Love Gifts

My mother had a term for gifts given without a reason: love gifts. Unlike Christmas, Valentine, or birthday gifts, love gifts just come out-of-the-blue on any old day, for no other reason that you love someone. Not hearts-and-flowers love, necessarily. Just any quantity or variety of like, love, respect, admiration, etc.

For example, last week I picked up a used copy of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden for a long-standing client of mine. I often do guided imagery with her using a garden, and when I saw this $3 love gift, I knew it was meant for her. Another regular client of mine who makes jewelry left me an acrylic-encased butterfly wing pendant as a tip the other day. She did not know how much I loved butterflies or that I sometimes dream of raising them and releasing them as a hobby or of taking a Costa Rican butterfly tour. The unexpected surprise of the tiny beautiful thing, though, brought an unbelivable amount of joy to my day.

One of my recent favorite love gifts are the kodama labels with our names on them that a fellow therapist made for the "buckets" that hold our indivial supplies of oil, lotion, etc. Based on illustrations from Princess Mononoke (see image above), they are a delight and certainly much more inspired that the sticky notes we had been using as labels.

I think that love gifts are a wonderful way to support each other in all times, but especially the tough economic times we find ourselves in now. The rush and stress of doing our jobs well and compassionately in the face of paying all the bills and meeting the financial committments makes for quite a balancing act. A love gift is never expensive and often nothing you would think to buy or make for yourself. When you give it, you lead with your gut and you help someone to stop for moment and smell the proverbial roses . . . and when they smile, you smell them too.