The girls and I went out to dinner to celebrate his life and also reflect on our journey during the last two decades.

We talked about grief.

But we also talked about life.

What it has meant to not have him with us, but also how we have evolved and who we have become because of it.

His passing was also the catalyst for helping so many others who were going through such catastrophic loss.

To this day I still think that experiencing the loss of someone we love is the most painful physical, mental, and emotional experience that nobody can prepare us for.

Not only do we suffer from such a direct hit, but in the years after we experience so much invisible loss that is so accumulative.

The ripple effects are quite something. And because of that it takes much longer to get to true joy and feel like you are truly living life again.

I often believed that I was out of the grief cloud before I really was.

The more years went by, the more I discovered the many layers of loss that disguise themselves as life.

But the evolutionary aspect of this is truly extraordinary.

Who I am today. How I see myself.

What I think about it all is multifaceted, and is allowing me to understand aspects of our existence that I would not have been able to fathom without losing him.

Over the years I had so many conversations with him inside my mind about the discoveries I was making in regard to grief, life after death, reincarnation, consciousness survival.

I often wished I could go back to the beginning and tell him not to be afraid to die. That he never would.

That he would survive his body.

That he was about to go on a new adventure.

That for him nothing would end, and everything would open up, and he would remember all his lives.

He would meet his soul, he would understand this journey.

For us of course it would be harder in this physical reality.

Grief doesn’t go away because we know that our loved ones survive physical death. We had to find other ways to heal.

But for him, and for everyone who passes before we do, a whole other reality is remembered. And for that I am grateful.

As I close the doors to the last 20 years, I open a new one to a new chapter.

One that could not have been here without this journey.

I believe that grief is invisibly connected to joy. And we can’t have one without the other.

The more grief we have felt, the more joy we are capable of experiencing.

Yes, it may take a long time to get to the other side of grief, but when you do, the kind of joy you can feel is transcendent.

It resides inside the present moment. It is not attached to outcomes, relationships, success, or any material possessions. It has to do with a deep knowing of self and an understanding of love.

I will end this here, but before I do I will say something I have said a thousand times before.

You have been my true companions in the last two decades, and without you on the other side of these words I could not have possibly understood this the way I have.

You are the reason for it all.

With 20 years of reflection and gratitude,

Christina

www.christinarasmussen.com

Facing yourself. Your own life. Your own immediate circumstances and environment is always a heroic event.

You have nowhere to go to, when you sit inside time.

This is not waiting, or killing time, it’s being with it.

Sometimes a life event will demand that you spend time inside your head. Finding a way not going insane while you are figuring it all out.

Inside there, you are all on your own.

It’s just you and your thoughts.

Surviving those thoughts is not easy.

Thriving in there is almost impossible.

Unless, you face what is there and are willing to change it.

This won’t feel heroic at first. It’s just you sitting on a chair somewhere inside your life’s timeline feeling lost and afraid.

It’s always been like that. We have always sat alone inside our heads.

We were just not willing to believe it, because it is too scary to even think about.

Last night I was praying. I was asking for a message, a nod, a word. Something. And it came. It said. Trust.

Then silence. Then gratitude. Then, me sitting there trusting what I was receiving to be true.

Wherever you are in your life, trust that you are meant to be there.

Somehow, you decided the trajectory of this life before you got here.

Then you forgot all about it. So you could feel like you were doing it all as if you have never done it before.

To drink up all the lessons.

To feel the need to be inside your head.

To feel afraid so you can be brave.

To forget that all of this was decided by you, makes this journey unforgettable.

If we remembered where we were before this life, if we remembered our souls across all lifetimes maybe we would not be sitting here talking to each other out of necessity.

Maybe knowing our greatness as a default from the start takes away the magic of discovering it ourselves.

And as I am writing this I have no doubt that everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be. However impossibly hard it is.

As you go about your day, I hope you keep this in mind.

While you are sitting here, look around, feel the fear, take a breath and trust the timing of your life.

With much love,

Christina

www.christinarasmussen.com

PS. Press play below to listen to this letter.

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I have missed you.

I have been painting. Creating from my soul.

And when you do that, everything changes.

It is as if you are no longer the person you used to be.

In many ways you have to rethink everything.

I still talked to you inside my head every day.

But sharing the conversations we have been having felt harder for some reason.

It’s as if I needed time to have privacy inside my own mind, even though you were all there.

I know there is a duality in what I am saying.

But I no longer feel the need to hide the peculiarities of myself.

Since we last spoke, I graduated with an MFA in Painting from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

This was my childhood dream. The one dream I didn’t have the courage to say yes to until now.

I have been painting a lot since the completion of the release of my book Invisible Loss.

I have been reentering further and further than ever before.

I don’t remember the last time I was in my Waiting Room.

But there have been surprises in the experience of freedom.

I had never experienced this level of ease before in my life, so this was a first.

I have to be honest, it felt very unnatural to begin with.

I felt as if I was doing something wrong.

As if I was uncomfortable inside comfort.

To my surprise, my comfort zone was a struggle.

What a dichotomy.

I was used to living in fear, grief and loss.

When I put myself outside of this misery after decades of this, I didn’t know how to be.

I had no idea that this easy state of existence was real. A life of my choosing. What a novelty.

I kept staying.

I kept waking up every morning walking inside comfort and staying in it.

And the longer I stayed the better it felt to be myself.

I want the same for you.

I want you to walk inside an easy life. An easy moment.

An easy relationship. An easy feeling.

Can you find a way inside your ease today?

I hope this letter finds you in your struggle and walks you out of it for a few moments.

Ease after loss is not an easy feat.

Don’t you forget it.

With love and ease,

Christina

PS. I promise to keep writing. I have missed you.

My website

When I stopped writing back in December I really did think it was only going to be for a short week. As I had never not written to you for the last ten years. 

But when the first Friday of 2022 arrived, the voice inside said something unexpected. It said don’t write this week. When the next week arrived, it said the same thing. 

During that time I was writing my new book. 

In many ways I was still writing to you. 

So many of you reached out and asked when will the letter come back? 

