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Filed under Life in General
Dear Katrina Bennett. Enjoy Your Name On The Wall. You Deserve it!
Dear Katrina,
If you’re reading this letter, it’s time to say goodbye. And as this time has come, there is so much I want to say to you.
Early days Katrina
Since you’ve first come around, hard shell and full of layers, you were the person I always felt I wanted to know better. The mystery behind your serious demeanor made me wonder “who is that woman?” And, oh, Katrina, am I glad to have had the chance to find out, to have seen your fierceness, your strength, your vulnerability, your intelligence, your kindness, and, most of all, your loyalty.
Katrina, do you even realize how relatable you are? From everything like your migraine crisis to only having had one serious relationship that you broke both of your hearts, to putting you goals above everything else in life, I could see myself. As the girl whose life could never stop — who went through high school, college and grad school with migraines (and people would always stare and wonder how I wasn’t hidden under a blanket with the lights out) — and it still doesn’t, because, I swear on whatever’s sacred to me, I am writing this with my head throbbing after a day of sitting with my father during chemo, doing yoga, RPG, a doctor’s appointment — seeing you get through life and live it despite your crisis made me feel like less of an alien for not stopping everything because of it, it made me feel normal and inspired and it made me root for you even more.
Katrina ready to fight
Katrina, do you even realize how powerful you are? How with each layer of yourself you uncover you become more of a human we want to be best friends with? With your perfectionism — and I so wish we could have had time to see where that came from — your drive to succeed and your fierce fierce loyalty. Your personal moral standards and ethics above all — even yourself — but not above your friends. Do you realize how powerful that makes you? Someone who fights for the well being of others at all costs, even of herself?
In all these years, no one has deserved to have that name on the wall more than you have. From the time you were Louis associate, and when you worked for Zane, and then back at your firm, no one has shown more integrity. No one has shown more focus, more determination, more ethics. No one has set a clearer line they’re not willing to cross — and stayed within its margins — and yet, still managed to be the best lawyer, the best senior partner and the best friend anyone would want to have on their corner. You’re the one everyone respects!
You can try, but you won’t catch her by surprise.
Listen — now that you’ve got this — remember to give yourself the chance to live for yourself as well. All these years you’ve put your work, your friends, your conscience above your own happiness. And you know what? You deserve to be happy, too. This is merely a single step into a long life of happiness — that I hope you’ll allow yourself to have. Of success, but also of joy and dance and laughter and… love.
Katrina Bennett — no one — and I repeat no one — has worked harder to have their name on that wall. No one has sacrificed more for it. So, enjoy having BENNETT up on that wall. No one deserves it more than you do.
Filed under Life in General
#RenewWhiskeyCavalier
18 seconds.
A lot can happen in that time. In 18 seconds a heart pumps 1.260 liters of blood. 77.4 babies are born. 43,881,462 emails are sent. Bill Gates earns $4500. (Source: https://www.omnicalculator.com/everyday-life/every-second).
In 18 seconds, you can fall in love. In all my skepticism that surrounds real life, I think it’s ludicrous to believe you could ever know someone enough to love them in such a short time. But with a world of life-like fictional characters? Yes, that is all it takes.
It took me 18 seconds of Scott Foley sobbing to a romantic comedy for me to love Whiskey Cavalier. I know because I looked. I wanted to know how long it had taken. By minute 24, I was sure: this was a show I needed in my life forever.
Will and Frankie – Whiskey Cavalier
These shows don’t show up often. Sometimes, tv shows grow into becoming your favorites. Rarely, you start watching something and you feel that warm and fuzzies inside, the feeling that everything is as it should be, both in the show — which likely has characters that work together to create a perfect balance and an engaging plot — and outside it, in your own life, even when everything is very not.
