“Write an intention for yourself on the postcard at your place setting,” says Meagan, the effervescent executive director at a recent fundraiser for Girls on the Run, a nonprofit I volunteer with. “Address it to yourself and we’ll mail them to you.”
At first, I cringe. Life has been so heavy lately—an injured husband, moving another parent to assisted living—the only intention I can manage is to wake up and make it through another demanding day of caregiving.
I tuck the card in my purse, then take it out moments later as I watch everyone around me—four hundred-plus women full of brunch and inspiration from the empowering keynote speaker, a filmmaker telling the stories of successful women you’ve never heard of making it in a man’s world—every woman was scribbling on her card.
My husband will see this and laugh, I think. He’s not one for self-analysis or emotions and often pokes fun at my endless soul-searching quest.
I decide to write an intention anyway. A mailbox overflowing with inspiration might spill into my life, right?
“Share it on your Insta feed!” Meagan says. “Tack it on your vision board!”
Vision boards have never been my thing, but in a sense, my notebook, a scribbled mind meld of morning pages serves as one: hastily jotted ideas for my blog; a flash story written from a one-word prompt; a poem clipped from a literary journal; an outline for a novel written on a scrap of paper and taped to the notebook’s back cover; my mother’s college graduation photo.
A week later, the card arrives. “WRITE FEARLESSLY,” it says. I paste it in my journal.
And I am.