Couple standing by the 9/11 Memorial. New York City, February 2020.

February 18, 2021

It is four days after Valentine's and I'm becoming so pro at missing momentum. Regardless of that, I did still want to take this opportunity to write a letter.

I'll perhaps begin with a confession that I am a brutal idealist. The type that writes about empathy in a pandemic, or sees she's an hour late for an application and sends it anyway. In nearly every circumstance I can't help but to be hopeful, a little naive, and painstakingly vulnerable.

So one might assume that I find writing about love easy. But in fact, I find it terrifying. 

I wanted to write a letter to the girls who were raised to be independent. The ones who are fearless in their own right, yet, when it comes to love, err on the side of caution. I want to reach my arm across the table to you, or rather, sit beside you on this wooden deck as if we are sisters, overlooked by pine trees, a lake, and a dark sky, tucking hands into each of our hoodies, hearing the sound of crickets, our thoughts anchored by stories we don't share to anyone. 

It is daunting to love. Sitting on a sacred, fragile corner, I like to leave this topic untouched. When I do bring it up, I communicate it through words that already exist, passing on things that have already been said — songs, scripts, poems and essays that come from other people — just to make it easier.

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I celebrate your strength, on which there is so much to be said, but I also hope you don't mistake guardedness for resilience. I still hope you let your heart beat freely, unrestrained by a steel armour you've sworn to keep around it so you can call it safe. Hearts are warm, pulsing, ravaging things, not made for the coldness of steel. And isn't it true that officials take their bulletproof vests off and throw it to the ground, when giving themselves as hostage?

Though love is unpredictable, messy, one heart-turning, bloody hassle, hopefully you realise you are still deserving of it. The wonder, the depth, the many variations of it — even if, yes, there's a risk it might ache. 

You don't have to pull away each time a life wants to lean into yours. Another favourite poet of mine Sarah Kay put it best: "If you grow up the type of woman men want to love, you can let them love you." 

Wariness, I learned, is not always fortitude. And it is not your doing — we simply mirror the love we know. Some of us are trained to expect the worst, by wounds, scars, the landscapes on which we grew up, and how these journeys cascade into your present day is, remember, none of your fault. 

So I'm right here sitting with you, to say that once in a while, love is also worth trusting. And also worth celebrating, in whatever form it comes — platonic, romantic, familial, other extents you haven't seen, touched, felt, or could imagine yet.

It is not your doing — we simply mirror the love we know.

You'll find there's high virtue placed around 'not needing a man'. You're right, we do not need men. And men, ideally, do not need us. Ideally, we are human and whole enough to inhabit our spaces in this world standing with our own two feet, without waiting around for another. But I'll throw in an unpopular opinion: Once you love someone, it is okay to need them. 

And once you are loved by someone, it will feel nice to be needed. On a train ride one evening, I once picked up my phone to hear news from a friend who's struggling back home. And I was glad she called. I was glad for this new knowledge she's opened up enough for us to share. You're allowed to sit in the warmth of being needed. It is okay to mutually agree that each of us will need each other. I hope you understand that even in your freedom, you may not always need romance but we'll always need people.

Clearly, they won't arrive in the form of princes or knights — which maybe we definitely don't need — but please rest and know there is no weakness in needing, nor is there any harm in being needed.

Woman with her dog in Central Park. New York City, February 2020.

If you are not in love, you would've heard the world tell you, "Love yourself first." So I will say this one thing and one thing only when it comes to self love: You can love yourself even if 'yourself' doesn't leave you completely enamoured.

Even when you are loved, you will not always like yourself (and this is fact). Throughout my life, "self love" became a challenge I constantly fell short of as I thought that it meant I had to admire, support, be in love with myself daily. 

In reality, there are (and will be) days and weeks and years where I am frustrated or angry with myself, where I debate myself over my own ideas — and perhaps in some ways this is healthy. But I have healed these wounds, treated my own scars. When my body needs something, it tells me, and I'm learning to listen. I don't always get along with myself but we've learned to live with each other and be there for each other and that will have to be good enough. 

