How do you stay connected and let the people in your life know they matter to you?
How can you make an impact and show those you love that you care about them?
What can you do to bring a smile to the face of someone you care about?
This year we’re partnering with Hallmark to share how our family stays connected, beyond what technology offers us, by putting how we feel into words to let the ones we love know we’re thinking of them. Now, more than ever, the world needs more caring. The world and the people in it need to feel that they are loved and deeply cared about. It’s a scary time out there and taking action, big or small, to share love and gratitude and kindness is a step towards deeper connection. Because when we care enough, we can change the world. When we take the time to sit down and put words on paper, it tells someone that you took special time just for them.
A few months ago my brother and his wife welcomed their first child into the world, a beautiful baby girl. Because of distance, I haven’t been able to meet her yet and it pains me. Literally breaks me. My brother and I have always been close. We talk often and are supportive of one another, despite the physical geographical distance between us. When he told me the news of them expecting I was elated and so excited for them. But I had this heaviness about it too and asked myself many times, how are you going to show up for this child and be the auntie you want to be? It’s important to me that I have a relationship with my niece, despite the distance. It’s important to me that my brother and sister-in-law know that I deeply care and want to be part of their new journey too.
Every month I sit down and write baby Vera a card and include art work from her cousins that are wildly in love with her too. I may not get to see her often, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a beautiful relationship. Sending cards and letters her way is a way to connect and show our love from afar. A tradition I’ve been so happy to start. I made my brother and sister in-law promise to read her our words of love and tuck them away for her to look back on someday when she is old enough to understand. She’ll have months and years of cards to read and artwork to page through and know just how much she is loved by us.
My grandmother is another recipient of the monthly cards that I send out. There is nothing that makes her more happy than hearing from her family. Receiving happy mail “tickles me pink” she tells me often. So happy mail is what she gets. My grandmother is 90 years old and has always appreciated hand written cards, because “this is how we used to do it.” There is a history there than I deeply respect and an awareness that I have grown to better understand when it comes to connecting with others in this world of modern technology. I love writing to her, telling her about our days at home, what we’ve been up to, what the weather has been like, and so on. It honestly doesn’t matter what I write sometimes, she just loves hearing from us and knowing that we deeply care and are thinking about her often.
You see, the message isn’t always in the actual words that are written, but in the action itself. It shows people that you care and that they matter to you. It puts a smile on the face of someone you love and tickles them pink with happiness. So I ask again,
how are you going to make an impact and show those you love that you care about them?