Dear you,

I have a beef with the term “life-changing.” Not so much the term, but when people overuse it. Dilute its significance. Is it wrong to think that life-changing things should actually be life-changing?

Today, I want to share something that is actually life-changing. Something so simple and easy to miss. It’s starting your letters with the word “dear” as I’ve done here.

I love it when I call you dear. How it creates connection right from the get-go. It feels a little old-fashioned, doesn’t it? Like the way you’d address someone in a handwritten snail mail letter. Writing the word at the top of the page, then staring at the empty space below, carefully contemplating what you’d like to say and how you’d like to say it, cause once you put pen to paper, you’re pretty much committed to that.

Something comes over me every time I type the word dear. It touches my heart immensely. It draws me close into the person I’m writing to as if I’m pulling up a chair alongside them. As if, in the typing of those four letters, a union is formed.

How this simple word creates a dear container for me and my writing to unfold into. Such that dearness infuses every word I lay down afterward.

A post to my Instagram stories, of that reel that went viral. Existing in the white space of a love letter in progress.

Lately, I’ve been curious about extending my practice of dearness. Treating this blog as if it were a dear letter to you. Treating my social media posts as dear notes to the dear people of Instagram. Not just curious; in the last few days I’ve been doing this, and it changes everything. (Seriously, I posted a reel of a dear moment on Facebook yesterday that got 2000 views - 5 times more than I’ve ever received.)

It’s as if I’m existing in the white space of a love letter in progress.

To be the kind of person that spots dearness and stays close in.  The kind of person that gives dearness away generously to others.   That holds dear space for others to find themselves dear.

I get this growing sense that I was always meant to be this way. To live in the dear, precious, and magical corridors that move between the hurried and mundane. And that all this that I’m on about is me returning to my native state. I wonder if this resonates with you at all. Perhaps you, too, are meant to live this way.

A dear moment with a dear friend. In the rain, NYC.

Dearest you, I am sure you know that there are certain ways to view the world that elevate the experience of the everyday. What I’m learning is this: that being an embodiment of “dear you” is one of those ways. One of those life-changing things that can actually change your life if you pay close enough attention.

You can begin by trying this one simple gesture - typing “dear friend” at the outset of your next note.

Thank you once again for pulling up a chair and hanging out with me here. I wish you all the best, my dear friend.

Dodie 🩶