a gift from my younger self, to you

This morning, after finishing a morning pages notebook, I was rooting through my bookshelf looking for a new notebook that I could use for my morning pages. One fell out, and it was not new, but an old notebook that I had at the start of 2020 that opened naturally to a page. I read the page and was so struck by what I was writing—it was during a moment where I had been re-reading the Ethical Slut. In the morning pages notebook, I gushed about how positive I was feeling; that the book had been really permission giving for me, that I felt really affirmed in honoring the idea of the beauty of each connection in your life and not putting precedent or undue importance on a romantic relationship as above all the other relationships, and how I loved orienting around not asking myself “is this MY person” or “is this THE person,” but instead asking myself—is this a genuine connection that feels good in my spirit and that I want to pursue?

So here is the gift from my younger self to you: what relationships in your life genuinely feel good? Are their pressures your putting on them to fit a certain mold that are taxing them? How can you follow the unraveling of whats actually present before you, rather than the idealization or expectation of what it should be?