Tubariki asks three questions. Your answers become a short letter that tells one person something true about them. We never write a word of it.
Who came to mind?
Type whatever you call them. You'll add their email when the letter is ready. Two sentences can be enough.
Maybe it was your father, who never knew how much you watched.
A friend who makes a room feel safer without trying.
The teacher whose sentence still lives in you twenty years later.
Have you ever told them?
Some diminish us long after they are spoken. Others steady us, remind us who we are, and help us meet what comes next. We simply say those words far less often.
A blessing is a short letter that tells one person something good and true about who they are.
What goes into a blessing
A moment you saw them
You were at the kitchen table on Tuesday with your coat still on, listening to me go on about the same thing for the fourth week running.
What it showed you
You are patient with people while they get to their own answer.
A hope you want them to carry
May you be listened to the way you listen.
The finished letter
Dee,
You were at the kitchen table on Tuesday with your coat still on, listening to me go on about the same thing for the fourth week running. You didn't fix it. You kept asking small questions until I heard myself.
That's what you do. You are patient with people while they get to their own answer.
May you be listened to the way you listen.
SamEighty-one words. Two honest sentences would also have been enough.
Three questions, one at a time. If a question doesn't open the door, we ask a gentler one. Your answers become the letter — we never write a word of it, so the person holding it knows it came from you.
From the reading room
May you rest, even now, while everything in you says you cannot.
for when you're tired
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