I appreciated that, as I was reconsidering the actual impact the letter was having. 

Was there still a point to keep writing? Who was really reading? 

Was it meaningful? Necessary?

These questions only came a few weeks into the not writing. 

When the quiet emerged. When there was space for something else. 

I was finishing the book. I was about to turn 50. 

It was time to question my journey.

Time to be honest with myself. Maybe even ask the question. What about me? 

My daughters were both in college and now one of them was graduating. 

I had spent ten years teaching and writing about living life again after a loss. 

I had created a new life. One I was proud of. 

I had done it while caring for my kids, my new husband, his kids and the world at large. 

But, what if I turned caring to myself? What would that look like? 

To my surprise it was harder than I thought it would be. 

It was easier to help others rather than myself. 

I decided to stay in the quiet longer, to hear the voice that belonged to me beyond the tragedy. Beyond the surviving, and even some of the thriving. 

What kind of life was waiting for me there? I started to walk in it, secretly. 

It sounded like a lullaby at first. 

Gentle like the wind you could stumble upon on a late spring morning. 

I sat on a rocking chair, letting it take me for as long as it needed to. 

I rocked and rocked. When something would come and disturb us, the wind would carry on. And I would do the same. 

You see, the entryway to the life that is meant for you, is always different to what you thought it would be. For me it was a windy melody, hypnotic in nature so I could ignore the echoes of the old life long enough for the new life to grow roots. 

They say, it takes a village. The kind of inner village that is equipped to build a new world is the type that has to come forth with tools from another planet. 

I recognized I was at a similar crossroad I found myself in 2010, when I resigned from the corporate world to come find you. It felt like an alien experience once again. 

At the time, I felt I was wrong to leave it behind to start something I could barely see. 

But I trusted that alien voice, the village that came forth with tools that belong to the new world ahead. This time I have something I didn’t have then. Faith. 

I have faith to trust the timing of my life. 

But most of all the voice that tells me to stop walking down the path I had been in, in the last ten years. It is a scary proposition to say the least. 

Who would I be if I did that? 

I do know that, the answer to that comes to us the longer we stay on the new path. 

The more we trust ourselves to carry on. 

Uncertainty is the only certainty on this path and we must learn to trust it. 

I now know what makes me happy and what doesn’t. 

Ignoring the truth of that is not healthy. It is the opposite of healing. 

The opposite of life. I am now finally ready to live my life for myself. 

I can assure you that it upsets people. It makes things complicated. 

It makes us step into a phase where we become divergent. 

We appear selfish to others. 

I stayed sitting on that rocking chair, listening to the lullaby from the wind. 

Unchaining the chains that belonged to a life that was no longer mine. 

One by one. Easy does it. I stood up. 

And braved my way to the alien world once again. 

I hope you do too. 

With quiet winds,

Christina

P.S. More letters coming ahead. Sharing more of my journey, to help you reveal yours.

My lessons are for my own life’s journey but if they can help you too, I will share them with you. Who I was when 2021 arrived is no longer here, but lessons don’t make our lives better, happier or easier. They make our lives different. Here are the learnings the unexpected moments of 2021 gifted me with. 

1. The sooner you start trusting yourself the more at peace you will feel in the long run. Stop questioning the voice inside that knows better.

2. Loneliness will be a part of your life the same way bread, water, and oxygen is. A natural component of your habitat. Unless you find what makes you come to life and wrangle it enough to be your daily companion. Life translates loneliness to solitude when we persist in seeking it. It rewards hustlers. Dare devils. Thrill seekers. Self actualizers.

3. When you have spent your life giving to others and never asking for what you need for yourself you will realize that unless you announce you need help, nobody will offer it. Unless you grab a megaphone and climb on your kitchen table and yell help me, they won’t hear it. They have been conditioned to believe you don’t need anybody’s help. Un-condition them. You need help. You always have. You always will.

4. Long term relationships will end for the greater good of your future, even though it may appear as the worst possible scenario for it. Trust the unexpectedness of your life, it has intelligence that is ancient. It has knowing that is timeless. Don’t question the ancient self that resides within you.

5. Don't ever stop bringing up your loved ones in conversations that take place in the present moment. Include them in your life in permanent ways. It has nothing to do with your grief, or your healing. It has everything to do with love. Honor.

6. You are not here to please your parents, your relatives, or your friends.

7. Take care of your body, it will always give to you all that it has, until its last breath. It is the only place you can be yourself.

8. Postpone work. Never postpone play.

9. Make friends. Partner with people who love and engage with your mind.

10. When something feels wrong, it always is.

11. You can change your mind about the choices you made about your life.

12. Read to free yourself from anything that imprisons you. Books are gateways to other worlds. Go to them as if your life depends on it. It does.

13. Your world is as large and as small as the minds you choose to befriend, love, and interact with. Choose wisely.

14. Write down everything you think about, every day. Capturing your thoughts should be non negotiable. It can save your life. It can give you the next step. It is an invaluable daily practice.

15. Don't lie to yourself to avoid loss. It is unavoidable.

16. Your looks are always influenced by your internal world. You look as good as you think. As kind as you are. As loving as you feel.

17. Use your life as an example of a life well lived, and let that be the gift you give to the world.

18. Pay your bills, put food on the table. But use whatever remains for adventures. The only material goods necessary are those that help you express yourself.

19. You will always be imperfect. Make the most out of those imperfections. They are meant to light up the dark sky.

20. By the end of your life you will realize you knew nothing at all. And now that you finally understand that you wish you could go back to the beginning. Rest assured that you are to begin again.

21. My favorite author Joan Didion passed away today. Honoring her life I will end this year of letters with her words. “Character, the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life - is the source from which self-respect springs.”

Rest in love dear Joan. 

I will take next week off to greet the new year so let this serve as the last letter of 2021. Thank you for being my pen pal. 

May 2022 bless you from its very first day. 

And let the Holidays be what they need to be for your spirit. 

With many lessons,

Christina 

These choices would exclude pleasing other people, considering everyone else's feelings first, making your life about only serving others and not yourself.