Artist John Paul Brammer mentioned, "I want you to see your relationship to yourself less as a love vs. loathing binary and think of it more as, well, just another relationship that happens to be important. Think of it as something that needs to breathe, that needs forgiveness and patience, because there will definitely be screw-ups and obstacles and hurdles."

Above this, I hope you don't let the continuity of this journey make you think you are in any way "hard to love". Because you are not "a lot" or too much or too little. Don't listen to anyone who tells you you are (even if that person is yourself.)

I'm saying this because we live in a world that labels women as a lot, too much, and too little. 

The expectation of how a woman should love has swung pendulum-like across time. A century ago, she was the wife. At the turn of the century, she was the empowered mogul. Now in my early 20s, I can tell you I don't feel either version of these women is lesser than the other — the caring and motherly or the fiercely self-reliant, as if we couldn't be both. I say this because you need to know you have the freedom and space to love; whether that means picking both choices, or neither. 

You are allowed to be tough, soft, gentle, assertive, all of these things and more, without apologising or worrying that you'd be valued any less. I applaud the strides of a career-focused woman, and admire the day-to-day strength of married homemakers. I've seen the office towers they reign. I've spent a day in the kitchen with a mother of three. Both leave me in wonder.

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So if you're ever wondering, Who do you mean by strong girls? I would answer: I consider strong every girl who has ever loved. Silently or loudly. Momentarily or for many winters. Single, married, in relationships, in almost-relationships. I like to think they're everywhere around me.

If love is a fire, have a bucket of water always ready. If it is a puzzle, don't insist on doing it alone. If it is a handwritten letter from a ripped page of a two-dollar notebook, you are still luckier than most. On this day, there's a calm after the surge: of roses, teddy bears, cliché "love is in the air" Hallmark cards. Maybe you're sailing through pandemic dating. Maybe you're expectant. Maybe a wound still feels fresh. Whatever way your world, your heart, continues to shift, I pray that for the most part, it is painless. 

"You make me realise, everyday, that when love isn’t chocolate and roses, sometimes, it’s a phone call. A peanut butter sandwich. The hand one lends to make another’s life easier. I may not know much about love but when I decided to wear my heart on my sleeve, you pulled your sleeve up to show yours too. So if I have not told you lately that I love you, I hope you remember that I do."

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Take care out there.

Signed,

Jo

It was a Monday, when the weather hit 36˚ and I was sitting in my friend's bedroom. Looking at my laptop, writing my first cover letter after graduating, I finally thought, How did I get here?

Flashing scenes play in my head. I'm rushing out the door at 17, dumping textbooks onto the car seat. I'm 19 and in Melbourne, sitting on the campus lawn with my friends. I'm 20, spending nights in lockdown, falling asleep thinking about assignments. 

I pressed "Leave Meeting" from my last class back in November. Today is February, and I feel like I've been catapulted across time.

My post-lockdown graduation was comprised of flowers, parties, proud LinkedIn updates. But what doesn't make it to the Instagram story is the questioning — the praying, waiting, deciding. It feels like adjusting to a new gravity. Time is unreal and I am untethered.

But while floating in this cosmos, there are some truths that pull me back to Earth. I'm anchored by three things I know to be true. They're not in the order that I learned them, but if you'd let me, I'd like to share them with you.

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1. We have so much beautiful time.

I mentioned in a post back in 2019 about a conversation I had with one of my classmates, Lisa. At the time of our conversation, she was 51. Over breakfast, we sat in a café talking about what it means to "find your life's calling". In all honesty, the discussion felt a little funny, as I contemplated on how much she must've known, and how much I simply didn't.

I remember sitting there looking at my croissant, not even wanting to go near the topic. On 9th of June 2019, I wrote...

As with any questions regarding my future plans, I felt myself regressing into a shell of self-deprecation – a continuous slur of "I don't know"s and "I'm not sure"s. I don't remember my exact words, but it was along the lines of I know I love writing but I still don't know what to do with it nor do I know what to do with my life so I'm just I don't know maybe I can write I'm not sure...?

[Lisa] looked at me, smiled, and reached across the table. "Joanne, I'm 51," she said, "and I still don't know what I'm supposed to do with my life."

