🌺 Dear Hawai’i
A letter to my home of three years & an invitation to letter writing (letter 219)
July 19, 2024
Dear Hawai’i,
On June 28, 2021, when I stepped off a plane onto you, you were so foreign.
I’d never seen you before. I was afraid of eating poké, called shoyu soy sauce, and was not confident with chopsticks. I didn’t know what it was like to climb a mountain or what a “switchback” was. I had never known how long I could hold my breath underwater. I never knew surfing was mostly paddling. My knowledge of the Hawaiian language was limited to what Disney taught me through Lilo and Stitch about 'ohana' .
You’ve allowed me to believe in the power of reinvention. Breathing here with you makes me feel alive, like a fresh breeze on a humid day. Your deep belly laughs and serene sunsets have helped me dream and awaken parts of me I forgot about. You’ve given me the confidence to cultivate deep friendships, even without booze. You taught me to lean into learning how to feel and to keep learning for the joy of it.
With you,
Love feels boundless.
Kindness feels abundant.
Connection feels expansive.
Life feels full and wholesome.
Hawaii, you are a place where I…
Bike up volcanoes, feeling my legs burn, the thrill of the descent, and saddle soreness for days.
Compete in triathlons, pushing my limits and savoring the taste of frrshwater in my salty mouth.
Fall assleep exhausted with brine in my brows and salt in my hair.
Watch my Hydro flask crush coconuts to create a lid.
Smile and greet my neighbors and talk story with aunties and uncles.
Drive often to the airport to pick up friends, each reunion a joyous occasion with lei.
Hear silence with less stimulation.
Feel more fluid with my feelings, like the ebb and flow of your tides.
Embrace my quirks like penpals, exchanging marginalia, and tea time.
Connect openly on journaling and poetry, sharing intimate pieces of my spirit.
Lean into routines with my morning pages and sun salutation strolls, grounding myself daily.
Tweak my banana bread recipe each week, delighting in small improvements.
Imperfectly strum uke chords and net many volleyball serves, laughing at my mistakes
Swipe right on a few too many awful dates, collecting stories from past folly.
Stalk chickens scurrying around the community garden, amused by their antics.
See shooting stars overhead, feeling like a little spec in this grand universe.
Hear cooing spotted doves in the morning, their songs a gentle wake-up call.
Feel the grass between my toes on the ’aina, connecting with our one island earth.
Turn my feet into that of a hobbit, embracing the freedom of barefoot living.
Notice my breath, a reminder of the present moment.
Am a thinker of thoughts, reflecting on life's big and small wonders.
With you Hawaii, I’m figuring out the life that I want to live.
I’ve learned so much alongside you. You’ve taught me…
To judge less.
To say Hell YES and to draw boundaries and say no.
To sleep early and to wake up with the sun.
To trust myself more.
To do the scary things to feel courageous.
To sit in silence for hours.
To see boundless possibilities.
To begin again and again.
To explore the paths less traveled.
To respect the power of the ocean.
To let hugs linger with friends.
To bow down in a child’s pose for a little longer.
To share the presence (alo) of breaths (ha) together as aloha.
To freely give love while connecting.
To nurture deep connections.
To see beauty of life everywhere.
To notice the dolphins playing around me.
To let the swaying palms mesmerize me overhead.
To enthuse my body and eardrums with music.
To move my body in the way it feels most pleasant.
To put my hands on my heart and tummy floating
To exhale deeply to sink lower to the ocean floor.
To be at peace with falling off more waves than I surf.
To see life is such a grand adventure.
Our shared space and time have transformed me back into a person I love.
Whenever I step onto a plane to leave you, I feel sad.
Whenever I retrace my experiences with you, I feel happy.
I feel happy and sad, but most of all, grateful to know you and have lived with you.
Mahalo nui loa, Hawai’i, for your magic 🌺
I respect you deeply and will cherish our memories for eternity. 🥰
Many hugs,
A grateful gal ❤️
PS - when I leave you after this summer, please know that I will be back again and again. These past three years have been the best of my life. This isn’t goodbye, it’s “a hui hou” for see you later.