Whether it comes from kindness or societal pressure. 

This letter is for you if you are constantly sacrificing yourself for others. 

Always making choices that would benefit your family, your friends, your neighbors. 

First and foremost thank you for your contribution. 

Please know how much value you have offered to everyone in your life. 

Some of this selfless giving will continue but let that not be the default setting of your actions unless you are in the aftermath of a war, natural disaster, poverty stricken community, or in a hospital where everyone is in need of help. 

If you are a full time caregiver, this also pertains to you, as it is critical that you give to yourself the right kind of daily life experience. Even if it can only last an hour. That hour can nourish you profoundly. 

Now that all of the above is said, let’s dive into what it means to choose a life, a day, a dream, an experience for yourself and only for yourself. 

It starts with the thought, the act, the willingness to view yourself as a valuable and finite part of the world. 

It is the quest of valuing your existence enough to accurately witness life through it while given this opportunity to be alive. 

The irreplaceable source of inner health relies on your ability to do just that. 

Offering experiences to the self where the noise of the voices around you are quieted down, equipping you with the ability to listen to your own. 

Especially the noise coming from the tired part of you, the whispers of suppressed truth, the inhales of burdens that are not meant to be in your life’s bucket. 

When you spend time just occupying the true space of you, you change the direction of your future. 

You change the fabric of your reality. 

We have undoubtedly been conditioned to think of the self as selfish. 

We are being quelled. Squashed, subdued, suppressed. 

In this context, we have devastatingly quelled ourselves as well as being quelled by others to live a life that either no longer belongs to us or never has. 

Whether for meaning, for helping, for doing good, if done without balance it can diminish our existence. 

It can cause grief. 

Grief for the unrealized true nature of the self that has arrived here to become. 

Imagine if you were born a daisy and you lived your life as a rose. 

Still extraordinary, and beautiful but never a daisy. 

Dying without ever seeing your white petals in the sun, living among the abundant wild greens, is the grandest invisible loss there is. 

Don’t finish this life without shedding the rose costume you’ve been wearing. 

Start by giving yourself one hour to be, do, experience whatever you want. I call it the petalling, the Greeks before me, called it petannynai, which means to spread out, to fly. 

Here’s to granting yourself permission to petal every day of your life, unquelled. 

With self generosity, from a modern day Greek :)

Christina

You feel a force pushing you to do something that is confusing at first. 

Trust it. It carries a message. 

The only way to know what the message is, is to take the action. 

And only then you will figure out what in the world is moving around in your life. 

Because something is moving. 

It doesn’t look like what you thought it would. 

Quite a few changes have taken place this last year for me. 

Some very unexpected. Some timely. 

But the changes of this past year started to have a say in other parts of my life. 

Even the parts that were not to be changed. 

The parts that were supposed to be good. 

The things I never truly questioned. Oh, my world. 

When the questions started to come in I was shocked. 

I sat with the questions. 

I wrote about them. I cleansed them in my journal. 

I walked inside the words I wrote. I started to see something. 

Something that was waiting for me to visit it. 

I had parked it there a long time ago when my life was a bigger battlefield and I could only fight two or three battles at once. 

I left this part of my life there and said ‘it is ok for now.’ 

Certainly better than everything else I have going for me, let it be my ground, my foundation. 

I was grateful for it. I still am. 

But now after all these years I no longer have the same level of war in my life. The thing I left untouched, is now asking for an upgrade. 

In other words, it is asking for its own battle. 

So I brought it front and center to see what needed to be done. 

Of course, in my head, the voice says, oh no, not this too. 

But yes, this too. Especially this. 

And everything else that will go along with it. 

Don’t you ever think that when you change one thing, only one thing changes. 

Everything around it will rise too. 

And since this is the part of my life that kept me going while in battle, it is the final part of me that helped me survive. 

As you can imagine my life in the last couple of weeks has been messy. 

Painful too. But how else can you do this? 

This is the part that most people never change, never question. 

And it always holds them back from a more deserving life. 

We have 20 days left in 2021 and I am shedding everything that was part of my life that was good, but not good enough. 

Along with this, I am emptying drawers, closets, going through everything, and taking it out of my house, my life. Everything must go. 

I am done with all the parts of me that cannot stand up straight. 

Your homework is to go back to the parts of your life that got you through and ask if you still are in dire need of them. It is time for them to be upgraded, shed, cleansed, and do what you must do with them. 

If it's ever time, it is now. 

If it ever was a question, answer it. 

If you don’t know where to look, go to your messiest drawer. 

Open it. Pull it out. Empty it. 

Write about it. 

See what that drawer has to say. 

And start from there. 

With empty drawers, 

Christina 

I used to share everything that was on my mind. 

But for the last decade or so, the real things that trouble me, or break my heart stay with me. 

You probably find it hard to believe but I share the most in these letters to you. 

You have been my one constant companion. 

One day, maybe a hundred years from now, someone will find these letters, all 500 of them. And will think of us in the years between 2010-2021. 

Today I am going to look back at some of the letters I have written to you. 

Each one of them tells a story of my life. 

But in many ways, it told a story in your life and it helped you too. 

I share small snippets of them here, but you can read all of them on the blog in full if you want to. 

September 2012, I woke up with swollen eyes, I had cried all night long. I wrote the Quiet sob letter. 

“You know that quiet sob…. you keep to yourself?

In the middle of the night while everyone else is asleep.

You know the tears that are hot as they travel down your cheeks.

That feeling in your heart that travels deep into your soul.

The moment when you say, I tried everything.

I worked so hard.

I did it all.

And I came home empty handed.

That is what I call the ‘quiet sob.’

When my loneliness would not go away, on September 6th, 2013, I wrote The Loneliness Lady 

“As the years went by I discovered a different kind of loneliness.

This one was so much harder to see but oh so powerful.

She Was Dressed Up Looking Like Everyone Else.

And you barely noticed that she was in your life.

The more different I became the more she walked towards me.

The more I discovered who I was as a woman the more the loneliness lady

approached me.”

