Open letters: Dear Heather

April 14, 2026

Dear Heather,

I’ve been writing to you in my mind for months now. My ritual is to set the alarm for six every morning. I struggle for consciousness in bed for fifteen minutes and check the weather while the wind chime calls in the gray light outside my window. Then, I listen to your letter on my phone while I make green tea with my little electric kettle.

I ration your letters, since you don’t write every single day. I only listen for that ten-minute interval while I make the tea. Then, I put it away. I don’t listen again until the next morning, unless you’ve written so much that there’s two full letters stacked up. Then, I might finish one later in the morning in between grad school assignments, bureaucratic meetings, and editing gigs—savoring it like sweets sneaked from my mother’s pantry when I was a child.

What would I do if you ever stopped writing these letters? I’d survive, I guess. But it would be devastating. I have never written back. I’ve thought of it. I’ve thought through whole letters to you in my mind. This is the first time I’ve ever written it down, and I won’t send this letter either.

But I’m writing today because you touch on a place near where I used to live in Central Europe. My friends there write either with bitter cynicism or cautious optimism. But you say it's the demise of a government built on “the idea that society works best if a few wealthy men run everything.” And that’s hope, isn’t it? After sixteen years of oppression. Still, you don’t push the hope too far, just a sign of positive change. We could do that, couldn’t we?

I’m glad you see that too. Not many people here are watching the news from Europe. My kettle marks me out as European here. So, when you wrote about that, I finally gave in and wrote down my letter to you. I’ll write but I won’t send it. You bring a bit of hope into my kitchen each day, even when your letters are deeply sad.

Arie

IMAGE of purple Rocky Mountain Irises in long grass - photo by Arie Farnam

April 16, 2026

Dear Heather,

My mother reads your letters too, you know. She doesn’t ration them like I do, so she’ll text me to urge me to read your latest. She has a harder time with hope than I do. I’m relatively tough. I’ve been through a few things, after all. But so has she. How does one stay that tender after living through everything she has. She tells me your letters keep her going.

I want to give her hope the way you do. I should be able to, right? Should I just focus on the positive more? Why is that so hard? My kids may be having a lot of trouble, but they’re still alive. We have food and a roof over our heads, even if it’s a bit rickety. She says our family is deeply dysfunctional and it’s her fault. She says she failed at the most important mission in her life. Not true. I came back, didn’t I? I tell her all the good things I got growing up the way we did—justice-centered values, empathy, understanding for struggling people, deep connection with the earth. Would I be the writer I am now if I hadn’t had that? She didn’t fail and if she did, aren’t I many times worse as a mother? She backs off then. She won’t let me say that, but she knows it’s true by the standards she set for herself—keeping the family together and all that.

This is why I am never going to send these letters to you. You don’t need to hear about our drama. In your letter today, you wrote about the grief after a dream is killed. You reminded me that the struggles I’m living have a long history and that how I respond matters. Your letters keep me hanging on.

Arie

Image of a red-haired woman with a yellow lab in a meadow of wildflowers - Image by Julie Farnam

April 25, 2026

Dear Heather,

Obviously, the strain gets to you too. You sound exhausted. You keep saying in letter after letter that it’s almost over, that things are crumbling. He’ll be gone soon. But it doesn’t end. Somehow, the situation keeps getting worse. Just when it seems like everything is on the brink of collapse, more things fall apart. Then, you tell me about ever more depraved abuse and criminality.

But today you went on a tangent about international law, the founding of the UN, and all the structures that made the first four decades of my life feel stable and relatively privileged, even when we were living in a shack without plumbing. I remember learning about all that as a young adult. I was so hopeful that the grown-ups were going to nail down an international court. War was going to be a thing of the past. We already had what felt like a much more stable world. I tried to tell everyone about “international rule of law” when I was twenty. I was such a nerd. It was my first big thing. I was obsessed. That’s part of why it feels like you’re talking directly to me across the kitchen table. But I feel how tired you are too.

I wish I could offer you a cup of my tea, gentle greenish yellow, earthy flavor in a sand-colored ceramic cup. I hope you stay strong, because I don’t know what we’d do without you.

Arie

—

April 29, 2026

Dear Heather,

I love the historical rabbit holes you go down, and I love reading about history, even the dark parts of it. But today, your letter leaves me with a deep sense of shame. It’s not your fault. Really, it’s not. It’s his fault. Only his.

You know how they’re always saying that “white children shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed of being white” in school by being taught about the history of our country. I’m old enough that I wasn’t taught any of the things that make those old men so uncomfortable. Not in school at least. I was taught about Columbus in early September every year, then the Pilgrims by Thanksgiving, and the Civil War by May. That was it for history class, and it was mind-numbingly boring.