Part of this was shared in 2023 in My Love Letter to Hawaii
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Aloha fellow learn-it-all 👋
Greetings from Honolulu!
I surprised myself this week with the tinkering of my banana bread recipe. This morning, I used cashews instead of walnuts and oat milk instead of Greek yogurt. It tastes good! I invite you to tinker too.
Anywho, last week, I invited you to join this workshop hosted by Foster called “Penning Letters to Weave the Past, Present, and Future”. Here is the 39-minute recording from it. It was my first time writing letters with ten others at the same time, and we had a lot of fun! Some shares from writers who joined:
- shared her beautiful reflections called “Aging Well ... Yes, Life Chose Me After All”
recently shared “A letter to my daughter”
Three takeaways from collective of the workshop that I tweeted about were:
we are on time
past and future self-wisdom sound similar
we already know what's important and need reminders of what matters
Letter writing is still alive and it makes my heart so full :)
I invite you to start your own practice. Of the three that we wrote from our younger and older self, start with the one of writing about this moment in time to yourself on New Years Days on January 1, 2025. Send it via email through futureme.org. For more, watch this recording to write yourself letters too:
❓Question to think about
How has the place I live in shaped me?
📖Reading
I’ve been rereading Alchemist by Paulo Coelho for the fourth, maybe fifth time. It’s a beautiful book that reminds me of the significance of dreams and adventure and trusting the journey.
A recent passage from page 20 that I pondered on:
“It’s a book that says the same thing almost all the other books in the world say,” continued the old man. “It describes people’s inability to choose their own Personal Legends. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world’s greatest lie.”
“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised.
“It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives becomes controlled by fate. That the world’s great lie.”
🎧Listening
28 by Zach Bryan
Took twenty-eight years of blood I was lost in
To feel loved on my own birthday
And I always felt like I's in between somethin'
Like home and somewhere far away
But tonight on the west side in a bar out in Brooklyn
I saw tears outline your face
[Chorus]
How lucky are we?
It's been a hell of a week, but you're all grown now
There's smoke seepin' out of your bloody teeth
But you're home somehow
🔍Word to define
Hawaii: a group of over twenty islands in the North Pacific Ocean
Capital: Honolulu (on Oahu translated as hono "port" + lulu "calm”); population 1,440,196 (2022) (est. 2022 according to DataCommons & census.gov, one tenth of the state of Michigan).
First settled by Polynesians, Hawaii was visited by Captain James Cook in 1778. It was annexed by the US in 1898 and became the 50th state in 1959—former name Sandwich Islands. Hawaii is the largest island in the state of Hawaii, also called “Big Island,” with two main international airports in Kona and Hilo.
From Hawaiian Hawai'i, from Proto-Polynesian hawaiki, said to mean "Place of the Gods" as a reference to Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.
Some fun trivia for your friday: The first record of Hawaiian shirt is from 1943.
🌟Quote to inspire
“There is virtue in work and there is virtue in rest. Use both and overlook neither.” — Alan Cohen
📸Photo of the Week
A blonde, brunette, and ginger get invited to a neighboring island for the weekend. They fly with seven others on the island hopper, eat a bunch of sweet bread, get invited to a rager at an elementary school, dip in a couple of waterfalls, hear a man’s radical views on airships, scope out the leprosy colony, play cards at the pizza café and fly back home.
🙏Shoutouts
to Hawai’i. I don’t know where else I’d rather be than here. You will always have a special place in my heart.
I appreciate you reading this!
If ideas resonated, I’d love you to press the heart button, leave a comment, reply to this email, or reach me at vermetjl@gmail.com. If you forgot who I am, I welcome you to my online home.
Keep on learning 😁
Mahalo 🌺
Jen
PS - in case you missed last week I shared a letter to Dear baby Jen in a bucket
If you’re reading this because someone shared this newsletter with you, welcome! I’d love it if you signed up to read my next letter: