The Things We Tend - The Sunday Savoring No. 075

Seventy-five.

This is the 75th Sunday Savoring I’ve written.

Some weeks the writing flowed effortlessly. Done by Wednesday and I couldn’t wait to hit send. Other weeks I’ve known what I wanted to write about and spent all day Sunday writing and perfecting it before hitting send. And some weeks, like this one, Sunday morning showed up and I had absolutely nothing written.

To be fair, life is particularly full right now.

My mother-in-law has had some health issues. I have 800 Savoring Dispatch envelopes that need to go out on Friday. Our son’s engagement party is here at our house next Saturday. And right after that, I’m hoping to leave on a road trip that I’m increasingly unsure I’ll actually be able to take.

And yet, here we are. It’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting outside by a fire with JJ, going through the to-do list for the week ahead, when I realize I haven’t even started the Savoring.

I could have skipped it. I have every legitimate reason in the world to say, I just can’t. The Sunday Savoring can take a week off.

But I didn’t want to.

I didn’t want to disappoint you and, equally important, I didn’t want to disappoint myself.

I started writing The Sunday Savoring after everything that happened to me in 2023. I needed a place to put my thoughts. What I was noticing. What I was learning about being alive after coming frighteningly close to not.

It became a sacred space for me.

And for 75 Sundays, I’ve tended to it.

I wanted today to feel like a big celebration of a newsletter. SEVENTY-FIVE. Cue the confetti.

And then I realized it’s not about today, this moment, this particular newsletter. It’s about all the ones leading up to it. All the ordinary Sundays that led to this one.

We talk a lot about creating things.

Starting the newsletter. Planting the garden. Building the relationship. Making the home. Beginning the tradition.

There’s excitement in creating something new. We mark the beginning. We celebrate the anniversary. We take the picture.

But the things that matter most in our lives don’t become meaningful simply because we created them.

They become meaningful because we keep tending to them.

Marriages, friendships, gardens. Our homes, our traditions, the things we create and the parts of ourselves we don’t want to lose.

Sometimes tending looks beautiful and intentional. Sometimes it’s a long dinner with someone you love. Watering the tomatoes before the heat comes. Lighting the candles and picking up the journal. Remembering the birthday. Sitting down to write because you have something you desperately want to say.

And sometimes it looks like sitting at your computer on a Sunday morning with absolutely no idea what you’re going to write, while 800 envelopes are waiting and an engagement party is six days away.

But you show up anyway.

The things we love don’t stay alive simply because we want them to. They stay alive because we keep showing up to tend to them.

So, here’s to 75 Sundays of tending this little corner of my life.

And to all of you who have kept showing up here to tend it with me.

Until next week, keep seeking what life has to savor.

- Stefanie

P.S. Only five more days, including today, to sign up for the September Savoring Dispatch.