grace, trying to accept that, for right now, not actively making things worse by blowing up is the best I can do.
I can imagine the difficulty you face. Yet, today's prompt is about extending yourself grace when those you wish to understand you or see things the way you would like, cannot. You seem to be doing just that, giving yourself grace, and that is a form of taking care of your grief. All the best.
The words grace and gentle in todays prompt landed in my heart. I felt them.
I "broke up" with a long time mentor a year and a half ago. He was a spiritual guide in many ways and we spoke regularly each week for about fourteen years. The grief is about me not caring for myself in our relationship by saying "Ouch. That hurt," when he said hurtful things or when he bullied me with the truth. I didn't know how most of the time. I reached a point where my whole ecosystem said, "Nope, we gotta go. Can't do it like this anymore."
That moment when I picked up the phone and said I was moving on was a pinnacle moment of grace, self-reliance, and self-compassion. A turning point. A clarity I'd never understood to act on before in my life.
Waves of self-pity and feeling like a victim wash over me at times. Shame is a relentless bastard and loud af. And, consistent, graceful, and gentle practices make a difference, a little at a time, even if I don't feel better right away.
"Love can look like handling the details when someone else can’t."
boom. I've been single all my life & solo for over a decade and it never feels lonely except for days when I really need someone else to take the reigns. You & Jon have a beautiful thing. Take care. You're a blessing <3
This stopped me. Four years ago, this week - I too entered in to the battle of stage 4 cancer adventures and I call it ( I honesty don't like the word 'journey') - an opportunity of life.
But when my mind goes missing. It goes big time.
28 years of battling cancer for me - bad ass gene pool. But I think this is one of your most effervescent and releasing posts for me. It is hard to drive the train of your mind.
I pack all those things you have, every hospital visit and never can read and can hardly listen to music - except for my Calm APP stories and singing bowels. I try to knee jerk my mind somewhere else. It's kind of a breath - and then not. I end up watching old movies and pick up books I think I should read - huge stack by my bed. Then not. Nothing. Silence. Breathing.
And then I am still here. This is a good thing. You are amazing and I am so grateful for your clear sightline.
I once stayed home from work, in my white cotton nightgown all day, and ate a slice of pecan pie. The only way I knew to unplug after horrible childhood memories surfaced. That was 38 years ago. I have many more ways to seek comfort in my times of grief. The more I grieve, the more I live.
When the wildfires were near in 2017, the sheriff banged on our door to evacuate. We frantically grabbed what we could - pets in carriers , meds, etc. It wasn't til I opened my bag later that I found I had packed three shirts and ten pairs of underwear! We were safe, pets safe, house survived. I packed another bag later that made more sense.
In this lovely snow day surrounded by accumulating powder I began my catch up on prompts day 23-25 and all with Nina Simone singing to me - ahhhhhh what a time of collage (a Georgia O’Keefe calendar from 2015) and musing of what I would need to feel well & todays .. being gentle with yourself in grief. Nina’s still playing the piano, the snow is still falling ❄️❤️🩹🙌❤️🙏
well now i am crying because when my husband took his own life i don't know whether i even took care of my kids for some months...i moved my oldest to college two months later but i am afraid sometimes i just dumped her. my son and i went home and just...lived. thanks for the prompt. 💜
I just want to say that I don't know how you do it... Chemo and airplanes and nausea and you just keep going. I struggle to get off my comfy chair and moving my head around produces auras and nausea and dizziness. Thank you for respecting your no and listening. Stories like that make it easier for me to do the same and not push past my "done". Sending you lots of gratitude
I journaled last about this exact prompt on 9/3/25. At the time, I wrote about losses I’d had that that felt devastating to me, their effects on me, how I dealt with them.
When we lose someone we love, our family and friends show up to hold our hands, feed us, run our errands, listen to us reminisce and cry with us. And it hurts, but not forever. The pain becomes less sharp and the good memories strengthen. And we heal - slowly, but surely.
