I was engaged once and it ended just before March of 2020. Your chapter on Endings in Getting Back To Center truly helped sew me back together- I’ve carry it around in my consciousnesses ever since. Just totally bawling my eyes out at 7am while reading this letter. “Not in some way of being responsible for it, but in the way that when you love anyone it brings them closer to whatever they love next. What a blessing we keep finding people to love next and next and next.”
This was beautiful. Love the quilt you made, the colors are so soothing and engaging. The scene you mentioned from sex and the city reminded me of the Laura Dern/Diane Ladd memoir I finished listening to this morning: Honey Baby Mine. Laura talks about being divorced/single parent but having soulmate type friends with whom she speaks everyday and spends holidays with. She commends her mother for modeling and encouraging these kinds of close friendships with other women and not promoting a codependent reliance on romantic partners/spouses
I am crying reading your words. I am currently in my first almost two-year partnership and it is teaching me more than I ever about how much I didn't love myself before. I have resisted being loved because it shines a light on how hard it is to love ourselves. Your poignant words on the flow of love in all directions when we allow love in, witness love, let ourselves be loved, hope for deeper love, are awed by the ability to love really spoke to me today. Thank you for your work, as always.
Oh Mar, this is so lovely. I feel it as someone who has not dated anyone for over five years. I am 43. And I promise, love, that there is always something to write about. There is always more of ourselves to explore, inside and outside of partnership. I have been single (if single is the word we must use) for over a decade. I remember, in my early thirties, meeting someone a little younger than I am now who told me she had been single for over a decade, and feeling nausea. Fear. Now I am that person; and I am happy. Happier than I ever was in partnership. With myself. Not alone.
I can see why this piece of writing made people cry. It made me cry. Your beautiful heart glows in the threads of each sentence. You touch people so deeply with your willingness to be with what is. I've been reading your newsletters for years now, and recently there's been this expansive sense of possibility and openness, and I know that wonderful, wonderful things are coming to you, just as they have come and are present now. Thank you so much for sharing yourself with us, and helping us see ourselves better. And let me know if you'd like to talk about MFA programs. <3
Such incredible and raw thoughts on a gut and heart-wrenching experience- thank you so much for sharing. Also---- it’s been years since I watched sex and the city (binged it with my best girlfriends way back in high school! Such good memories) and I still. Remember. That moment. When Charlotte says that. Just thinking of it still brings tears to my eyes.💚
Marlee, what you’ve shared is *so tender* and courageous and just utterly beautiful. And maybe it felt even more precious to me as a reader because I caught myself thinking that this kind of love and respect and acceptance and openness and warm-heartedness cannot possibly exist when there used to be a relationship/a marriage and people suffered a lot. Calling out all the (*my*) effed-up beliefs! I felt my heart softening and whispering in awe “wow, just wow” - I’m grateful to you because you’re modeling something new, different from what’s familiar (at least to me, and, if I might generalize, in our culture in general), and truly powerful. Also, I’m 35, alone, and dateless too, and I feel a bit less lonely reading your words and being reminded it doesn’t mean shit about me and my ability to love.
This is, I think, my favorite monday monday I've read! Just so beautiful and tender. My ex husband will be getting married next month, and while your experience will not be my experience, it brought me a lot of peace. Thank you!
I was engaged once and it ended just before March of 2020. Your chapter on Endings in Getting Back To Center truly helped sew me back together- I’ve carry it around in my consciousnesses ever since. Just totally bawling my eyes out at 7am while reading this letter. “Not in some way of being responsible for it, but in the way that when you love anyone it brings them closer to whatever they love next. What a blessing we keep finding people to love next and next and next.”
I love that chapter! I love endings <3 Even when they hurt the most
not me bawling my eyes out before 10am on a thursday. no one else writes about love like you, mar 💌
thanks Linds ;) <3
Darling, this was one of my faves <3 I love you. As you also know, I love love as well. Here's to all the love on the horizon xoxo
Incredible. What a way to name the thing 💐
This was beautiful. Love the quilt you made, the colors are so soothing and engaging. The scene you mentioned from sex and the city reminded me of the Laura Dern/Diane Ladd memoir I finished listening to this morning: Honey Baby Mine. Laura talks about being divorced/single parent but having soulmate type friends with whom she speaks everyday and spends holidays with. She commends her mother for modeling and encouraging these kinds of close friendships with other women and not promoting a codependent reliance on romantic partners/spouses
mar you taught me to never be ashamed of loving love so much. you’re simply the best at it. it’s an honor to love you & be loved by you.
love you 💞
I love your special spacious tender heart so much
Yeah, I lay in bed reading this beautiful entry - sock me in the gut, why don’t you!?
And the words stuck with me through my dog walk, my coffee making, and now as I sit at my morning pages...
I’m off to a writing retreat today and am bringing it with me to read again and again.
Oh Mar, I love this. 💕
Amen. Thank you, Mar.
I am crying reading your words. I am currently in my first almost two-year partnership and it is teaching me more than I ever about how much I didn't love myself before. I have resisted being loved because it shines a light on how hard it is to love ourselves. Your poignant words on the flow of love in all directions when we allow love in, witness love, let ourselves be loved, hope for deeper love, are awed by the ability to love really spoke to me today. Thank you for your work, as always.
Oh Mar, this is so lovely. I feel it as someone who has not dated anyone for over five years. I am 43. And I promise, love, that there is always something to write about. There is always more of ourselves to explore, inside and outside of partnership. I have been single (if single is the word we must use) for over a decade. I remember, in my early thirties, meeting someone a little younger than I am now who told me she had been single for over a decade, and feeling nausea. Fear. Now I am that person; and I am happy. Happier than I ever was in partnership. With myself. Not alone.
I can see why this piece of writing made people cry. It made me cry. Your beautiful heart glows in the threads of each sentence. You touch people so deeply with your willingness to be with what is. I've been reading your newsletters for years now, and recently there's been this expansive sense of possibility and openness, and I know that wonderful, wonderful things are coming to you, just as they have come and are present now. Thank you so much for sharing yourself with us, and helping us see ourselves better. And let me know if you'd like to talk about MFA programs. <3
Such incredible and raw thoughts on a gut and heart-wrenching experience- thank you so much for sharing. Also---- it’s been years since I watched sex and the city (binged it with my best girlfriends way back in high school! Such good memories) and I still. Remember. That moment. When Charlotte says that. Just thinking of it still brings tears to my eyes.💚
Marlee, what you’ve shared is *so tender* and courageous and just utterly beautiful. And maybe it felt even more precious to me as a reader because I caught myself thinking that this kind of love and respect and acceptance and openness and warm-heartedness cannot possibly exist when there used to be a relationship/a marriage and people suffered a lot. Calling out all the (*my*) effed-up beliefs! I felt my heart softening and whispering in awe “wow, just wow” - I’m grateful to you because you’re modeling something new, different from what’s familiar (at least to me, and, if I might generalize, in our culture in general), and truly powerful. Also, I’m 35, alone, and dateless too, and I feel a bit less lonely reading your words and being reminded it doesn’t mean shit about me and my ability to love.
absolutely weeping at this
This is, I think, my favorite monday monday I've read! Just so beautiful and tender. My ex husband will be getting married next month, and while your experience will not be my experience, it brought me a lot of peace. Thank you!