DEAR FUTURE ME

A Forgotten Letter From The Past, Highlights of the Week, A Poem, and more...

Edie Art

Hi, Friends:

I’ve been slowly working my way through my studio office, reorganizing and tidying, and rearranging furniture for a fresh perspective. I need to move the energy of “what’s come before” so that I can make room for “what’s to come.”

I’ve been sorting through piles of paper and stacks of files, painstakingly reading through a box of post-it notes hastily written with insights or reminders ( I really need to break this post-it note habit), and generally just organizing and reviewing from the past year. I like to do this a couple of times a year, especially as I consider either a new project or a new approach to an old project. January seems a blatantly obvious time to do this.

Since January marks one year since we moved into this house, two years since moving to Colorado, I also found myself digging through a few boxes stashed in the closet that hadn’t been opened since the move. I was jamming to RM”s new CD Indigo and making lots of progress in my organizing efforts when I stumbled across a file with two sheets of loose-leaf paper and the words DEAR FUTURE ME penciled at the top. Those two pages in a wrinkled file folder stopped me in my sorting tracks.

I had no memory of writing this letter to my future self but I was excited to find it and curious to see what vision I had dreamed of for myself. Written in January of 2021, the first month of my then self-proclaimed and slightly overconfident, “YEAR OF HEALING” to which I had wholeheartedly committed myself. A tiny note in the upper right-hand corner said, “ Read in 2 years.”

I love the way Spirit works. Here we are in January of 2023 and I stumble upon this little note from my past self to my present self, which then was the future me. (But what is time anyway, right?) I had completely forgotten about it so its discovery felt like a gift.

So here’s a bit of it I’ll share:

My Dear Future Mary,

Future Mary is no longer questing, she is expressing. She is open to new ideas insights, and experiences and she recognizes and receives what is true for her in her expanding consciousness.

The work she has undergone in the Living School has prepared her to reach out to the world, to women in particular, through her circle and online programs, and in-person gatherings. She no longer worries about whether she is doing the right work but enjoys what is right for her in her work, as it presents itself.

She looks back at the early days in Colorado in Jan 2021 - The Year of Healing - and is profoundly grateful, inspired, and awed by what came through her and she knows that she was strengthened and supported to take on this important generational healing work.

Her long, beautiful gray hair is a visible manifestation of her hard-won inner knowing. Her outsides match her insides, as does the way she flows through the world, shoulders wrapped in beautiful fabric, the blanket of Spirit with her always. The thing she prayed for most, to learn to fully embrace her True Self, is here. It is not as if she has stopped or will stop growing and evolving but she is at home in herself in ways that are solid and cannot be shaken other than by God, who has taken her through this dark night. She has emerged with gifts…

Though the letter didn’t provide a lot of external particulars, other than my long gray hair ( not quite there yet) and my desire to dress in a way that more reflects how I feel inside ( also not quite there) it did BLOW ME AWAY. And here’s why. I feel that in many ways, I have indeed been carried through to the embodiment of much of this vision I had for myself. As we all know, by casting a vision, we tend to walk into it.

The second page of the letter held a short but powerful list:

• She waits before she speaks.

• She speaks from the deep well within her.

• She trusts what's come to her and what comes through her.

• She adjusts when adjustment is needed.

• She shows up for her life, her people, and her work.

As I read through this letter to my future self, I am reminded of the qualities of being I hoped to embody when I wrote that note. A love note to myself for the future. It was my way of partnering with Spirit to say, “This is my heart’s yearning and I hope, with your help, to move in this direction.”

Have you ever considered writing a letter to your Future Self? The Future Me organization allows you to email a letter to yourself at a future date of your choosing. I think I’ve done that in the past but changed my email, so it never arrived. Whoops. Fortunately, this simple pencil and paper note to myself arrived at the correct time without any help, other than the impeccable timing of Spirit.

XO Mary

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5 LITTLE TIDBITS THIS WEEK:

1. This sweetheart came to my door asking if he could shovel my driveway for $5.

(I shared this as a post on my socials.)

Maybe it's my longstanding affection for middle schoolers.

Maybe it's the earnestness and enthusiasm with which he asked to shovel my driveway.