Today, living in the middle of the ICE occupation of Minneapolis, my past grief feels very small and insignificant in the face of the human tragedies happening around us. This is a grief of a community - a state - a nation - a world; it is the grief of people who have known and continue to know fear and oppression and hatred. And it’s not new - this has been going on around the world for ages.
A community comes together, and still feeds, and holds, and listens, and helps. But the pain does not become less sharp. Healing that pain cannot begin as long as the CAUSE of the grief is still present; as long as the threat of further loss and devastation looms. You’d think we would have learned from history, and started to pack differently. You’d think we’d realize all those stupid things we were putting in our suitcases just weighed us down. You’d think that we’d realize carrying those pieces of luggage filled with relics of our fear and distrust and hatred were making it so much harder to move through this world. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. We are where we were when Matthew Shephard was murdered. We are where we were when Emmett Till was slaughtered. We’re where we were when we allowed millions of Jews to die. We’re still carrying that luggage, and the burden gets heavier and heavier.
We aren’t packing for shit - we are packing shit. And carrying it. And grief is the price we continue to pay. I can’t be gentle with this grief. I can only rage.
When my Dad was dying, I spent all day with him and then hours of Candy Crush on my phone. I had downloaded it on the flight home to be with him in his final days in his LTAC (may you never know what these places are). After he died, we planned his funeral by day and I exploded colorful candies by night. My brain did not want space for any introspection. Days were about sitting vigil and then logistics. Night was for numbing myself. I deleted the game once back in my own home, followed by a long, hard sob in my bed. I’m not a gamer. I don’t keep any games on my phone now. But I’m grateful to that silly game for helping me keep going, sparing me the mental anguish that was coming once I was ready.
I breathed deeply for the first time in many days. I was understood. Thank you Suleika and Nadia.
After reading this morning’s prompt, I went to the kitchen to start my coffee. My father-in-law came hobbling out of his bedroom, left leg dragging slightly behind the right as he steadied himself against the half-wall that draws a straight line from his room to the kitchen.
“Well,” he started with a heavy tone, “Lola passed about six this morning.” I walked toward him and put my arms around his crooked body.
“I’m so glad you went to see her last week,” I said. He had made the four hour trek across the state several days ago to spend time with Lola, his mother’s best friend who had had a stroke and been moved to the hospice wing of the nursing home she resided in.
“I’m glad I got to hear all those ‘I love you’s she said to everyone,” he said wiping a tear from his cheek.
When he had returned from seeing her the other day, the thing he highlighted the most about his visit was that Lola was in a constant state of saying “I love you” to everyone who walked in the room. I asked him if it felt like an absent sort of rote statement or if she was genuinely present with her words (I’ve never met Lola and was trying to get a sense of both her as a woman and the extent of the stroke).
“Oh no,” he had reported, “she meant it every time.”
So I’ve been sitting with this the last few days. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Approaching the gate of death, as Lola knew she was doing, made one thing clear to her: she was in love with everyone and everything in her life. And in a moment that could have easily been met with fear or dread or overwhelming sorrow, she opened to love and got to share that - shower that - with all her loved ones who came to hug her one last time.
What a tender gift… to remind everyone who will be grieving in your wake, that what they are experiencing is being loved.
Thank you. After my favorite, dear Aunt Jane died, I had a vivid dream of her. She was coaching me to write thank you notes to everyone she knew: mailman, teachers, family and friends. She wanted to make sure that I didn't leave anyone out. I could feel her love of everyone in the dream, and I shared the dream at her memorial service. She loved us.
Oh wow! I love this 🤍 ancestors crossing through in the dream realm is one of the most remarkable expressions of love.
I love you
I love you
I love you
Mary Helen Fernandez Stewart Imagine and live in peace.
That is what grace and grateful looks like. Thanks for sharing.
Beautiful thoughts. A life filled with love- what more can we ask? I'm glad your father in law got to say his goodbyes and hear the love.
This makes me think: imagine what kind of wake we would create if we bellowed all our “I love you’s” throughout our life.
