A lover is someone who loves: Celebrating three years of loving you

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Three years ago this week LoveYou2.org was born as a simple blog with the original i love you, too flier to download. That same week, I began painting and hanging art on the fence outside my home - these two activities unconnected in my mind for many months. What fun this three year adventure has been! This last year of loving you has been exceptional: art show, rad mini documentary, website update with a proper domain name, creation of a casual love note pad, an epic dia de los muertos altar, live love note writing events, heaps of guest photos and stories plus a map with new geotags in Austria, Gaithersburg, Seattle, Boston, Brooklyn, Atlanta, Saulita and more. The best part - I still get goose bumps thinking about loving you like this.I'm very grateful to Cary Tennis, writing workshop teacher extraordinaire, who taught me "a writer is someone who writes." In the process of learning to believe that statement, I began to see myself, and possibility, in a new light.

11.24.2010

Dear Cary:

It's Thanksgiving Eve and I'm thinking of all the many things I'm very grateful for.  I want you to know how much you've impacted my life.

The first week I sat in your summer writing workshop and heard you read aloud the words "A writer is someone who writes," I giggled and scoffed inside my head.  It seemed silly to hear this and clearly untrue.  Of course, a writer is someone brilliant and knowledgeable and not me.  Something about you reading that line every week, combined with the freedom to read aloud my writing without fear of judgment, made that statement come true.  A writer IS someone who writes.  I write.  I am a writer.

Around the same time this fact or truism resonated with me, I was explaining to someone, "I want to be a surfer....I'm trying to surf. "I stopped myself and said, "A surfer is someone who surfs.  I'm a surfer.  I've been surfing since May."

In dance class when I start to compare myself to all the REAL dancers (the lithe women, the beautiful ones, the ones who know the moves before the teacher even begins the demonstration) I stop myself and repeat inside my head, "A dancer is someone who dances."  Then, I dance and bend and smile while I'm moving and twisting my body, because that is what dancers do and I am a dancer.

I've always wanted to be an artist.  I thought I would do this in retirement - become an artist.  It occurred to me that an artist is someone who makes art.  I took pieces of wood from the basement and painted them and hung them on the fence.  It's my gallery.  Open studios is tonight. Or tomorrow. Or whenever anyone passes by. I am an artist.

Next I wondered, is a lover someone who loves? I'm going to give it a try. I started a website www.LoveYou2.org where I'm giving away love. I launched the site on Monday.  This feels like one of the most true things I've done in my life.

I'm reflecting on all that I'm grateful for, see the end of 2010 is on the next calendar page and can't forget that I'm turning 40 next year. That's alot of reflecting, yes.  I have a deep satisfaction with my life at this moment and can follow the thread back through these manifestations of latent dreams to my slightly nervous self, sitting in your living room hearing you say the now familiar fact "A writer is someone who writes."

Thank you.  From the bottom of my happy heart. Happy Thanksgiving! Shannon

Three years later I know through an often practiced exchange of giving and receiving: A lover is someone who loves. I've looked for proofs, no doubt. Collecting as memories the times I've been asked "Are you the love artist?" or been introduced as "The love note writer." Curious as to when I'd arrive at this knowing, I'd note the expansion and contraction of my heart, the feeling of saying yes to the unknown, the experiences of creating.  Having arrived now at this knowing, I'll keep practicing loving you like this because a lover is someone who loves.