Strawberries in the spring

Dear friend,

I hope you’ll forgive my long and unexplained absence. I have been focusing on other writing, the fog finally cleared after nearly three years of not being able to focus long enough to write more than a page or two at one time. It has been exhilarating to sit down at my desk and get completely lost in the fictional world I have created, sometimes for hours.

One thing I’ve realized since I began writing in the long form and off the internet is how much of the content we create feels at best like noise and at worst like chaos. I don’t want to contribute to that noise without bringing some value to the time and attention you may give to these letters. And so, while I have many drafts of letters that have so far not seen the light of your inbox, I have chosen silence. But right now, in the small hours of the morning before the sun rises on Christmas, I find myself writing to you, from my small moments to yours.

On 21st December 1881, Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, eating strawberries in the spring is indeed part of life, but it is only one short moment in the year and right now it is still a long way off. It is a long and meandering letter about his loneliness, his desire to find a woman to love morally or not (who am I to know? and his resolve to not become melancholy or brow-beaten (we all know how that turned out for him). This line about eating strawberries in the spring makes me think of the winter, of Christmas, of grief. It’s because I can imagine exactly how it would feel to bite into the strawberry and how the gentle spring air would feel on my skin. It’s a reminder that most days, most events that we feel viscerally are just passing moments. They will come and they will go, and so we don’t need to be consumed by them. We can simply experience them. When I think about who and what I’ve lost, how the holiday cheer never really finds me and is instead an aching reminder of how far removed from joy I often feel, it’s comforting to think of the hard days as moments that will come and then go.

And so, if grief of any kind has gripped you for the first time, or suffering seems endless, remember this:

• The past is not a place to return to, or something to bring back. Whatever you manage to bring back will be wrong and mangled, so leave it there and move forward.

• Sometimes, grief is best survived by living in the body and not the mind. Some people call this mothering it. For me, it’s just as simple as doing something that I know my body needs; like a nice meal, a long walk, sleep, a hot shower, a perfect cup of tea.

• It is necessary to have something to do, something to love, that isn’t an obligation or tied to earning an income. Sometimes the only thing that will defeat the day is being absorbed in the joy of a hobby, doing something you like just because you like it.

• Hope is not a ridiculous thing. It is not magical thinking. Though it may sometimes feel like clinging to hope is taking shelter under a blade of grass, cling to it anyway.

• Wherever and whoever you are right now, just as you are, deserves care and tenderness. Give that to yourself.

• Darkness always passes, but you must let it pass instead of trying to run away and escape it. Let it come, and let it go.

I hope the new year holds for you all that you want and need, and I hope we enjoy at least one strawberry in the spring.

All my best,

Lidiya