The Sunday newsletters always hits hard. When Suleika said 'I'm done' and Jon kicked in, i cried so hard. What a beautiful love. Thank you for sharing. This prompt reminded me of when I broke my foot in 2021 and had to be cared for by my daughter. What should have been 6 weeks on crutches ended up being 5 months due to complications. I lost my mind and my mental health, but she kicked in high gear and was my life-saver. On a side-note, can we talk about how texturized and full our journals are getting with this 30 day project? The maps and collages..I've never loved my journal more than this one. Thank you for showing us new ways to journal by adding crafts and various mediums, and textures. Happy Sunday everyone!
I agree I love this special journal…where we all create in isolation and bravely share with the compassionate world. Small gentleness… slower intentional movements… and long luscious silences to nourish listening with our hearts. Imagine and live in peace.
Yes, all you say! I never expected the abundant richness that is blooming from these prompts. And also (being new here), the beautiful community that you all are. And btw, last April I tripped on my dog, knocked myself out, required the ER and emergency surgery and my darling daughter and then my darling sister came to my rescue (and also a whole cast of others, including my neighbor, my ex, etc.), which has given me gifts of appreciation I hadn't known were possible.
Happy Sunday, y'all xox
Right??? Same! Daughter, sister, community...! Oh...What will we do without our daily prompts 😔
permission gratefully received to stop, lie down, tear up the list. If you can rest and care for yourself so thoughtfully, and I"m still not sure how the hell you rest and still pour forth endless juicy creatively in the midst of medical treatments, I can too.
I've been actively working on giving myself more grace in times when I'd ordinarily be hard on myself for not showing up in some idealized manner. Several members of my immediate family not only voted for the current administration twice, but continue to support it. I've been carrying this awful heartsickness, trying to figure out how I might be able to pierce the web of lies. What good am I in helping to turn the tide if I can't even reach my own family? I know directing anger and judgment at people only causes them to dig in deeper. I know approaching them with curiosity is the way, but I just can't. I can't even fathom that plane of equanimity let alone act from it. I get so upset. There's so much pain and suffering, so much gaslighting and hypocrisy. I can't have a calm, curious conversation about it. I just have to step away. I'm trying to give myself grace, trying to accept that, for right now, not actively making things worse by blowing up is the best I can do.
I can imagine the difficulty you face. Yet, today's prompt is about extending yourself grace when those you wish to understand you or see things the way you would like, cannot. You seem to be doing just that, giving yourself grace, and that is a form of taking care of your grief. All the best.
The words grace and gentle in todays prompt landed in my heart. I felt them.
I "broke up" with a long time mentor a year and a half ago. He was a spiritual guide in many ways and we spoke regularly each week for about fourteen years. The grief is about me not caring for myself in our relationship by saying "Ouch. That hurt," when he said hurtful things or when he bullied me with the truth. I didn't know how most of the time. I reached a point where my whole ecosystem said, "Nope, we gotta go. Can't do it like this anymore."
That moment when I picked up the phone and said I was moving on was a pinnacle moment of grace, self-reliance, and self-compassion. A turning point. A clarity I'd never understood to act on before in my life.
Waves of self-pity and feeling like a victim wash over me at times. Shame is a relentless bastard and loud af. And, consistent, graceful, and gentle practices make a difference, a little at a time, even if I don't feel better right away.
Sometimes the grief feels like a gentle anchor.
"Love can look like handling the details when someone else can’t."
boom. I've been single all my life & solo for over a decade and it never feels lonely except for days when I really need someone else to take the reigns. You & Jon have a beautiful thing. Take care. You're a blessing <3
This stopped me. Four years ago, this week - I too entered in to the battle of stage 4 cancer adventures and I call it ( I honesty don't like the word 'journey') - an opportunity of life.
But when my mind goes missing. It goes big time.
28 years of battling cancer for me - bad ass gene pool. But I think this is one of your most effervescent and releasing posts for me. It is hard to drive the train of your mind.
I pack all those things you have, every hospital visit and never can read and can hardly listen to music - except for my Calm APP stories and singing bowels. I try to knee jerk my mind somewhere else. It's kind of a breath - and then not. I end up watching old movies and pick up books I think I should read - huge stack by my bed. Then not. Nothing. Silence. Breathing.