When Whiskey Cavalier first came on air I was having a horrible reaction to a medication, one that made me have unbearable anxiety and daily panic attacks. This is something I never want to feel again and watching the show was the first time in a while I felt okay. I didn’t feel like the world was falling apart around me
The main cast of Whiskey Cavalier
Soon I took it to Twitter and I was met with such grace. I didn’t know how famous Lauren Cohen was until she replied to me like she was just a mutual. Ana Ortíz and Josh Hopkins — the two cast members I actually didn’t know before — were always so engaging and present — and David Hemingson, the creator, so great and thankful to have us with him.
My story doesn’t end there. It’s been 11 episodes, and they carried me through a suicide attempt and the aftermath of it of a close family member, the migraines that followed my lasik surgery that so many times incapacitated me to the point of not being able to stare at a screen (and I had to mostly stop live tweeting, which sucked), it was there with me through a huge personal accomplishment I can’t wait to share with you all.
11 weeks. Some of the craziest 11 weeks of my life. Some days I didn’t even know how I would get through them. I didn’t know how to get through the hour. My life has been so inconsistent that’s been terrifying. But they were there. Frankie. Will. Susan. Standish. Jai. Ray. Freaking Ray. Did we know we’d love him that much?
Sometimes, when I feel like I’m too emotionally exhausted to keep going, I try to listen to Susan’s pep talks in my head. I try to tackle life with Frankie’s badass fighting moves (Susan’s too — in heels). I try to handle every day with Will’s annoying positivity and Standish sense of humor. I try to do my art, my craft with Jai’s precision and talent. When I feel I’m failing, I focus on my shot of redemption like Ray.
If this isn’t giving life, what is? If this isn’t teaching, what is? If this isn’t what really what really matters, what is?
For the past 11 weeks, Whiskey Cavalier has been consistence. I’ve found a home, friends and solace in its existence in the world. At 24 minutes, I knew I wanted it forever. 13 weeks is not enough. I have so much more to learn. We all do. Life is hard enough for us not to have the shows that give us joy. It’s hard enough for all the darkness that’s out there. Whiskey Cavalier is light, and I’ll always fight for light. For fun. For laughter. For family.
Susan, Standish, Jai, Frankie and Will, cheering
So, Warner Bros. studios. Please, Renew Whiskey Cavalier. Now that ABC has canceled it, someone else, pick it up. For all of us! Follow the hashtag #SaveWhiskeyCavalier. It has so much strength. It has taught us endless ways to be strong. We talk about it. How it taught us to live and to fight. We’re fighting because it matters. For every single one of us.
Filed under Fiction, Love, Television
Dear Jennifer, enjoy your unicorn rides. You deserve them!
Dear Jennifer,
I’m glad you’re able to read this letter. It means you’ve survived the whole virus-time-travel-red forest-basically end of the world ordeal from the last four years. Four years that I bet felt like five or six lifetimes, didn’t they?
Jennifer, as I watched your story unfold, as I cheered on Team Splinter and waited for the outcome, I yearned for your happy ending as much as I yearn for my own. Have you yet realized how you’ve always been the heart of everything? How you’re the actual protagonist of the whole story?
We saw every step of your path, as you struggled with your inner voices and demons. And how beautiful you handled them. How gracefully you kept living everyday, never, ever giving up.
I can’t even imagine the burden of being a primary, but I’ve seen in your journey the pain you’ve carried. The pain of being trapped inside your own head, the pain of not being taken seriously and being taken for granted — until you become a part of a family at last — the pain of not knowing whether you’re too powerful, too crazy or a little bit of both.
Do you even realize how much an inspiration you are? I’m not even talking of all the cheesy — but always amazing wisdom you share — but your survival in itself.
It is, you know, exhausting being crazy. I know, because in so many ways I’m also trapped in my own mind. I feel things — I have a world perspective greater than my own — that I wish I didn’t have to deal with. It’s obviously nothing compared to having scrambled visions of past, present and future, being under the constant threat of, you know, being murdered, but still, it’s constant pain. And it amazes me, astounds me how you go through every day with joy and grace.
You could have made all the wrong choices, you could have let the voices and the pain destroy you. But you carried on and through. You’ve stared at your own death fave to face (and how I sobbed) and you chose life every time. You were abandoned for years in freaking France and you’d still give your life for your friends without a beat. And you did.
