LOVE NOTES, I bet you've sent one today

It started with cleverly folded paper, alphabet letters on the fridge, postcards in the mail and sticky notes in lunchboxes. Now with the open flow of the internet, love notes have evolved...

… and often in ways we don’t even realise.

Love notes are everywhere from obvious ones like Valentines or anniversary cards to heartfelt action; the cut up apple (thanks Bec Griffiths for an InstaStory you recently shared), the change of channel to your favourite TV show when you finally sit down after a long day, the lying with your kids to help them go to sleep, the arriving early, staying late, and time. Time spent together is truly the most powerful of all love notes.

Creatives send them subconsciously through their work, shared with heart and passion through social media posts to their fellow human beings. Many have started to channel these love notes more consciously through emails, blog posts, Instagram posts, podcasts and Substack publishing.

Love notes created to inspire, soothe and nurture. To spark and springboard but most of all to know we are not alone in our endeavours, celebrations and failures.

For the Love of the Photograph was and still is my love note to other artists as they journey their path in photography. I’ll be honest, I don’t read it that often, it can feel weird to read your own book however the irony is as I return to its pages more and more I remember that I wrote it for me as much as for you, my readers.

Laura Wood captured by her gorgeous sister Sarah

I longed to have memory prompts of things I’d learnt, ointment for the harder parts of the process, springboards for ideas and simplified ways to approach the layers of this love affair.

This first few months of my Substack sharing journey is focused on personal projects, to settle our over-stretched post-pandemic minds and hearts. To bring my book into the arena, to talk more about what I wrote and why, to expand, extend and fall in love again with our journey.

Tomorrow I’m going to share the notice board I have beside my desk and all the love notes I have been sent from artists over the past few years. Not in childlike giggly idea of a love note ways, instead the gentle rub of an aching back, the you’re doing ok, keep going and here’s a cut up apple to refresh and nourish you ways.

For today, what if you were to write a love note to your future self as a reminder of right now? A series of love notes by way of a personal project, how would they start to look? What questions do you have? What leaves you wondering and memories you long to hold onto?

You are a sum of parts,

A tied bundle of love letters, filled

with the scent of every landscape you’ve explored,

the warmth of every sun that’s set

and the layers of every year of your life.

The laughter of every friend you’ve loved

and the tears of loneliness you’ve shed.

Darkness and light, night and day.

You are you. And this is your journey.

p191 For the Love of the Photograph, Chloe Lodge

Swaying in my desk lamp light,

CW x

PS Melinda Edwards wrote a gorgeous post recently on ‘how are you loving’, do check it out.