Your Submissions
ask a question, or tell me your storiesMarch 21, 2024
Sweet Jane,
Since I last wrote to you, a few seasons have passed and I'm grieving another loss of summer. Today is the spring equinox for you, and the fall equinox for me. I wore long pants and sleeves, the air was so much colder than when I was at the beach just three days ago.
Right now, I'm missing everything I don't have. I can't stop thinking about all the people and places I can't experience at the moment, and won't be able to for the next few months. I know this thought pattern is only digging me into a deeper hole, but I can't seem to stop it. Any advice for homesickness and savoring everything that's right in front of you?
Loving you big time all the way from the southern hemisphere,
Olivia
Dear Olivia,
The last and only time I told my dad I was in love, we were walking to our favorite Thai restaurant. We had gone to a basketball game earlier that day, and watched as our team climbed a ladder to cut their net in celebration of another victory.
I hadn’t yet told this person themself that I was in love with them, but I think they knew. We danced around it for weeks, which felt like years. It was every cliche of the intoxicating blissful embrace of lust that sparkles with a youth only teenagers have otherwise.
I said everything to this person before I said the words, “I love you.” I told my therapist it was like watching a ladybug climb a blade of grass, tempted to pick it up but knowing not to because the germs on human hands might kill them.
I’m telling you all of this because this experience spawed the developement of a sense of time that has become fundamental in the way I live: I see my life as a painting. Something vast, like The Last Supper. Though time pretends to be fleeting, it is physical, and I can see it. My childhood is painted: the grass of the Smoky Mountains, my mothers big gray coat she put me inside to hold against her chest, and the instant hot chocolate at karate camp. My teenage years are a watercolor of a middle part, biology class, and the first place my best friend appears. I wait to see what strokes appear, or what characterizes my present, and the rest is broad, mysterious, yet not dauntingly blank.
I explained this to my dad as we approached our destination. I told him that I knew the chances of this person I loved stretching all the way to the other side of the canvas were slim, and yet I still loved them. It was my last year as a teenager, a powder snow winter, I was walking to my favorite Thai restaurant with my father who did the same thing in this town when he was attending this school, glimmering in the omnipresent lovesickness, too. I didn't care that love could be mortal, because my memories of it were not, so I held the ladybug and watched it die.
What I mean to tell you, is that every lovely thing you miss is watching from east of the canvas. You live closer to them than it may feel, and they lovingly giggle at your uncertainty. Olivia, all of the things you miss love you so much. What’s more, to be loved is to have the certainty that there is divinity waiting for you. That you can trust what is behind you enough to look forward, and enjoy what is now.
Some possibly more practical advice is an exercise I like to do when I find myself in doubt: look around, and start reciting, “god, I see you in the ______”, filling in the blank with what you see. I find this brings me back to the love the universe has for me, and my abitity to trust and stop fighting.
Love,
Jane
August 26, 2023
Hi Jane,
As a fellow teenager in her twenties, I still find myself subconsciously in a constant search for validation from the wrong people. I hate endings, I am not good at them. I hold on tight to salvage myself from the cold air of a door slammed in my face, even when it’s for the best. I guess what I’m getting at is, in the face of discomfort and fear, how do you do right by yourself and make choices about relationships and people that do not serve your needs?
Kisses!!!
Nikki F
Dear Nikki,
I apologize for taking long to respond. Upon receiving your submission, I thought it a dishonest thing for me to reply in what was my state of being: anything besides a secure person. I’ve spent the last month and a half thinking of what I could tell you, but most of it I’m sure you know well: if you act only to recieve validation, you will always turn up empty.
I've chased, I've lured, I've surprised myself with how far I’ll go, and how much time I've lost. I’ve “won” made-up games, and still I turn up empty. It's like being at an arcade, spending the day winning thousands of tickets, and the only prizes you can get are bubble gum and a sticky hand. For a moment, you're relieved, but soon sticky hand is covered in cat hair and you’re and chewing on what tastes like building materials.
I find it interesting that the way we use the word, “validation” (the act of confirming something as true or correct), implies a second party. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means for us to fully embrace our truths without hearing them read back to us, and the way seeking confirmation of our experiences and instincts leads us away from our divine intuition.
The first step to doing right by yourself is coming back to your body and surroundings. Pursuits of validation and conquerment themselves take on intangibly polysemous definitions in our human stories, yet are limited to success and failure. I think we do this because the truth of our existence is so mysterious. We will hold onto anything to save ourselves from the earth spinning. Giving ourselves stillness allows our next choices clarity.
Be curious about what you're seeking in a broader sense – when confronted with smaller choices, we can unintentionally forget about a larger alignment. Have a good line of communication with yourself. This line of communication is strengthened the more we wholeheartedly care about ourselves. Some of the ways I like to build this love are:
- Looking at my baby photos and sitting with the existential wonder they pull.
- Cooking with the fruits and vegetables of each season – this reminds me of my celestial connection to change/time. When you celebrate someone else's seasons, it becomes more obvious to celebrate your own.
Nikki, I hope you invite this rebirth with love and maybe a pastry.
I wish you very well,
Jane
August 2, 2023
Jane,
So many beautiful things have happened in my life this year, and not only have I enjoyed the recent seasons of joy, but I am eager for the growth and continuous love the upcoming seasons will bring, too. Lately, I've found myself feeling consumed by what's to come and have been struggling to be present in the moments happening right in front of me. Any advice for working through anxiety about time and the future, while staying connected with the people and experiences surrounding me?
