Love the Ones You’re With
With my eyes closed and the cards in hand, I asked one question:
"When should I send my first newsletter?"
The answer arrived before I was finished shuffling the deck.
Well, damn. I hear you, Spirit.
♡♡♡
It was Monday, June 22nd, fresh off the Summer Solstice. Just two days earlier, I had stumbled upon a publishing platform for my email list.
It felt perfectly aligned, down to the color palette, and I hadn't stopped reeling with excitement since I found it.
Finally. I was going to create my newsletter.
♡♡♡
I had just gotten off my morning shift and, as with most things, was consulting the cosmos for guidance.
Mercury retrograde was only a week away—a transit notorious for tech glitches and communication mishaps.
Any average astrologer would have advised waiting until after Mercury stationed direct to publish the first letter.
If I had been looking for an excuse to procrastinate learning the coding basics I'd need to customize my website—and, consequentially, the letter—this was it.
But the post-shadow period was still a month away, and whatever was stirring in my chest needed to be written now.
I was torn.
I didn't want to wait.
I didn't want to rush.
And then I remembered I'd just purchased a new deck: the Awakened Dreamer Oracle Deck.
What better time to use it?
I sat down on the back porch, cards in hand. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath in, and asked one question:
"When should I send my first newsletter?"
The answer arrived before I was finished shuffling:
Love The Ones You're With
"As if this were your last day on earth, give 100% of your gifts to the project or person in front of you now. Stop waiting to exhale. Though your circumstances may not be perfect, consider this permission to give all the love you've got to the ones you're with."
Well, damn.
You can't make this shit up.
♡♡♡
It was as if Spirit had heard me contending with my mortality the night before.
That evening, I'd spent hours dreaming out loud with my partner about all the possibilities for this newsletter.
Somewhere along the way, the waterfall of creativity became a trickle of anxious thoughts:
What's the point?
If war struck tomorrow—if the "end" I've spent my entire adolescence anticipating finally came—and all I have to show for my contribution are these newsletters, what will it have truly meant?
If I spend all my time writing, where will I find the time to save the world?
(Since that's totally my responsibility... right?)
♡♡♡
These thoughts were familiar visitors.
In my experience, fear tends to get loud whenever I'm about to do something real and vulnerable.
Something that nudges me closer to true living.
Something like sharing writing from the heart with a beloved community.
♡♡♡
I don't know about you, but when I ask myself a question in the dead of night and Spirit responds the next day with clarity like this–I listen.
There was no ambiguity.
The instruction felt immediate:
“Stop waiting to exhale.”
Start.
Now.
So I walked inside to begin writing my first newsletter.
Or so I thought.
♡♡♡
And then, the channel opened.
What began as a throat chakra tune-up to one of my favorite songs, Cool People by Chloe x Halle, quickly turned into an attempt to learn it on guitar.
Swearing to myself that this definitely wasn't procrastination, I kept playing.
It didn't take long before my fingers wandered to a different chord.
Then another.
Before I knew it, lyrics began rolling in like steady waves:
If it were my last day on earth, would I give it all that I got?
Would I give at all?
If it were my last day on earth, would they still remember my songs?
Would they still remember the words, long after I'm gone?
If it were my last day on earth, I'd know I'd given it my best shot.
I won't apologize for who I've been, or who I was not.
This world can take, oh yes it can.
But if you give a little, it'll give you so much back.
If it were my last day on earth,
If it were my last day on earth,
that wouldn't be so bad.
♡♡♡
There it was. The exhale.
My shoulders dropped. Emotion swelled as I sang.
A familiar catharsis settled into my bones line by line.
Somehow, as I repeated the question that had been plaguing me the night before, something in me loosened its grip on the answer.
My lyrics weren’t promises of certainty. They never answered anything directly.
But in singing them, I remembered something I so often forget:
What mattered most wasn’t what I was asking of Spirit, but what Spirit was asking of me.
♡♡♡
"As if this were your last day on earth, give 100% of your gifts to the project or person in front of you now. Stop waiting to exhale. Though your circumstances may not be perfect, consider this permission to give all the love you've got to the ones you're with."
By then, it was clear that the project in front of me wasn't the newsletter or even the song.
It was my life.
And the person in front of me wasn't a reader or a listener on an email list.
It was me.
The woman who needed to hear her own voice first before she could offer it to anyone else.
The woman who needed to stop engaging with existential thoughts of a distant future as a way to avoid the purpose she was being called into right now.
The woman that needed to remember that her song was medicine for her own heart, too.
And that song can only emerge in one place;
Right here. Right now.
♡♡♡
Love the ones you're with.
Not someday.
Not when the website is finished.
Not when the retrograde is over.
Not when you've saved the world.
Now.
Love the person in front of you—even if it’s just you, a guitar, and a question you no longer need answered.
Even when there’s no one around, and you are your own mirror, and your own muse.
Especially then.
Welcome to SteadyinLoveLetters ♡