Maybe it was his adorable grin when I said yes.

Maybe it's also a relief to not have to shovel my own driveway after a big snowfall last night and today.

But when this sweet face showed up at my door asking if he could shovel my driveway for $5, I was an immediate YES.

He responded, "Really? You're the first person who said yes!" I said, " Oh yes... YES!"

He worked hard as I watched from the window. Using all his weight against the shovel to push at least 2 feet of show off to the yard, one pass after another. When I finally told him it was enough and he'd done great, he said with a big smile, THANK YOU SO MUCH!"

I asked if I could take his photo and whether he was saving up for something special. He told me he lived down the block and that he was saving up for a car one day! He said he tries to do jobs wherever he can to save up.

WHAT? Whose child is this and I can kiss you? Or at least shake your hand and tell you what a fine lad you've raised? It was like watching a Norman Rockwell painting come to life. I felt such happiness and dare I say, hope, as I interacted with him and I told him he had worked hard, that I was proud of him, and that he had really helped us out.

I of course gave him $10 ( which absolutely thrilled him) and two pieces of candy. He officially made my day.

2. Three books I look forward to reading: Rest Is Resistance, On Our Best Behavior, and Saving Time. Currently reading: Stories That Stick and Our Souls At Night.

   

3. Other Highlights of the Week: Training to be a Side-walker with Hearts and Horses, an in-depth book discussion with my friend Caitlin, my very first in-person class in Korean ( more on this soon), and the Closer Than Breath Centering Prayer Summit.

   

4. Spotted on my drives:

   

   

   5. This poem by Lisa Olivera. In line with the theme that seems to be popping up this week.

   I have a history of running and being at a standstill simultaneously,
   itching with desperation to get to some other place,
   to some other version of me who has already done The Thing,
   already gotten The Lesson, already embodied The Wisdom,
   already Made It, who is already “There”, yet at a standstill
   because being anywhere or anyone else is impossible.
   I’ve sprinted and fallen over exhausted, defeated
   by the reality that there is no “there”.

   There is only Here. There is only This Body.
   There is only this life, the one I have now, the one
   I am in, the version of myself that exists
   as I take this breath, as I type this word.
   There is only this life, with
   all of its murky crevices and dusty bits,
   all of its unfinished works of art and unchecked boxes,
   its grief and silent longings, its hidden parts and 
   the still-empty room connected to the kitchen.

   There is only this — this body left with pounds
   and stretched skin that were once not here,  
   this wrinkle above the eye and this dream not yet reached.
   There is only this — this questioning, this mystery, 
   this reckoning with what could be but isn’t,
   this practice of seeing the open-ended present as sacred
   instead of something to work my way around.
   There is only this — this willingness to hold
   what is not yet here, to hold what I don’t yet know,
   to hold my current Self with reverence instead of
   captive to an unreachable different reality.

   When I stray from my own knowing,
   from the truth that there is nowhere and
   no one else to be, the relief comes
   not from figuring it out or reaching
   some imaginary, all-better There,
   but from remembering what is true:

   The Thing, The Lesson, The Wisdom,
   the Making It, the arrival to some ethereal 
   future where all my woes and wounds
   are resolved, where I’m finally some
   idealized version of myself,
   isn’t the answer.

   The answer is trusting I can meet myself
   where I am, as I am, with arms held wide.
   That I can let this, let here, be what it needs to be.
   That I can stop solving and practice just living.
   That just living includes the boring, uncertain
   moments in-between, includes quietly massaging
   my own tired hands, includes the grieving and eating
   the same dinner three nights in a row as a way
   of making one less decision, the inconsistent rituals
   and the not knowing — includes all of it.

   There is no there.
   There is only here.
   And here isn’t something to resolve;
   it’s something to allow.
   Soon, everything will be different.
   And for now, here I am. Here I am.

Wishing you a week that inspires and encourages you!

xo Mary

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“What wisdom can you find greater than kindness.” ― Jean Jacques Rousseau

This month I will be donating a portion of my paid subscriptions to:

ATV /Alternative To Violence, Loveland. Alternatives to Violence provides shelter, advocacy, education, and resources for people impacted by domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking.

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