On February 7th, 2014, I wrote Dear Death, I Never Liked You. 

I have had such a love hate relationship with death, I despised it, and wanted to know everything about it at the same time. 

“Dear death,

You come and knock on the door of some amazing people.

You take them in the night,

in cars,

in hospital rooms and in every possible way imagined.

I never liked you.”

On May 2nd, 2014 I wrote the most read letter of all, The Anniversary Train. 

A reader wrote to me and asked if I could write about it. I did. Who knew I needed to write this for myself too.  

“On his birthday we would go and sing to his grave.

We would bring breakfast and sit there and sing, and the girls would dance.

They would say. 

Are you 1, are you 2, are you 3 are you 4…. 

All the way to his new age.”

On May 23rd, 2014 I wrote about a devastating and humiliating experience and I called it Be With The People Who Want to be With You.  

Without sharing the details, I shared the lessons and the heartache. 

“Why do we chase people who don’t want to be with us?

What is up with us?

I really don’t know how else to say this but it is almost as if we are asking for it.

And let me tell you, I am including me in this group of people. I am the worst of all.”

The Letter to Heaven was written on July 18th, 2014 

Maybe I will be remembered for my love for letter writing. I wrote this letter to my first husband and so many thousands of people wrote theirs to their loved ones.

“I used to imagine how would the pain feel years from the day you left.

A part of me wanted time to speed up and another part wanted time to go backwards.

You left behind a train wreck.

The girls wouldn’t fall asleep at night without holding on to the glass picture frame of you.

In the middle of the night I would go in their room to remove it so it wouldn’t break and hurt them. We were all so angry, desperate and very alone.”

On August 8th, 2014 I wrote the letter Moment of Impact 

I had always had this deep connection with you all, I would write the letters as if we knew each other. Especially in my loneliest, hardest days. 

“We might never meet in person but if we did I would want you to know that you are so beautiful.

That your toughest nights are shared with me.

That your invisible losses have been seen even by one person.

That no matter how much you have been through,

no matter the terrible losses you have experienced, you have the courage to overcome them. 

That you are worthy of all the stars in the sky.

That if I could hold your hand every day I would.

That my life is changed by you forever and ever.”

On July 3rd, 2015 I wrote You are not Crazy, You are Grieving. 

I have often felt insane, mad, and could not find anyone to reflect my thoughts with. 

Madness is lonely. Nearly as much as loss. 

“Food has lost its taste.

Ice cream makes you feel nauseous.

The phone rings and rings and rings. You don’t answer.

Your body somehow doesn’t want to carry you anymore.

NIghts are a nightmare. Even though you are not sleeping.

Days are long even though they still last 24 hours.

Silence is loud.

Absence is a real person. And you think you’ve lost your mind.

You have.

And we have to talk about it.”

I wrote the Mirror Letter on May 20th, 2016

I have spent so many years not finding anyone to see me. 

I always look for mirrors who can reflect the exact image of my soul. 

They are rarely found. 

This is one of my biggest invisible losses. 

“I know you miss being loved.

I know you feel like nobody cares about you.

I know this is not easy.

And, as I am sitting here trying to think about how I can make it all better, I realize that I can’t.

I can’t make it better for you.

But what I can do is tell you that you are not losing your mind, your feelings are normal.”

I wrote The Half Step Letter on September 2nd, 2016

I have taken so many half steps forward and many backwards. 

“One day in the near future, the half step will become one full step.

The two steps back will become one. Can you see this?

Soon your back steps will become less frequent.

And your forward steps the only constant.

Life after loss is a dance.” 

On May 17th, 2017 I wrote The Long Game After Loss 

It is such a long game isn’t it? 

I had felt tired, drained, lonely, life after loss had been impossible to predict.

“If you are in year one, just know there will be many nights ahead of you where you will want to give up.

Please don’t, however convincing the feeling of giving up is.

If you are in year two, you will feel as if things are getting worse.

As if it’s all going backward.

You now realize how real the loss is.

And it is here to stay.

I am so sorry about that.

I tried to make this part go away but couldn’t.

Year two is hard.”

On December 29th, 2017 I wrote, There is no candy hanging from your alarm clock.  Between the years 2017-2019, I went through such a dark time. 

I experienced sadness that was impossible to understand. 

“It feels like my whole body is crying. Not just my eyes.

It starts with being tired.

With the clock starting over again each morning.

With the fact that there is no break.

No wins between one day and the next.

Nobody is saying bravo for doing your best.

There is no candy hanging from the alarm clock.

Just you and another day asking for your striving. For your very best self.

Without anyone noticing.”

I wrote Endings on February 2nd, 2018 after a friendship had ended. 

It spoke to so many of you. 

“It was not like any other day.

Something was in the air.

A heaviness, with no name.

A knowing. A goodbye.

An Ending. A full stop.

And it was known.

Nothing could prevent it. Nothing at all.

It was coming. Like all endings do.”

I wrote the Visit on April 6th, 2018 

I took the girls to Denmark for the first time since their dad had passed. It was such an emotional visit. 

“The mind has the ability to bring someone back to life and make them timeless.

Immortal.

And so it is for me and my girls in our visit to Denmark this week, his home country.

And so it is, we brought him back to life, visiting his best friends, his parents, sisters.

The streets he grew up in.

The schools he attended.

The adventures he had.”

I wrote You have to stop fixing what cannot be fixed on February 8th, 2019 

Something within me always tried to convince me that I could fix everything. Even the unfixable things. I believed always I could conquer it all. 

But of course, I learned this lesson many times the really hard way. 

“And your life inside the house starts to look like the tsunami did.

The destroyer. The chaos keeper.

The end of you.

But this is what it will take.

Complete life destruction to move out.”

On July 5th, 2019 I wrote the Letter “Finding a way to write from the moon”

I always connected with those who have been through to hell and back. 

You have been my heroes. You have been the ones who could see me. 

“I could not write a fairy tale, a happy ending.

But I could write myself inside a hero. 

I could find a way to the brave words of her life. 

Because of that, I know you can too.” 

