February 18, 2026

I don’t want you–any of you, all of you–to lose heart. I want you to believe in you. To not give up on you. You are precious beyond words. When we run out of words and there are no words for what we have to say–as in the experience of this photograph, for example, or for the experience of your looking into your bathroom mirror and seeing you as a two year old child and how precious beyond words you were then, and consider the illogic if not abject stupidity of thinking, “That was then, this is now” as you consider you in the mirror as a two year old and you in the mirror as a here and now year old, and I am calling FOUL!!! on you!!!

There is nothing about the intervening years that has taken precious, and more than words can say about you away from you! Surely, you can see the truth of what I am saying, and embrace your present preciousness! And I do so hope you are crying now, or laughing, because tears and laughter are all that is left to us in the space where there is no vocabulary to say the truth of what we recognize to be so in the deepest, most truthful, kind of way. You are precious and worthy of love in the deepest, most truthful, kind of way. It is so! And know that it is so every time you look in your bathroom mirror for as long as you shall live!