You deserve care. All of us deserve care. We deserve gentle, consensual, loving touch. We deserve warmth that nurtures and doesn’t overwhelm. We deserve to trust those who are supposed to love us.
How have you received care in healthy, nurturing ways?
“To be able to have people to love and care for, that cared and loved me, depended on me, is a privilege that I was most grateful for. To be a part of someone’s life…to guide throughout all their trials and tribulations, was the paragon of what it meant to live. Now, none of them are in my life. Do I hold hope that we can be together once more? Yes. Until that time, I hold those memories close. Of you, I ask this, if you have family, tell them you love them, for you never know when it’ll be your last moment with them.” -Robert, a CLF member incarcerated in Massachusetts
Tell someone you love them today.
One of the ways we are connected to each other as family is in the ways we live on in future generations. The love and legacy we leave behind is a gift to those who come next.
What would you like your legacy to be?
As we begin the month of November I am very aware of many spiritual practices that honor and remember our ancestors. Our ancestors are family who helped shape our current family. Family traditions may still exist that have been passed through the generations, stories carried from a mother’s mouth to her child, and she to her child. Famous ancestors, maybe the town doctor who has a park named after him. Or simply a headstone marking a loved one’s passing. They are all still family, even as an echo from the past. -Katherine Hofmann (CLF)
What echoes from the past do you feel/hear/understand today?
This month, we will be exploring the theme of family. It is a complicated theme, and we want to begin by honoring the many ways families exist in this world, and the fact that for many, family has been a source of pain.
Be gentle with yourself today.
