Letters of love - a second chance

"connecting in a way that doesn't have to hurt"

My friend texted me this morning and asked if I felt the shift from last night. She’s tapped into energy and all that comes with it. I move in and out of what I call my spiritual quest. On some days I bury my head into reading self help and expansion titles and then others I forget that I have spent so much of my time searching for a bigger meaning to life. Anna most often reigns me back in. She is a deep feeler and always has been. She connects with life on different layers than most, stopping to chat with people that most others don’t see and walk past on their way to something else. As she has grown up in a city thousands of miles from home, it’s her images shared and stories told that give me glimpses into her growth and stretching to be more than she was the day before. I feel the pain she carries, that’s been held by strangers, collective consciousness, and ignored by many. It stings and sometimes I imagine the pain originating from my not being able to protect her or guide her away from it. I’m learning that she sits with it both by choice and out of a desire for it to be healed and no longer denied by many as not being real.

This is the second year that Anna has come home and wanted to hold an open mic in honor of Letters of Love. A movement created and spear headed by a very special human that Anna met in Vancouver. It creates a space for individuals wanting to reconnect with love ones after having been separated by addiction and all the heaviness that it affords for the sufferer and those related. It’s simple in its premise. It is easily constructed with little or no money yet affords abundant returns for both the writer and recipient of the love letters even if in symbology. An opportunity to release pain is a present to allow love in, for it to come and stay awhile. In many cases the letters are written to loved ones who are no longer living and have passed on. In some cases, the writer and recipient have lost touch and no longer know where the other is living or even if they are still alive. Tonight we will be setting up a letters of love table for the second time in Southern Maine. The cause has once again traveled thousands of miles from its point of origin to be offered to others who may or may not have been or be affected by addiction.

Anna will be hosting an open mic to entertain and offer a space for others to do the same. In just a few hours we will be setting up in George’s yoga studio in York, Maine. It sits between the fire station and the library and offers an intimate space in the basement for strangers and friends alike to come together and be still for a couple of hours. We don’t know how many people will turn up and have kept it pretty loose encouraging artists to simply show up and join in on sharing throughout the evening. In a small way we are hoping to bridge an effort to bring people back together again, to spark the efforts Che began on the west coast with where Anna used to call home. If you find yourself with nothing to do this evening we would love to see you there. If you find yourself wanting to write a letter of love at home, that is highly encouraged as well. We will be accepting donations but not expecting them for both Letters of Love, and local organization Lucy’s Love Bus. We also encourage guests to consider writing their own letter while they are at the open mic.