I wrote The Visit on December 25th, 2019, when my soul was traveling back and forth. 

I can only write deeply when I feel everything.

“Thirty four seemed old to me, if only I knew how young she really was.

I wish I could see her physical strength. 

She worked all day and took care of the kids after work until late at night. 

She was healthy then. 

In the beginning of the grief journey her body was ready for the fight, I wish I could go back to celebrate that with her. 

I want to see when it was that she started to get tired. 

When was it that grief took over?

When did she become afraid?”

I wrote the Imperfect letter on February 7th, 2020

It has been messy, imperfect. 

And I wanted you to know that I knew, I knew too. 

“In time, we have to find our way to self forgiveness.

We have to understand the imperfect self that got us down the mountain.

Believe that without it, we would not have made it. 

The loss would have taken us all with it. 

So, if you feel guilt, shame and regret for some of the choices you made during the chaos, don’t. 

These selfish acts saved your life.” 

I wrote the Bag Carrier Letter February, 20th, 2021

I have written a few letters about people pleasing and the loss that stems from that. 

“Of course when you stop saying yes to other people’s expectations of you, they won’t go down without a fight. 

Without sulking. Without the silent treatment. 

The list is long. 

But you are worth the fight. 

You are worth the respect. 

Enough is enough.”

On July 24th, 2020 I wrote The Losing of Oneself. 

Nostalgia has been my biggest companion in the last decade. What an inner experience it is. 

“I am nostalgic of all the moments of my life where I just lived, without any wishing or dreaming, just living a regular life. 

Being lost in the weather, the ocean, the normalcy. 

Oh the normalcy. I miss that the most.”

I was about to sit and write the letter to you on October 30th, 2020, and I got an email that broke my heart. I wrote about the Changing Chairs and thousands of you sat with me across the world. 

“What happens in the moments after a big blow? 

More hurting. Even though we go from one moment to another. 

It feels like a continuous moment doesn’t it? 

I wish it was more like a string of chairs. 

One next to the other. Ten or fifteen chairs. 

And we would sit, feel the heartbreak, get up, sit on the next chair, feel it, then get up again and so on.”

I realized this week I have written you over 500 letters in the last 10 plus years. 

As the year comes to an end soon, I wanted to acknowledge you for our unique friendship and sharing. So many of you have written back to me this past decade.  

I may not be able to respond to all the emails, but I read all of them. 

Each and every one. 

Thank you for reading, you have had a first row seat in my life. 

Thank you for the honor to sit with you also. 

We may never meet, but know that we have met each other many times through these letters. 

With a few more letters to write, 

Christina 

Almost as if things are finally making sense. 

I understand the hard things better and appreciate the easy things more. 

I taste loneliness but can sense the fullness of my life too. 

I respect the need for gratitude. 

The devastating but timely lateness of wisdom. 

If I could name this new feeling I would call it, finally. 

It feels like I have arrived at a place I didn’t know existed. 

I wish someone had said something about it. 

Everything in my life is the same as before but it feels as if I moved to a different corner in the room. And that other corner had a different view. 

Everything looked different. 

It was not about a new perspective. 

Or about acceptance. 

It was something else. 

I am reminded of something Ram Dass has talked about. 

“Our journey is about being more deeply involved in life, and yet less attached to it.”

This new feeling sits right inside this sentence. 

Why also I decided not to write about Thanksgiving.  

It seems like you and I needed something more lasting to talk about. 

Something that belonged to just us. 

One thing I know for sure is that I have lived my life being pulled by my hair. 

Whether in bad times or good times. 

It didn’t matter. 

But finally, wisdom looking like an old lady walked in and said stop pulling your hair girl. 

Let’s give it a good brushing and let’s see how it looks. The old lady brushed my hair and told me to go sit over to the other side of my life and see what I notice. 

Especially now that my head was not down on the floor. 

I saw. And saw. I heard. And listened. I felt. I felt everything. 

The old lady sat there too. Holding the brush. 

Knowing that this side of the room meant a different kind of life. 

I know there is an old wise lady waiting for you too. 

She is late, of course. But her timing is impeccable. 

With short hair and an awesome brush,

Christina 

Like really know. 

And do you show that real self to others? 

So much so that everyone would feel like they knew you forever. 

Realer than the chairs, the tables, the roads. 

More real than anything else real. 

I have been asking myself lately if I know who I am. 

And not the kind of question that leads to the purpose of my life. None of that. 

Just the basic aspect of the question. 

Who am I. 

Beyond the kind of food I like to eat. 

Beyond what my family and friends think of me. 

Beyond the filters of prejudice from preconceived notions, stereotypes. 

If I was to sit down right here and write all the things that I am, will you do the same? 

Will you just sit down and write yourself on paper? 

I mean the real truth of you. 

And then would you take that paper and make it real, as real as the table it is resting on. 

As real as the DNA of you?

When you write yourself down, look for the details of you. 

I will do the same. So here goes nothing. 

I am a good person. 

I love to hear people’s stories. 

What troubles them. What wins them over. 

What impossible things they have done. 

The unthinkable things they had to endure too. 

I don’t want to die even if it means that I will be reborn. 

I want to travel all around Earth. 

Stand on the Moon. 

See the Milky Way up close. 

I love to paint. So much it hurts not to. 

I love my children as if I had already loved them before this life. 

I grieve the people I love even when they are alive. 

I just grieve the day I may lose them. 

I started writing because of the strange grief thoughts in my head. 

I wrote so I would not lose my mind. 

I think I am funny. I love karaoke. Even though I am a terrible singer. 

I never lie. I don’t like people who do. 

I am quirky. For better or worse. 

I wish I had realized it sooner, everything would have made a lot more sense.  

I don’t like to shop. 

I wish I only needed two pairs of jeans and a couple of t-shirts. 

I love short hair. 

I am a small person inside my head. 

I don’t think about my age much. 

I will write and paint my way to the last day of my life. 

I have not enjoyed the public aspects of my work. 

That surprised the heck out of me. 

The longer I am on this journey the more I enjoy giving it all away. All of it. 