With love,
Riley Jane
I spent the entirety my 16th year pondering this Charles Baudelaire quote:
“This life is a hospital in which each patient is possessed by the desire to change beds. One wants to suffer in front of the stove and another believes that he will get well near the window.
It always seems to me that I will be better off there where I am not, and this question of moving about is one that I discuss endlessly with my soul.”
It goes on to fantasize escapes, until the last line, “my soul explodes, and wisely she shrieks at me: "It doesn't matter where! It doesn't matter where! As long as it's out of this world!”
For a while, I repeated the first line to myself many times a day. -- This life is a hospital in which each patient is possessed by the desire to change beds.
I myself am a patient, and spent most of my free time early this year curled up in my bed, thinking I’d survive winter by sleeping it away and that spring would cure me. When spring came, I brought the blanket outside and curled up too, this time praying summer would cure me. Summer came, and I swaddled in its swelter, too. During all of this, I would write lists of who I would be in the next season, each time drawing the line farther.
The monotonously vanilla times in our lives barricading us from future plans, calm framed as boring, unimportant; imagine her as your oldest elder. The one you secretly love more than all the rest, because she possesses something you're not old enough to have yourself, but have always understood. You hang onto every word; it feels like the only thing that matters to keep them in the safest place and to carry them forever until you’re able to become them. Her inevitable absence looms in the distance, and you hold them even tighter. If you listen closely, and for long enough, you’ll feel that she loves you so much the fabric of the universe can hardly stand it.
That piece of clothing you love so bad collecting dust in your closet because you don't want to waste it on the wrong day? Wear it. Today is the right day to do that. Look around. Even if you're in public, (I promise no one will notice), collect what you see, remind yourself of your presence in the space. You are here right now! You are skin and bones, and maybe a little sweaty, and you can feel the kitchen tile under your bare feet, you can feel the unabashedly green metal chair beneath you while the keyboard clicks words onto a document beneath your fingers.
All my love,
Jane Riley
July 17, 2023
hi there sweet jane,
seeking advice on how to begin breaking down the walls that i have put up in order to protect myself from rejection. i am beginning to realize that it is much easier to just shut people out than to let them in and risk being hurt--and that never letting people in isn't a sustainable way to live my life and maintain relationships. i guess i'm wondering what advice you have for how to be brave and not care about what others think or how i am perceived.
loads of love,
meggy
Dearest Meggy,
Throughout my life, I have clung to ideas of what would “fix” or “complete” me in various forms such as opportunities, relationships, acceptance, etc. Instead of seeing opportunities as just that, a chance to learn and possibly acquire an initial intention, I internalized their outcomes to be validation for my seemingly flimsy existence. I turned them over again and again in my mind, I let them consume me. This way of thinking morphed the “thing” into something worrisome – ironic considering I thought having it would finally make me content.
A few years ago, I stumbled upon a “spiritual meme” (for lack of a better name) by one of those accounts who post Ram Dass/Abraham-Hicks quotes on top of chakra diagrams and AI generated plants. It said something along the lines of: “when you ask the universe for something, it will give one of three answers: ‘yes’, ‘not right now’, or ‘I have something better in store.’” I think of this a lot, and have found proof of the latter answer in my memory box. I believe the universe rewards those who go for the purest desires of their heart.
Describe the things you are worried about in objective terms. When we strip away the alterations fabricated by rumination, situations are much less scary. For example, I often feel deeply anxious that people close to me are mad/annoyed by me for a reason I just can't remember. I talk myself through it, and recount that 1. I can't recall having done anything to upset anyone, and 2. I have faith that if I have, the people who love and care about me would tell me! (The best of these talks ends in a giggle.)
As for how to not care how people perceive you, I could tell you something adjacent to what you’ve already seen on bathroom decor at Ross, * be yourself everyone else is taken *, but I myself have not found that and other clichés soothing. My best advice is when you find yourself nervous about how others are perceiving you, stop and take a look around. Most likely, everyone is so invested in their own shenanigans they hardly notice yours.
So Meggy, I challenge you to have trust that exactly who you are as you’re reading this, who you were when you wrote in, and who you have always been and will be are all complete. You deserve to go after the things planted in your heart simply because you exist. Let the things themselves morph into something better than you could ever imagine.
Sincerely,
Jane
July 10, 2023
Sweet Jane,
I always feel myself getting so excited for the summer. The winter weighs me down and I miss the sun against my skin. But, then the summer comes and it feels difficult to savor the peace, and the things I do to fill my time always feel wasteful for some reason. Maybe this is just what it feels like to grow up and out. Looking for advice <3
Writing to you from an empty apartment,
Liv
Dear Liv,
I agree that voracity for action is uncomfortable while standing still. You’ve reminded me of the cyclical gardens of our lives, the necessity of birth/death, light/dark, love/grief, and all of their inbetweens. In this still, sweltering heat, you are much like a Eucalyptus, which is fire-activated, meaning it can only germinate after fire has melted the resin on the cone that holds its seeds. Summer melts you, forces you to be slow and contemplate how that stillness feels.
Later when your Eucalyptus is grown, thank the fire, seeds, and friction of the resin. This way, you’ll enjoy the next beginning a bit more. Though, all time is eternally present, so thank yourself now for your patience, and savor the quiet for its bravery. I also recommend wearing a weird outfit to the grocery store.
Your Sweet Jane