Jennifer, you said that there are many endings, but the right one is the one you choose. You chose life. You chose to fight for your life, your friends and your happy ending, even when the odds were against you. Even when all forces — external and internal — were against you. You never gave up. On anyone, especially yourself. You’re my inspiration. If you can do it, so can I.
Even in your darkest moments, you’ve always been light. You’ve always been heart.
Jennifer, no one deserves this happy ending more than you do. Enjoy all the unicorns rides. You’re free now.
Filed under Life in General
Dear Adalind, Enjoy Your Happy Ending. You’ve Earned It!
Dear Adalind,
First of all, whew! If you’re reading this, it means you’ve survived. I’m so glad you did! I mean, I’m glad everyone survived, and everyone got their happy ending, but no one is more deserving of that than you. To people reading this letter, and they might, since it’s an open letter, they may grunt and scoff butshesacrazybiestandtriedtokilleveryone so she surely doesn’t deserve a happy ending, right? After all she’s done, she gets to just sail off into the sunset like everyone who’s been good and fair all along?
Oh, dear Adalind, how I wish everyone could understand the beauty and the complexity of your being. You’ve brought something else to the everlasting debate of nature vs. nurture that so many people often forget are also part of the equation: opportunity and choice. With humans, I think, the line between being born actually evil or good is a little more gray than with wesen, but, you, a born Hexenbiest, never had a choice to begin with. Your nature to surrender to power and take pleasure in destruction was all you ever knew from the start. And being raised by your Hexenbiest mother (bless her heart) nurture was a fiery and mortal as nature. Not only there was immensurable evil power inside you, you were never taught to repress or contain it.
Being a mother changes things, doesn’t it? It’s maybe the one instinct stronger than the biest inside you. Surely you hadn’t known love like that before, worth giving your everything for, even your deepest and most tresured part of yourself: the biest. Weren’t you fortunate that along with the immense love you had for your children, you also found… friendship? And… romantic love? And, then, just then, for the first time, the biest was literally dorment and you could feel emotions that didn’t come from her, but from the most human part of your soul. And when presented with that choice, for the first time in your life, you chose to fight the biest. You never batted an eye, you blindedly and fiercely chose love.
And we all saw your battles and your path. We saw how hard you’ve had, it, too. I imagine it’s probably hard to look back and see all the evil you’ve done. I see a lot of people saying you don’t deserve a happy ending and you don’t deserve forgiveness, that there is no excuse for what you’ve done. They are wrong, you see. You are not the biest, and maybe had you been taught that from the start, as you will surely teach your daughter, you would have learned to control her. We all know fighting a Hexenbiest and her power isn’t easy. It’s not easy fighting one from the outside, let alone the one which lives inside you. I think even us, human, who live with darkness and battle our human monsters understand that. Sometimes, we need power inhibitors, too. We need the endless support of friends. We need to find love and purpose to understand what really matters in our lives.
I just want you to know, I’m so proud of you. For the last six years, I’ve seen you change and grow and turn your life around. I’ve seen you choose life over death. You know, not only you were Nick’s first, but you were our first, too. I think we were all a little afraid of the biest at first. We all hated you at some point. You probably hated yourself. But seeing you now, there are few I’ve been prouder of.
So, dear Adalind, enjoy your happy ending! Enjoy your twenty plus years of love and happiness with Nick, Diana and Kelly. Enjoy your friendships with Monroe, Rosalee, Wu, Hank, and even Juliette and Renard (the fact that you don’t hold a grudge against each other, and are, ultimately, willing to die for each other — maybe not Renard — means everything). Enjoy beautiful Portland that you made a part of our lives. Know that every one of your choices have led you to this moment, have made you who you’ve become. And that is a good person. You’re forgiven. You’ve more than paid back your share of sorrow. You’ve earned every bit of happiness life has bestowed upon you. Enjoy it, my dear, and may it last forever!
Filed under Love, Polemics, Television
Books & Hugs 