I learned real history only by reading on my own and by talking to people who lived it. It was amazing, thrilling, shocking, terrible, and tragic. But it never made me feel ashamed. Maybe, some moments made me feel a sense of responsibility, but responsibility to do something different in the future, not responsibility for things that happened before I was born. Even though I knew the version of history I was taught in school was, in and of itself, a crime of erasure, it didn’t make me ashamed. I was a child. I had been assaulted with propaganda. I felt kinship with the Eastern European dissidents who told me about the propaganda they’d had forced on them as children. I wasn’t ashamed when I learned real history. I was angry.

But today I’m ashamed. You quoted him talking about the importance of "Anglo-Saxon bloodlines," about how the English settled “a wild and untamed continent” here, as if no Americans lived here before then and no others live here now. And it isn’t just the echoes of psychopaths of the past. It’s the violence of these lies. I feel a deep sense of shame for being primarily Anglo-Saxon when he drags my heritage through the sludge of his hate. I can’t look my friends in the eye without apologizing every other sentence. It’s humiliating.

You remind me that each of us has value and dignity. You soothe away the shame. And I’m glad for that. I will try to hold my head up and do what I must. I’ll be here with my teapot again tomorrow.

Arie

Image of a ridge-top of wildflower meadow above the mountain-ringed grand ronde valley - Image by Arie Farnam

May 10, 2026

Dear Heather,

I’m not fond of Mother’s Day anymore. I’m an adoptive mother, and when my kids were very little there was the occasional teacher who would tell them to draw a Mother’s Day picture or something similar. These usually didn’t make it home to me, and when they did, they were clearly created under duress—a heart drawn in a single wobbly line of crayon, a slapdash paper flower found at the bottom of a backpack. It wasn’t the kids’ fault. They both have developmental disabilities and ADHD. Focusing on something arbitrarily dictated by the calendar isn’t a strength.

Now, my fifteen-year-old cusses me out because I insist he brushes his teeth at least once a day. My seventeen-year-old demands why I won’t buy her “designer perfume.” Their neurology makes them such easy targets for the vultures of social media and advertising. No one else tells them it’s Mother’s Day and I’m certainly not going to mention it like I’m begging for a pinch of appreciation. I hug my mother. We visit a greenhouse full of spring beauty and walk in wildflower meadows together. But Mother’s Day still leaves me aching deep inside.

Mother’s Day just feels like another pressure point with more demands for performance on me, my mother and other mothers I know. I appreciate your letter, the idea that the original Mother’s Day was about women seizing our own power. That’s refreshing.

A woman mentioned you to me at the farmer’s market yesterday. I couldn’t even recognize her with my very nearsighted eyes. You’re becoming like a secret code. “Happy Mother’s Day! Have you read Heather’s letter?” A way to signal safety and solidarity. Keep on, please, keep on.

Arie

—

May 13, 2026

Dear Heather,

You’ve been grim the last few days, mostly recounting events in a dogged, weather-beaten tone. The Voting Rights Act is in tatters. You clearly feel a need to give us hope. You quote Tennessee state representative Justin Jones, “We’ll keep fighting. We will not stop getting in good trouble. We will not go back.” Those are tired stock phrases, and he’s likely to lose his job with the new map.

When you sound that exhausted, I think I should send you a letter just to say how much we appreciate you. I know you get tons of letters, thousands you can’t possibly read. You try responding to people in your letters sometimes, but you’d need a small army of staff. And I’m not a fan girl type. I have always detested celebrities. The only reason you’re an exception is because you appear to have an undisguised cold sore on your mouth in videos, you aren’t wearing makeup, and you don’t appear to have a staff to read your mail.

Dappled light falls across my page through the maple next door. Steam rises from the squat cup. My tea is brewed. All I really wanted to say is thanks for the letters. We need them.

Arie

Learning reciprocity the hard way

With Mother’s Day just past, it’s still on my mind. There was a time when I thought Mother’s Day was nothing but a saccharine, commercial holiday. I was unimpressed even with the cards teachers force kids to write to their mothers. And then, there were the years when I was battling infertility and Mother’s Day was like a knife twisting in my gut.

I have a new perspective now.

First of all, I’ve been reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific, Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It has taken its place among the select handful of books that are my all-time favorites. It’s that good.

Image via Pixabay

The primary theme is reciprocity with the natural world. One of the big questions explored in the book is whether or not gratitude, including overt expression of thanks, is “enough.” Does our gratitude somehow repay the natural world for all that we take and for the great harm human beings are doing to the earth’s ecosystems?