Inside my head, I live outside of time. 

As if I am not here. Even though I know I am. 

I feel free. Maybe for the first time.

To live the life of my choosing. 

And that is the hardest thing I will ever have to do. 

Aside from saying goodbye to the people I have loved. 

Now it's your turn. 

Write yourself down. 

Remember who you are. 

With me, myself, and I 

Christina

When you are there, it is as if everything is just the way it is supposed to be.

This place we all have visited.

Some don’t remember ever visiting.

Those who can’t remember, have experienced early loss.

The kid mind can’t go that far back.

But they did visit their good place.

It is where we come from when we are born, and where we naturally gravitate towards before loss happens.

When we lose that place, we forget that we used to go to it easily.

Now we think it is not that easy to find.

We may even consider, it no longer exists for us.

It is too late to even look for it again.

And every time we think that, a wind picks up and our good place gets moved further out.

When we call ourselves unlucky, a street we loved inside the good place gets erased.

For each time we tell others how we don’t remember the last time we were happy, the music we listened to when we were there, gets forgotten.

We convinced ourselves that happiness is not an option anymore and that good place, our natural habitat, gets pushed over the edge.

Now, it will take quite the rescue team to get it back up.

It will take miracle workers, daily remembering and speaking of it.

Playing music until you find the sound that belonged to your good place.

Asking yourself for forgiveness for denouncing your happy place.

But, when you finally start to believe in it again, you hear it coming back.

It is being lifted back up from the edge of the cliff.

It sounds like the whole universe is under construction.

I bet you never thought construction would sound so heavenly.

Not going to lie, the good place is a little beat up.

The streets need some cleaning, the buildings painting.

The coffee shop in the corner, needs a new barista.

But that’s alright.

Because being here in the dust, brings back the goodness you had forgotten.

And just like that, here it comes.

Do you feel it?

The feeling of joy for no reason.

Just that you are still here getting a second, third, fourth...chance at believing that life can be good again.

Miracles do happen.

The good place, is as real. As you.

As easy as the words you want to say right now.

With good places and new baristas in town, Christina

That was it. My destination. Suddenly found. In the not arriving. 

It became apparent that each end of the road is nearly always a turning point. 

Another destination just pops up. 

We just keep traveling thinking we are going somewhere. 

But we never seem to finally make it there. 

I bet we are in the middle of infinity. 

Our minds can only see a small chunk of it at a time. 

If we did glimpse at infinity, we would have never started to build our castles in the sand. 

So this is what I figured. 

Destinations do exist. 

Just not the way we thought they did. 

A destination is a string of thoughts that can conceive the illusion of a conclusion.

That illusionary conclusion is placed in the future.

So we don’t have to confront the fact that it doesn’t exist in the present. 

We are basically saying ‘I will have time to make this real by the time I arrive.’ 

But even the end of a day is really a middle. 

Sure the night comes, and we turn off the lights to go to sleep. 

But the story is always left unfinished. 

Just like it will be in our last day in this life. 

We would be thinking about what’s for dinner. 

Or making vacation plans. 

And yes, there are some people who have a real ending. 

But most of us die in the middle of a regular Wednesday. 

Somewhere between the beginning and the middle of a middle of the week day. 

And why I have strung thoughts together to make the illusion of arrival present itself today. In this way, I arrive somewhere every day. 

I try my best to spend my days inside things that I really enjoy doing. 

When I can’t do that, I string my thoughts together once again to arrive at something I love inside the thing I don’t. 

So that there are no illusions. 

Just present to what arrives.

And here we are arriving at the end of our time together.

Stringing together the illusion of the end of this letter. 

So we both feel the glory of arriving, making it through. 

And just like that. 

The middle can be an extraordinary destination. 

Here’s to your string of arrivals traveling alongside you wherever you are. 

With Infinity at my door,

Christina  

I know. Just imagine for a second. 

If we could all look inside each other’s journals. 

All of a sudden the whole world would be revealed, no mysteries left to solve. 

No hidden agendas. 

No misunderstandings. No secrets. 

No Invisible Loss. 

Someone told me the other day exactly what they thought of me. 

To my face. 

That’s right. 

Sure, it was not pleasant. 

Sure it felt like someone just slapped me. 

But I no longer had to wonder. 

There it was. 

No need to guess anything. 

If I had to choose between someone telling me the truth today vs hiding it for years to come. 

I would choose truth. Truth delivered on time. 

Ultimately, we all find out what a friend or a relative is writing about us in their diaries. 

Why spend years with someone who doesn’t like you, when you could be with someone who does?

One of the things I struggle with is wasted time. 

Talk about loss. 

I consider it a robbery. 

The worst thief of all is the kind of thief that steals time. 

Make sure you don’t live with them, drink with them, or dine with them. 

And certainly make sure you don’t sleep with them. 

This by the way, goes both ways. 

We can fall into the pleasing space in a relationship especially when we don’t want people to find out how we really feel. 

And that is not just a betrayal to them, but to ourselves. 

After loss, the only life worth living is the one that reveals our most authentic selves. 

Anything else is not life, it is just a waiting room with big windows. 

It looks like it's part of the house, but it really is the extra room that never got finished. 

So go on, show or tell the truth to the person who should no longer be in your life.  

I am. 

With on time truth,

Christina

I sit here every week writing exactly what I want to say. 

There are no pretenses. 

No adjusting my words. 

I just tell you things as they are. 

As the years have gone by, I understood the importance of this letter in my own life. 

It is the one place each week, I can count on to be real. 

I have often struggled with living inside a dishonest world. 

When people say something they don’t mean, it feels like a betrayal. 

It is often the seemingly harmless pretenses. ‘I love seeing you.’ Or, ‘let’s hang out together again.’ When they really don’t mean it. 

I happen to believe what people say. 

I am a literal person. 

If you show interest, I believe that you are interested. 

If you tell me you like my hair, I believe that you do. 

If you make a promise, I believe you will keep it. 

So when I find myself in places where pretenses are at the forefront of my experience I feel a lot of loss. We live in a play pretend world that nobody prepared us for.  

