Dear girls,
Darling girls. You’re both about to embark on adventures that will profoundly change you, and change where you are in the next nine years. Jo is about to leave for Peace Corps and has given Jen the best advice Jen has received and has reused and redistributed several times, which is to be exactly where you are before you go off to the PC. “Be present as you exit the life you now know, as you will have plenty of time to be and learn and prepare when you get to where you are going, but you only get this goodbye once.” And in fact, when both of you leave this time neither of you will return to Minneapolis for more than a few months in the next decade. So this goodbye is important, and you both lived it wonderfully. It helped you learn a habit of saying goodbye beautifully, and you’ll both need to use that skill over and over in the next decade, to each other, to men, to jobs, to countries, more than a few times each. It’ll help wear away the fear of change, but never completely eliminate it, because that fear is the sign from within that you are actually both continuing to live your destinies, to continue to grow and change and learn and risk. This is the vow you may not have said in words, but that you made when you looked at each other, laughed, and realized you weren’t yet ready to go home. You still won’t be.
You’ll learn to slowly and gently peel the skins away from yourselves as you grow, too. It’s sometimes painful, and definitely confusing to gaze upon the familiar seeming but seriously different version of yourselves that emerges. But you’ll learn to be with that pain, to stand in the change as it pelts you as gently as a rain shower and as stinging as a sandstorm. You’ll offer your hearts up, again and again, to ideas, to people, to nations, to your work. Sometimes those hearts of yours will break a little, but their GPS never will. Resilient things, those hearts of yours, as each time you open them up and each time you bash them against the rocks of life, they seem to grow back a bit stronger. Sometimes they’re a little more difficult to pry open again, but the good ones will find the cracks and wiggle their way in. Let them. It’s worth it.
You’ll be completely gobsmacked to know right now the work you will do. Right now it seems out of reach, and bigger than either of you. And it is. To think of the lives you’ll touch and the calibre of the work you’ll do brings tears to my eyes right now. Ladies, you’re going to be a part of your very own worldwide movement, that in total Jen and Jo fashion is bigger than even the two of you. You’ll gain accolades but most importantly, you’ll teach, you’ll create, you’ll help move people closer to the best versions of themselves they can be. Just the way you live your lives will change the lives of others. My girls, you will inspire. People will know you.
And you’ll each be surprised to know that you’re single again at the end of this. But as with now, you are and shall never be alone. Because you’ll continue to collect more amazing women in your life, who will be more tenacious on the road trip of your lives than the men thus far. Not to knock the men, not at all! You’ll have some very special gentlemen come and go through your lives, and each of them teach you a bit more about yourselves. Each of them teaches you how wide your heart can stretch, the different ways it can be formed and how deeply you can care for someone. They also give you some clues as to the spaces you still have room to grow. They don’t need to be kept forever to do their job. Be grateful to those boys a blow them a kiss on the breezes.
And your Tribe! Oh my girls. You will learn the names and locations of your Tribe, you will inscribe their likelinesses on your hearts and in some cases on your bodies. They will teach you the fierceness of love, and how great your capacity for it is. Some of your best friends are still to be made, and that alone is worth the rough waters ahead because you will have such a talented and wonderful brave crew to help you steer the ship. They are sprinkled all over the world, in countries you may not have even considered traveling to yet.
I’m so excited for where you girls go with it. It may seem a bit like a hazy mystery right now, but let me assure you, it’s all good. There are moments of such profound beauty, and sorrow, and pain and joy, loneliness and connection that dot the roadmap to where you end up, on the path that was meant just for each of you. Be brave my dear girls, and keep living your dreams. You are unique in this way, and this is a gift. All of it is a gift, even if you don’t understand it. You continue to be together, (apart), steering your ships in the stars…
You’re doing it all right, my girls. Everything is all right.
All my love and admiration,
Jen
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