NaBloPoMo 2025: Love Notes For November

“If it’s safe, tell people you love them… Even if it’s not safe, do it anyway.
Because what is love if not brave? onward! :)” cc, 5-21-2025

OH, I love how ideas emerge, evolve and execute!

After my tenth year doing the 30 day, daily blogging challenge that was National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) last year, I thought I might stop. Ten is a nice, round number, a milestone achieved, a good ending. But then I had a light bulb moment.

I’ve written jar smiles, we could call them Chenger Cheers, most days for about 18 months now. There are now 29 jars out in the world, across the United States and one overseas. Some have been refilled multiple times. Every note is hand written and all but a handful are my original thoughts in real time. I cannot express how fun and loving, connecting and joyful it feels to write them, and occasionally actually see them bring smiles.

Originally for this year’s daily blogging challenge, I thought I’d write for individual people I know: 30 notes, one person a day. I’d make it anonymous but identifiable, with nicknames. For instance Hubs would be The Provider. Then I thought, ‘that note could apply to any/all providers.’ Then I thought, ‘I could write a note for any role. The friend. The parent. The advocate.’

30 roles or identities. Love for each.

I could invite readers to try on each identity, see how it fits. Can you relate? Step out of your own perspective and receive others?

I could include identities that I myself would not readily claim, like anti-abortion advocate! How could I see opposition as an identity to love? How would I love it? How do I love it already? Love THEM? Hmmmm…. This thought progression occurred all in the space of a few minutes, and I saved these notes as a draft earlier this month.

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Then it all evolved further yesterday, as I bounced Book ideas around with loving friends. What if I wrote ten notes a day, each around a certain theme, like courage, fun, fear, leadership, and laundry? What if they could be printed into a little booklet with an index at the front, so someone could turn to the page for the love they seek for that reason, that day/hour/moment? What if each note were perforated, meant to be torn out and shared, fortune cookie style? What if a carbon copy of each note remained in the book, with space underneath to record the date, the recipient, and additional love notations by the giver? 300 love notes, pocketbook style, that could be carried around at all times, ready to drop a little love on any unsuspecting human who could use a smile. If I could manage to write twelve decent ones each day in November, that’d make 360, almost one for each day of a year. Then I could just add five special, maybe surprise ones, to round out 365.

Twelve love notes a day, each day a different theme. I feel butterflies of challenge and anticipation in my belly already. This could be fun. Let’s see how it goes, yes?

Please feel free to request a theme, dear readers! I’m open to almost anything, I think, and of course I reserve the right to decline or defer. 😉

T-minus 2 days, my friends. Let’s go.

Drills and Brushes

Me, about my Inner Work: “I’ve done all the work I can do with shovels. Now I need drills.”
Astute and honest friend: “Or brushes.”

These last several weeks, new insights about my recurrent emotional patterns have emerged in rapid succession. The mind and body know when it’s time to go deeper, when there is bandwidth, I think. And the more I learn about myself, the more there is to learn, about both myself and the methods of learning. The work is infinite, and sometimes we can take a lighter touch.

Talk therapy, coaching, and books can all help us on our way to self-discovery, -understanding, and -regulation. As Christine reminded me recently, I can hold it all loosely. The Work I have done to date makes me generally calm, open, and relatively equanimitous. I should ask those who know me whether thay agree. I still feel physical effects of agitation, and I tolerate them much better. I notice when an uncomfortable encounter lingers on my psyche, and I explore it without the judgement and anxiety I once did. I recognize the feeling of resolution after working through it, and give myself space to debrief that arc of conflict from trigger to conclusion. Each instance teaches me again and anew.

What books have helped you on your self-exploration journey? See some of my recent ones below. I read more slowly these days, giving myself more time to question, explore, and reflect.

So maybe I don’t actually need drills now (yet? ever?). Maybe brushes, yes–all different kinds. Soft and strong, large and small, brooms to watercolor, wielded with knowledgeable if not expert hands, at appropriately chosen excavation sites, with teams of open, curious, and collegial explorers whose goal is to discover, consider, and tell plausible, informative, relevant, and useful stories, and hold them all loosely and lovingly. And what a perfect season now, both this time of year and this time in my life, to wade a little further into the Work. Nice and slow, gentle and kind, curious, humble, honest, and with integrity. That feels right.

Books:
Years ago — The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, Debbie Ford
Why We Love, Helen Fisher
Existential Kink, Carolyn Elliott, PhD
The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk, MD
Romancing the Shadow, Zweig and Wolf
The Self-Led Internal Family Systems Workbook, Tanis Jo Allen, LMSW, ACSW

What’s Your Signature?

“That has the mark of Cathy on it.”

Many years ago I sent fun and functional wall decorations to Tom and Janet’s kids for Christmas. I had apparently neglected to include a gift message at the online checkout and still, my friends knew it was from me.

How do your friends know you? How strangers? Colleagues and rivals?
What is the essence of you that lingers after any encounter?
Is it what you hope or want? Is it how you know yourself to be?
Who would you ask, and what do you feel in your body at the prospect?

What impact do we each wish to have on the world, now and after we’re gone?
I think it’s okay if we don’t have a particular wish or plan for it.
But let’s be clear: Each and every one of us makes a mark, intentional or not.
Because we all matter, truly, each and every one of us.

It occurred to me this weekend what my signature likely is. It emerged like a warm light I’ve always carried that just got a little brighter, a little bigger, catching and holding my attention, waking me from a much needed and now completed psychological (existential?) nap. Small and mighty, as so many great insights are–that little popcorn epiphany has now nudged me to pick up Book work again. I can’t remember when I had put it down, but it was the right thing to do at the time. And now I shall try again. I think I’ll have a lot more fun this time around.
So wish me discipline, perseverance, openness, humility, and full ownership of my awesomeness, please? That’s the only way this thing gets out into the world, after all.

What can I hold for you, dear reader? Let’s help each other out, yes?
Onward, my friends. We’ got stuff to do.