I came back home last night after experiencing many new adventures, making new friends, and visiting places I had never been to. 

In the last two months, I traveled to Greece to see my family. 

I saw a rocket go to space up close. 

I spoke at a conference where politicians, celebrities, and public figures spent three days together. 

And I came back knowing that finding people outside the Matrix is rare. 

You can feel connection, friendship, and meaning but 9 out of 10 times, it won’t last. 

9 out of 10 times, it won’t be more than a short-term occasion that ends on the day it starts. 

In the last two months, I had plenty of new connections and friendships. 

I experienced such beautiful moments. 

I felt excitement that I can’t even describe. 

I had the time of my life. 

I even felt like I belonged at times. 

That I finally found my tribe. 

I spent time with new girlfriends, mentors, public people, cousins, aunts and uncles, parents, dogs and cats too. 

I had moments of pure joy and contentment. 

I took my MFA art homework on the road. 

I made book deadlines sitting at airport gates. 

I met with my team no matter where I was. 

I continued facilitating my classes as I was running from one place to the next. 

I kept everything moving forward while searching for meaning, for new friendships and connections. 

Always looking for some kind of human Nirvana. 

I didn’t find it. But I did find myself. 

The most trusted player of the game of my life. 

I played the play-pretend game without becoming one of the pretenders. 

I looked people in the eyes. 

I meant everything I said. 

I didn’t make promises I had no intention of keeping. 

I walked inside every conversation wanting to know the other person better. 

I showed up without ulterior motives. 

I tried to leave everyone better than I found them. 

And that has to be more than enough. 

In life, you will meet groupies, pretenders and users. 

But now and again as you sit inside the game, someone will come along who is not a player. In the two months of traveling, moving across the globe I may have brought home with me 2 new friends, dare I say 3.

Here’s to finding yours. 

Remember they are out there, they are looking for you, just as you are looking for them. 

You and I are a special kind of human. 

We mean what we say, and say what we mean. 

And you will always find us outside the Matrix. 

With honesty,

Christina 

But I have been flying, traveling, experiencing, living so much that this letter did not get to be written today. 

Instead, I am sending you a short note to tell you to drop anything that is not important and go do something fun. 

I don’t care what it is. 

But don’t tell yourself you don’t have time to see a friend, to try a new ice cream flavor, to be free of the to do lists. 

And as for me I just landed in Oakland and I have to go celebrate my friend’s Kristine Carlson movie Premiere Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff. 

So in honor of my life, her life, and your life this is the length of today’s letter. 

With the presence of life,

Christina

P.S.

Make sure you watch the movie on Lifetime TV and grab Kris’s book Heartbroken Open. 

Devastatingly never ours. Some of them, impossibly foreign. 

Further than our physical bodies can get to. 

But also vaster than the confines of our minds. 

There is so much safety in staying inside the same world. 

But with so much unknown loss in it. 

Unknown because we could have not imagined ourselves living another life. 

I realized that no matter what has happened to us, however lost we are, we are in pain. 

In tragic sorrows, we can enter a different life, even if it is inside the one we are living. 

Sometimes this stance gets me in trouble. 

Especially with those who do not share the belief that we can defy our current circumstances. Even for an evening. 

I was one of those people.

The pain of loss blinded me and took away every key to any room that I could have escaped to.

But just imagine this, for just the length of this letter. 

What if there are mini lives waiting to be lived inside the one you are in? 

Like, hidden rooms in a house. 

I promise you they are there, and they come with new feelings and emotions. 

If only you dared to go into them. 

If only you believed they were worthy. 

Plentiful. 

For a little while. 

For a moment’s solace. 

And then for more. Yes, for more. 

Once you start occupying these rooms they grow on you like a new book you didn’t expect to like. Like a museum you never thought you would get lost in. 

Like a desert you never believed could comfort you. 

I live inside many rooms. 

I draw and paint in one. I write books in another. 

I teach in the main living room. And help people in the kitchen. 

I go to space in the hallway, and raise my daughters in the library. 

But of course, some of them are dark and heavy and I renovated them to lead to hallways full of stars. 

And so it goes. And so it is. You have to not stay in one room. 

If you did, you may as well live in a mansion and only use the first floor. 

With no views. Or the balcony with the evening breeze. 

To bring this to a close, just remember you are here to live more than one life. 

To love more than the people you already do. 

And to do it all, all at the same time. 

Not after. Not later. Not one day. 

Now, in the midst of your hard day. 

In the middle of your ok job. 

In the day after your break up. Your mom’s passing. 

Your brother’s accident. Your sister’s meltdown. 

While your bank account is empty. 

Especially then. Go on. 

Find that library room in your house, and look for a story that will take you so far away, you would forget your last name. 

With hidden rooms, 

Christina

Be you, they say. 

Live your life however you want. 

But that is the thing. 

Who the heck are you? 

What kind of life do you want to live?

The old life is not ever coming back. I checked. 

A thousand times.

This is about the versions of the future you get to choose from. 

Often, we don’t even know there is a choice. 

Nobody told us. 

By the time we let ourselves believe that we have options, we have already missed our chance a few dozen times. 

Let me explain this a little more. 

Imagine someone walking up to you with 5 cupcakes on a tray, all different flavors. 

They offer you one. 

You ask if they have your favorite kind. 

And they say no, they don’t. 

What do you do next? 

Do you have one of the 5 cupcakes left on the tray?

Do you say thank you and have none? 

Or do you ask if the kitchen at the back would make you the kind you want? 

Oh I know, I know what you are thinking. 

Come on, Christina. Who asks for that? 

Well let me tell you, there are some people who do. 

And sometimes, the answer they get is, yes sure. 

What kind would you like? 

But let’s go back to the tray with the five cupcakes. 

Here’s what you didn’t know. 

The tray started out with 50 cupcakes of different kinds. 

The five left were just leftovers. 

Dark Chocolate Bacon. 

Sweet Potato Cider Cupcake, 

Licorice and Peppermint. 

And a milk chocolate avocado. 

