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hi there,

how are you holding up? it’s been a while, and i feel bad for not reaching out sooner. i’ve been meaning to check in. it feels important to keep tabs on each other these days and make sure we’re all doing ok.

actually, i take that back. it doesn’t just feel important “these days”. i’ve been hating this sense of heightened empathy in moments of crisis. it feels so fake and performative. i want you to know that i care about you everyday, regardless of your proximity to the most recent mass shooting or who sits in office or what piece of legislation threatens our personhood.

you are important to me.

i don’t think we say that to each other enough. i wish we would affirm each other more. but we are caught in a loop of constant reactivity, and everything feels urgent. it’s really hard to slow down, check in, and remember how magic we are for having made it this far.

when i pause to remember what is good, when i let joy swell, i feel so powerful. turns out, there are reminders of joy all around me. i think about shared meals where we take time to check in and nourish ourselves. i think about all of the queers who adorn themselves and take up space in ways that feel good to them. i think about the sky and the way the light hits the clouds just right and how it’s constantly changing and constantly beautiful.

i am trying to slow down more. i want to remember all of these glimmers of joy. i want to remember there is more than urgency and reactivity and feeling under attack.

did i tell you about the bag full of treasure i found a few months ago? i was walking down the street on my way to work, and something caught my eye. i turned my head to find a plastic gallon bag stabbed onto a fence with the words “take me.” i impulsively grabbed the bag and kept walking to my station.

while i was waiting on the platform i started looking through the bag and realized it was full of old jewelry, big pieces from another decade, mostly earrings. immediately my mind raced to questions of who had owned these, what their story was, what did they look like when they were rocking these pieces, and what future possibilities for adornment did these pieces hold?

adornment is one of the things that brings me constant joy. i love our ability to adorn ourselves in tattoos, single earrings, bold lipsticks, floral patterns, and every other thing that makes our bodies feel like home. adornment feels like a radical practice in taking up space exactly how we please. it’s a reminder of our autonomy, even when everything else feels precarious, because we choose how to show up. there is so much power in that choice. and i believe this power compounds when we pause to affirm the ways in which we’re showing up, when we celebrate each other’s adornment.

so anyways, i’ve got this bag full of earrings, and i am on a quest to slow down and remember joy, so of course my brain started scheming different projects. here’s what i’ve come up with: i want to send you one of these earrings, and i want you to adorn yourself with it and post or send me a selfie. i’m planning to send out each earring from the pair to different people. that means the pair to your earring will be out in the world with your adornmate. i’ll be cataloguing everyone’s selfies via instagram, so you’ll be able to find each other. my hope is that once you find your adornmate, you’ll write them a love letter or affirmation. this, of course, means they will also be writing to you. i’ll be around to help with the logistics of swapping your love letters, but by the end of it all i am hoping we’ll all take some time to slow down and celebrate one another.

if you’d like to join in this exercise of adornment and joy, please let me know here. there’s no deadline or timeframe, just an open invitation to slow down and celebrate each other. no pressure either way.

hope you’ve got the space and support you need to take care of yourself. know that i am thinking of you, and hope we talk soon.

sending you love,

rv