The answer is complex. There are some ways in which Kimmerer argues that gratitude is a particular gift that humans have to offer and that all that is asked of us is that we give the gifts that come naturally. But then there are ways in which it is clear that most humans have lost touch with the cycles of reciprocity and this is a grievous loss.

That was kind of the theme of Mother’s Day this year for me.

For us it was COVID-19 lockdown day 61. Being trapped in quarantine for two months with any three other people will tend to highlight their shortcomings for you and strain whatever relationship you have. In our case, we are nearly at the point of psychological collapse.

That has a lot to do with various disabilities. I’m nearly blind and the other three people in my household are dyslectic, which entails not just problems learning to read but also lifelong struggles with organization and attention to detail. Anyone who lives with a blind person will know that organization and attention to detail are the keys to success. On top of that, one of the kids has significant behavioral and psychiatric problems.

I’m the mother in this zoo of needs, the one responsible for filling bellies, soothing hurts and ultimately imparting values. I have spent the past eleven years doing everything I can to raise children with the values of respect and reciprocity. And by any measure, at this COVID-19 moment, I have failed miserably at that, whether it is entirely my fault or not.

This past Mother’s Day, my kids, ages 9 and 11, were at the end of a three-day weekend, because May 8 is a state holiday here. They had been out riding bikes both of the previous days in the sunshine and had no responsibilities. On Sunday, they needed to catch up a few things for school and do a small chore each to help out around the house.

Several hours of screaming, cussing, hitting and throwing everything within reach ensued.

“You’re the worst parents ever!” “I wish I had a different mom!” “I wish you would die!” “I hate you!” “Every other kid in the world has an iPhone, except me!” “No one else has to do chores!” “You are supposed to be my servant!” The screeches bounced off the walls (but they are edited here to exclude vulgarity. simply because I don’t feel like repeating those parts)

In the end, I didn’t get any vaguely cubist pictures featuring hearts this year. I didn’t even get any hugs and my kids never did do kisses. I haven’t ever actually experienced breakfast in bed and it certainly wasn’t on the menu this year. I didn’t get flowers and instead my eleven-year-old pulled up the flower starts I had put in window boxes, taunting me through the kitchen window while she tore the tender roots to shreds because I wouldn’t let her have video games before her homework was done.

So, it wasn’t much like the way Mother’s Day is portrayed in popular culture.

I did overhear the phone tutor trying to get my children to draw me a picture for Mother’s Day. They didn’t. My husband is too overwhelmed to make them do it or to think about values beyond survival.

The whole thing made me think about reciprocity, the value of gratitude and the role of ever-giving, sacrificial mother. This is essentially how we treat the earth, isn’t it?

When I spend hours cooking from scratch only to have my family make gagging noises at the table and complain that other kids get packaged food, I think of the earth giving us endless crops, despite our abuse of the soil through chemical fertilizers and harmful monocultures. When I have to shield my particularly vulnerable eyes with my arm, while the kids throw pencils and toy cars at my face, I think of the rare-earth mining operations that gouge deep into the planet to make my phone and computer.

My children have a lot of needs and even more desires. Perhaps like the earth, I signed up to be a mother, but I couldn’t possibly have known what the cost would be. It isn’t so much the work, the gray hairs, the long nights, the exhaustion or the endless homework sessions that get me down.

It’s the words and the disrespect that hurt. I wonder if the earth feels the same way.

Of course, there are scientific reasons why the earth is hurting and none of them have directly to do with our expressions of appreciation, or lack their of. But Kimmerer makes a compelling argument as to why gratitude physically and biologically, as well as spiritually, matters to plants and ecosystems.

We know it matters in relationships. Despite my very unpleasant experiences of Mother’s Day, I’m actually a proponent of it. I know it is used and abused for commercial purposes far too often. But there is nothing like NOT getting a smudged picture of a stick figure mother and child to make you value one.

I am glad mothers are given at least one day of gratitude and appreciation. It may be too much like Earth Day, when some of us do the same for the earth without giving much thought the rest of the year. But either is a call for us to rejoin the circle of reciprocity. And this year, even more than most, I have learned how the earth must feel as an unacknowledged mother and my resolve to do right by her is renewed.

Would gratitude and appreciation be “enough?” If I did get Mother’s Day cards and “thank you” when I cook a meal?

Would it erase every other trouble? I doubt it.

But I think it might just be “enough” in a way. I have a lot to give as a mother. My well is deep. Just not bottomless.

The earth is like that too. She’s a mother with vast resources, just not endless resources. If we treated the earth the way we say people should treat their human mothers, with some basic appreciation and gratitude, as Kimmerer asks, there might just be hope for us after all.