You were getting ready to choose one of them. Or say no thank you. 

Weren’t you? 

Imagine now this was about your life choices. 

The Life Tray. 

Would you bother to find out if there are more options available to you? 

Would you even think it was possible? 

We live in a world that by the time the tray gets to us most of the things we wanted were taken by others. 

We see them walking around living the lives we wish we had. 

But what if this time, the tray comes, you smile and say: 

These look great but I would much rather have something else. 

Can you make a vanilla, cherry, and burnt marshmallow cupcake? 

BOOM.

Specific. Detailed. 

Crystal clear about the kind of cupcake you want. 

Honestly, it took me a while to find myself here. 

Or find her here. 

You see, it is no longer me who is showing up when the tray of cupcakes comes by. 

It is someone else. 

Someone I have never met before. 

She arrived a few days ago. 

And to my surprise. 

She came with her own cupcakes. 

Lemon cream flavor. 

Who knew? 

I certainly didn’t. 

Whoever you’ve been. Whoever you are. 

Be ready for who you could be. 

There is a version of you, you could have never imagined waiting her turn.

With a lot more than 5 cupcakes, 

Christina

P.S. If you have lost a spouse. Listen in to this week’s podcast. It has already been loved by many. LISTEN HERE.

I gave them my own narrative, I wrote their words out, I came up with what they must be thinking.

These women were so much larger, smarter, kinder, complex and brilliant than I ever imagined them to be inside my mind. 

The version I was getting from the zoom calls was not enough.

But it was enough to feel like it was all there was.  My dear friend, we have lost so much more than connection throughout this pandemic period of our lives.  We have been inside a part time adventure in relationships that can only go so far.  I don’t know how you will do this, but you must find a way to the physical counterpart of the mental version of the people in your life.  You must interact with both, but mostly with the physical one.  The mental version of your family and friends is influenced by either your fears or your dream versions of who you want them to be.  But they are never accurate, or true. The pandemic didn’t just take away our connection with the people we love or want to love, but their true version of them.  There was an imbalance that was invisible to us all. What a loss.  Even if it is with a mask, 6 feet apart, go and be a part of the physical world and experience people outside of the digital reality as much and as often as you can.  The loss you experience when this doesn't happen often enough, is so much bigger than you can imagine.  I am already planning my next adventure, in close quarters with some of my new best friends.    I hope you are too.  With physical proximity, Christina

Where does the beginning sit in a new story? 

Is the beginning at the start of the new experience, or at the end of it. 

I have been away inside new adventures for the last few weeks. 

I swam in turquoise waters in Greece. 

I witnessed a rocket blasting off to space at Cape Canaveral with a friend inside of it. 

My eyes going from one world to another, adjusting to the new view. 

Something happens when you change reality dramatically. 

Where nothing is left the same. 

People. Places. Streets. Words. You. 

Skies. 

All speaking a new language. 

Your inner compass becomes turbulent. Until it stabilizes.

But the beginning is not here yet. I can’t find it. 

The beginning is not inside the adventure. I looked. 

Maybe there will never be a beginning to think about again, because I will not need to begin again. 

Is that possible even? 

We seek new beginnings because wherever we are, is no longer needed, wanted, chosen. But what if you made your life exist inside many realities, where you leap from one to another. A new beginning would become irrelevant. 

Wouldn’t it?

Loss would be minimized. 

Love would become everything, everywhere, everyone. 

You won’t have time to not love, as something new will always show up ready to be loved by you. 

In the last few weeks I met people from all over the world, living lives I have never seen before. 

Wanting things I have never wanted, because I didn’t know they existed. 

Living in a singular world creates immense loss. 

I am just realizing that a monogamous relationship with life is not healthy. 

We have created the concept of a new beginning because living a linear existence meant that we had to end one world to begin another. 

What if we don’t have to? 

What if we exist in many streets, and homes, and places, and most importantly inside many stories. All at the same time. 

I don’t want to end my adventures. 

I don’t want to begin anything else. 

I just want to continue whatever this is. 

Because this right here, feels like coming home. 

With no beginnings, and no endings,

Christina

Consuming. Deeply confusing. 

It is hard to understand. 

You will often wonder why certain things have to happen. 

Especially if you are a good person going about your day, expecting the best and doing your best. 

It will be the most heartbreaking for the good hearted ones. 

The lovers. The givers. 

I am easily heart broken.

I live in a constant invisible fragile state, especially when I am with other humans. 

It feels like walking through a battlefield with bombs ready to detonate. 

When my heart breaks it screams. It rolls in the mud. 

It throws itself into the big ocean.

It becomes a tsunami that doesn’t end. 

An immortal fire. 

It screams like a newborn. 

I really don’t know anything anymore. 

Life will surprise you and then it will change you. 

It will kick you and then it will teach you how to tend to your wound. 

It will hang you upside down and drop you on your head. 

It will shock you and then make you forget. 

It will put you to bed only to wake you up with the loudest alarm. 

And all of this will come at you from every part of your life. 

Even the safe parts. 

The parts you didn’t expect to hurt you. 

Those parts will break you the most. 

Because you could have never seen it coming. 

You would have bet your life on its loyalty to you. 

But loyalty is a very rare value. 

Almost an endangered species. 

Because of that, I have built inner worlds with resting spaces. 

I have replaced loneliness with solitude. 

Venting with writing. 

And loyalty loss, with personal integrity. 

The more time on the battlefield, the more certain I am about myself. 

As you are reading this, I am on the long flight to Athens where my sister picks me up to drive me to my parents home. It is time for me to go back for a while. 

To close my eyes.

I will also take a three week pause from writing Friday’s letter. 

So I can be immersed in the experience of my one and only family. 

Where unconditional love and everlasting loyalty is still there. 

I hope you spend the last few days of summer with the people who love you and if that is not available, may you build worlds inside yourself that are safe, loving and loyal to you. 

Being loyal to ourselves may be the hardest thing of all. 

See you back here in 3 weeks. 

With a beautiful breeze on my hair and a knowing about who I am that can never be shaken. 

Christina