And then I am still here. This is a good thing. You are amazing and I am so grateful for your clear sightline.
I once stayed home from work, in my white cotton nightgown all day, and ate a slice of pecan pie. The only way I knew to unplug after horrible childhood memories surfaced. That was 38 years ago. I have many more ways to seek comfort in my times of grief. The more I grieve, the more I live.
“The more I grieve the more I live” … oh yes.
When the wildfires were near in 2017, the sheriff banged on our door to evacuate. We frantically grabbed what we could - pets in carriers , meds, etc. It wasn't til I opened my bag later that I found I had packed three shirts and ten pairs of underwear! We were safe, pets safe, house survived. I packed another bag later that made more sense.
In this lovely snow day surrounded by accumulating powder I began my catch up on prompts day 23-25 and all with Nina Simone singing to me - ahhhhhh what a time of collage (a Georgia O’Keefe calendar from 2015) and musing of what I would need to feel well & todays .. being gentle with yourself in grief. Nina’s still playing the piano, the snow is still falling ❄️❤️🩹🙌❤️🙏
well now i am crying because when my husband took his own life i don't know whether i even took care of my kids for some months...i moved my oldest to college two months later but i am afraid sometimes i just dumped her. my son and i went home and just...lived. thanks for the prompt. 💜
I’m sorry for your loss Lauree. Survival takes many shapes and forms.
Thank you for this honesty. How else can one live at such devastation.
I just want to say that I don't know how you do it... Chemo and airplanes and nausea and you just keep going. I struggle to get off my comfy chair and moving my head around produces auras and nausea and dizziness. Thank you for respecting your no and listening. Stories like that make it easier for me to do the same and not push past my "done". Sending you lots of gratitude
I journaled last about this exact prompt on 9/3/25. At the time, I wrote about losses I’d had that that felt devastating to me, their effects on me, how I dealt with them.
When we lose someone we love, our family and friends show up to hold our hands, feed us, run our errands, listen to us reminisce and cry with us. And it hurts, but not forever. The pain becomes less sharp and the good memories strengthen. And we heal - slowly, but surely.
Today, living in the middle of the ICE occupation of Minneapolis, my past grief feels very small and insignificant in the face of the human tragedies happening around us. This is a grief of a community - a state - a nation - a world; it is the grief of people who have known and continue to know fear and oppression and hatred. And it’s not new - this has been going on around the world for ages.
A community comes together, and still feeds, and holds, and listens, and helps. But the pain does not become less sharp. Healing that pain cannot begin as long as the CAUSE of the grief is still present; as long as the threat of further loss and devastation looms. You’d think we would have learned from history, and started to pack differently. You’d think we’d realize all those stupid things we were putting in our suitcases just weighed us down. You’d think that we’d realize carrying those pieces of luggage filled with relics of our fear and distrust and hatred were making it so much harder to move through this world. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. We are where we were when Matthew Shephard was murdered. We are where we were when Emmett Till was slaughtered. We’re where we were when we allowed millions of Jews to die. We’re still carrying that luggage, and the burden gets heavier and heavier.
We aren’t packing for shit - we are packing shit. And carrying it. And grief is the price we continue to pay. I can’t be gentle with this grief. I can only rage.
“Grief of a people”. This was moving. There is so much collective grief.
i love that conversation with you and Nadia. and this post.
When my Dad was dying, I spent all day with him and then hours of Candy Crush on my phone. I had downloaded it on the flight home to be with him in his final days in his LTAC (may you never know what these places are). After he died, we planned his funeral by day and I exploded colorful candies by night. My brain did not want space for any introspection. Days were about sitting vigil and then logistics. Night was for numbing myself. I deleted the game once back in my own home, followed by a long, hard sob in my bed. I’m not a gamer. I don’t keep any games on my phone now. But I’m grateful to that silly game for helping me keep going, sparing me the mental anguish that was coming once I was ready.
Same. I listened to Neil Young's Love to Burn really loud over and over.