It is reassuring, yet still surprising each time I find that the people I deem accomplished — people who, in my eyes, have "made it" — admit that they're still figuring things out themselves. This tells me that, in contrary to all our fears, none of us are missing out. Nobody is falling behind. 

I don't think there is such a thing as "running out of time" to do what you are meant to. You have time. You're allowed to pace this. Surely God, or the universe, is not as hasty or impatient as we.

2. We are not our worst mistakes, but we're also not our biggest achievements.

A large part of stepping into adulthood is the sobering realisation that I can still, very much, mess up. I don't know why I thought that our ratio of human error would magically diminish, once we know how to hold a job or how to cook and clean. Spills and mishaps and misunderstandings still very much happen. And unexpectedly, I've had to learn so many times about the importance of self-forgiveness — of extending grace to ourselves in our darker hours.

I've always stubbornly walked into mistakes and learned things the hard way. Always been humbled by embarrassing failures. Always put on a brave face in front of criticism (while telling my inner child not to cry.) And I realise that growing up doesn't mean that these moments of ache no longer continue happening. If anything, they affect me so much more. But it is in them that I gain a more level-headed view of the person I am.

Whenever I'm "shocked" that I make a mistake, why am I? When the worst knocks me off my feet, why am I caught off guard? There is still pride that churns in my early 20s, encasing me in the illusion that I 'got this'. But in reality, who on earth does?

I'm reminded again and again that I am not my mistakes, nor am I my proudest achievements. We are not our valleys nor our mountaintops. I am not who I am when the pandemic first hit. I'm also not who I am when showered with flowers, compliments, wishes on my graduation. We tend to think these dramatic highs and lows define us, but really, they don't have to. 

Our wrongs don't make us worthless, and in a similar vein, our victories don't make us invincible.

3. Follow your curiosity more than your thirst for productivity.

Sarah Kay, who is my favourite poet, had someone ask her at the end of the show, When is a poem finished?

Her answer, though I couldn't recite it word for word, went on as something like this: 

My advice would be to try and fulfil your curiosity, more than your thirst for productivity. To ask, is there more here? What else can I find? And to follow what you're curious about, instead of what you want to finish for the sake of finishing.

As she was saying this, I realised it can be applied in both poetry and in life. Life is so much like a poem in that it's never about a word count, but about excavating as much meaning and connection as you can. How differently would we live if our motivation wasn't to tick things off to-do lists, but to follow something as simple, and unquenchable, as curiosity. To explore with openness and delight. Imagine if we find a path and, instead of dread how long it will be, wonder how much is left to discover.

One of my favourite gestures that Sarah has used in a poem, actually, is when she described that she doesn't want to move through the world with closed fists. But with open hands, facing upward. Vulnerable. Curious. Ready to receive.

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I am no fan of uncertainty. I may be a big proponent on "embracing" it, but I am so much more terrified of it in real life. 

As I'm writing this, we've just heard news that there'll be a third lockdown here in Melbourne tonight. Earlier, I witnessed the announcement surge through the city. Everyone on the streets making calls. A sombre energy slowly descending. 

To this day, I do not know how to put into words the weight of pairing typical post-grad uncertainty, with the anxiety of a world so turbulent and seemingly apocalyptic. But I know that it makes me feel less entitled to having all the answers — less of a need to propel myself into some abstract idea of success. I imagine it would feel so inconsequential, even if I were to become a famed writer at this very minute. 

Back in high school, my journal entries were all about 'future goals'. 

Nowadays, in my latest entry I'm pretty sure I wrote about "the smell of sunflowers". 

Because I just want to keep showing up for as long as I'm able. I want to keep writing, fully knowing that some of it will be better than others. I want to care way less about sounding profound. There is no longer any time, nor emotional and mental capacity, to wait for these words to be perfect. 

I'll pour my words as they are. I'll give myself to this world as I am. I will continue to soak in unbridled, everyday joys, that help to dissolve my anxieties around growing up (because there are plenty). 

In days like these, especially, I will clutch onto them — the old holiday photos, the songs I hum to while cooking, the view of sunset from my window. You realise soon enough that the thing that will save your life isn't a career, but rather anything in this life that can make you feel less afraid.

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What We Build by Sarah Kay
as spoken in her commencement speech for Scripps College's Class of 2015: