You are a gift

A special reminder on a special day.

On Friday morning, ahead of the hustle and bustle of getting out the door and to preschool, I sat on the floor as my daughter wrapped me up in a blanket.

“You are a gift,” she whispered to me.

To her, swaddling me in a blanket was a hilarious game. She tossed the soft white fabric around my body until it covered my back, arms, and head. Then she’d tip-toe around me, surveying her work.

“You are a gift,” she whispered again, this time followed by a giggle.

To me, her unintended affirmation was a gift. I doubt my daughter had any idea how powerful her words were. I was just her silly mama, pretending to get wrapped up like a present.

The rest of the day, I carried her sweet little whisper with me. I am a gift. The idea made me more tender with myself, more grateful for all I could offer to the world.

Today’s newsletter is short and sweet. I’m writing it in the stolen moments of a holiday weekend, and opted to send it on Monday, instead of Tuesday. Today is Labor Day—a day rooted in the efforts of American workers who banded together to demand more. Those workers fought for their worth, ultimately creating a gift for us all.

Every so often, I like to share a collection of inspiration and thoughts that this sweet dumb brain of mine has gathered lately. They haven’t yet been fully formed into essays. But they, too, are little gifts.

Not the exact blanket I was wrapped in, but close. (Getty Images)

You are a Matryoshka

I’m finally reading Maggie Smith’s much-anticipated You Could Make This Place Beautiful. And while Smith’s memoir is about her divorce, it’s still bringing up a lot of end-of-marriage feelings for me. When people get married, they expect to spend the rest of their lives together. Sometimes, that winds up not being the case at all. A couple parts and goes on to live separate lives. Sometimes, it’s only half-true; one partner dies, and the widowed spouse has no choice but to go on living.

No matter what happens, a marriage—and its inevitable ending—leaves a lasting impact on us.

I’ve highlighted lots of passages in Smith’s memoir. This is one of my favorites so far:

How I picture it: We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves—all of our selves—wherever we go.

Inside forty-something me is the woman I was in my thirties, the woman I was in my twenties, the teenager I was, the child I was.

Inside divorced me: married me, the me who loved my husband, the me who believed what we had was irrevocable and permanent, the me who believed in permanence.

I still carry these versions of myself. It's a kind of reincarnation without death: all these different lives we get to live in this one body, as ourselves.

You are looking for something more

I connected to Perry Bacon Jr.’s account of being a ‘none’—someone who doesn’t belong to or practice a particular religious faith. Like him, I appreciate the community and focus on universal values like kindness, generosity, and compassion that most churches offer, and I sure do love it when people unite in song. (It makes me cry, in the very best way.)

Still, I find church complicated, and can’t articulate what exactly I believe in. As Bacon Jr. expressed, I often feel like there’s something missing but I’m not sure what would fill that gap.

(Dear reader, do you also feel this way? If so, reply to this email and let me know. I have an idea that I might experiment with next year ... but it’s just an idea at this point.)

You are more than your job

For all my writing about redefining success and leaning away from leaning in, I still sometimes struggle with feeling less-than when I compare myself to my peers who continued on the career path I’d left. I have to remind myself of the freedom and fulfillment that freelancing affords, even if it doesn’t come with a fancy job title.

If you, too, are feeling a little less-than about your job title or career trajectory, here’s a reminder for you (and me!): 

You are so much more than your job. Your self-worth has nothing to do with how much money you make or what you do at work. You are smart, creative, and curious (I know this, because only a smart, creative, curious person would spend their time reading a newsletter like this). 

You might be riding high in your career and doing all sorts of exciting things—that’s awesome! Or you might be hitting some bumps at work and feeling a bit lost—that’s a-okay, too, because you will eventually find your way. Everything is a phase, always. In the end, your job title and salary won’t matter a lick. But you, and your relationships with people, do and will matter. You are a gift.

You are a T-shirt

Lest you believe that my daughter is a tiny sage, the day after she proclaimed me a gift, she decided I was something else entirely. “You are a T-shirt!” she shouted, as I helped her get dressed for the day.

“A T-shirt?!” I said, in mock confusion. “I thought I was a gift!”

“No,” she replied, with all seriousness. “You are a T-shirt.”

I haven’t yet figured out the affirmation hidden in that one.

xoxo
KHG