The Power of Love

I believe in the power of love. I believe it can change the world. I believe it can heal hearts, birth art, build communities, transform lives.

So when I came across a post for the organization, Revolutionary Love. I signed up right away. They hooked me. I want to be a part of love transforming the planet. You can learn about them here: Home - The Revolutionary Love Project.

In their latest newsletter, they talked about the power of love letters. They even have a place where you can write and send one: Act of love submission.

I share this because it reminded me of a love letter I wrote several years ago to an organization that has profoundly impacted my life, Powerstories Theatre of Tampa, Florida. I wanted to thank them for giving me the chance to debut my solo show, My Year of Saying No, as part of their inaugural Voices of Women Theatre Festival.

But a thank you note wasn't going to be enough. It wasn't going to capture the depth of my profound gratitude, the way they changed my life.

I wrote a love letter instead. You can read it below. And then ask yourself, who might get a love letter from you? What profound impact on your life can you honor? How can you spread more love in this world that really needs it?

You can learn more about Powerstories and the workshop that launched my solo show here: Seek and Speak Your Powerstory | Powerstories Theatre Tampa | Girlstories Leadership Theatre Tampa

My Dearest Powerstories,

Little did I know when I first met you seventeen years ago all the ways you would change my life. I first met you through a Telling Your Story to Funders workshop which would lead me to auditioning for Bernadette's Bravo. This happened at a time that was very challenging in my life – just a few years after divorcing and moving from Washington, DC to be closer to my family. I wasn't fitting into the Jimmy Buffet vibe I seemed to encounter everywhere in Florida, even in much of the local community theater scene which had always been where I found my people and made friendships. The women I met in Bernadette's Bravo were my people and at last, I started to feel like I could forge a new life in a new land.

The process of finding and telling my story was life altering, empowering, the first step I would take in truly becoming. I learned about myself and I learned just how powerful theater could be at opening minds and hearts and making the world a more loving place. This was incredibly significant for me.

When I first came to you, my dearest Powerstories, I had almost two decades of acting experience. I deeply loved performing. It was a source of great joy in my life but I considered it only a hobby, something I did to re-energize myself for the important work of teaching I did in the world. I had never pursued theater as more than a hobby because it didn't seem serious enough, didn't seem like it could make a difference in the world.

How that idea was turned on its head as I performed in Bernadette's Bravo, watched the transformation of my sister actors during that process and spoke to so many women through the tears in their eyes after the many performances we did. "I needed to hear this. I felt like you were talking to my soul." So many thoughts like this were shared with me and the other performers. It was life affirming for me and opened my eyes to the crucial role art plays in our becoming who we are.

Bernadette's Bravo would lead me to teaching with the first two years of the Girlstories Theater Project, becoming a certified Seek and Speak Your Story Workshop facilitator, leading a Seek and Speak workshop for recent alumni of an equity project with Community Tampa Bay, performing in SheVolution, and directing and performing with SheVolution II. Each of these experiences deepened my devotion to your mission, helped me continue to meet myself at my growing edges, and revived me when I started to lose faith in my ability to make a difference.

Every time I have performed with you I have been rewarded not with just the laughter and applause I get from other theater but with expressions of the deepest gratitude from audience members who have indeed had their minds and hearts open and come to understand themselves in a new way.

You have been one of the few constants in the last almost two decades of my life. You have often been the only place I felt fully seen and heard. You have been a respite when I was weary and a vessel for my joy. The women I have met through you are some of the most amazing women I have the privilege to know – women who are brave, strong, loving and authentic, women who hold space for others to step into their brilliance. This, my dearest Powerstories, is your greatest gift. You create sacred space for women to own their power, their gifts and to become who they are meant to be.

And that is what you have done for me, dearest Powerstories. You have given me so many opportunities for me to reach past my boundaries and limits, discovering new skills and new strengths.

In my most recent dance with you, the Voices of Women Theatre Festival, I realized a lifelong dream, writing and performing a one-woman show. For years I have sensed I had something to birth, something big. Nothing in my world felt big enough, not even the twelve years I spent serving as artistic director at another theater. But My Year of Saying No, this was the big. It demanded every ounce of everything I had creatively, emotionally, spiritually. It was the child crying out in me to be born and I don't think anyone else could have been my midwife, dearest Powerstories, only you.

As always, my sisters were by my side in this birth, many of them Powerstories sisters. It's another one of your gifts, the way you bring women together as the holy collective they are designed to be. Some of my sisters were in the theater with me, some watching on livestream but all truly cheering me on and being so generous with their words after, sharing how my story had moved and inspired them.

I share this deep gratitude with you, my dearest Powerstories, for without you, I would have never had the skill, the desire, or the confidence to write a one-woman show and bring it to full production in the course of less than three months. Only because I was safe in your loving, nurturing arms could I attempt something that was such a moment of growth, a moment of stepping into my true power, a moment that has already and will continue to change my life. You have opened up a whole new world for me.

I am forever in your debt, my dearest Powerstories, for all the ways you've blessed my life.

Yours always,

JC