Dear reader,

If you’re reading this, it means you made it through. January felt like a whole year by itself, and yet here you are, still breathing, still trying. I’m glad you’re here.

I’ve been sitting with this loveletter for a while, feeling both full and wordless. This past season left my heart heavy in ways I can’t fully explain, as if an old chapter kept crumbling in slow motion. I started and deleted so many drafts. I wanted to tell you how strange and heavy this past year has been, how it felt like living in a loop of endings, like a snake shedding skin that wasn’t ready to come off yet. I kept waiting for the right moment, the right words, the right feeling, and nothing came. Some days I felt like a stone in a river, everything moving around me while I stayed stuck.

And then, something softened.

I realised it’s not that there was nothing to say. It’s that there was too much. So much sadness, so much beauty, so much that doesn’t fit into a neat paragraph. The world feels like a polycrisis of the heart and the headlines. There are days I feel over-informed and under-held. Maybe you know that feeling too. The urge to disappear to a deserted island is real, meanwhile I am currently living on an island, just not deserted haha.

If you feel any of this too, I want you to know I think of you. I wonder where you are reading this, what your sky looks like tonight, whether you have someone to exhale with.

Home has never been one fixed place for me. It has been houses I leave, beds I borrow, suitcases, islands, cities, strangers who became family and family who became far away. Moving so often taught me to build home anywhere, not always because I wanted to, but because I had to. Home is where your nervous system can exhale. Home is where you feel loved. Maybe that’s why writing to you feels like building a tiny home in the space between us. For a moment, we meet here.

There is something else on my heart too: love, and how rarely we say it out loud. We’re shy, busy, distracted, afraid of being too much or not enough. We feel love quietly but leave it unspoken. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote that when you say “I love you” with your whole being, not just your mouth, it can transform the world. When we express love, it doesn’t run out. It multiplies. Our whole body fills with it, activates it, makes it more real.

So here’s a gentle invitation: if someone comes to mind today, let them know. Call them or send the message. Say, “I’m thinking of you,” or “I miss you,” or “You matter to me.” It doesn’t have to be romantic, or dramatic, or perfectly written. It just has to be true. We need to see the goodness in each other and say it out loud. Not just see the gold in someone’s soul, but embrace it. Name it. Offer it back to them like a mirror. You can start where it’s easiest to feel love and widen the circles from there. Begin with your dog, your child, your friend, the person who made your coffee this morning, the neighbour who nods at you, yourself in the mirror. Real love is not always fireworks. Sometimes it’s a “I’m here,” a hand on your back, a shared silence, a cap that says “I MISS MY DOG” because you really do.

When I travel, the thing I miss most is my dog, Lily. The ache of leaving her, the wish that I could explain I’ll be back soon, the way her presence makes any room feel like home. That longing became the seed for something I created. On the surface it’s a cap that says I MISS MY DOG. Underneath, it’s about unconditional love and all the beings who shape us without using words. In a world that always wants more, it’s a reminder to honour what already matters. If you feel called and happen to be in Amsterdam, there are currently a few left at X BANK, the Dutch art and design store inside W Amsterdam on Spuistraat 172. Also available online, shipped to any corner of the world. If one finds its way to you or someone dear, I hope it feels like a small talisman of love.

At night, when the sky is dark, I find myself thinking about quantum entanglement. The idea that two particles created together can stay connected no matter how far apart they travel. Change one, and the other responds, instantly. Distance becomes a suggestion, not a rule. I like to imagine that the people we love are like that too. Once our souls have really met, something between us keeps moving, even when life scatters us across cities, continents, timelines. Sometimes you think about someone you haven’t spoken to in years, and a moment later they message you. You wake with the feeling of someone in your heart before you remember their name. We are all part of one big universe or more…

If you’re missing someone right now, I want you to know that missing is also a form of love. It means your heart remembers. Somewhere, in this vast, messy universe, under these same stars, there is a version of you and them who once shared a moment that mattered. That doesn’t disappear. It just changes shape.

So, as this new chapter slowly unfolds, I hope you can be gentle with yourself. Let the old cycle complete. Let your system rest. Pause to take in the small joys: a homemade meal, a good coffee, a window of sunlight on the floor, a hand you can hold, laughter over something silly, the feeling of sand under your feet, the sound of rain or even your own breath slowing down.

I’d love to give you a hug today. If you have a space in your heart, you can send it back, with a thought, a breath, or a reply if you feel like it. I’ll be here, receiving it.

This loveletter is my way of saying: I see you, even if I don’t know your face. I feel you, somewhere across this quantum field of hearts, Wi-Fi and waves. Thank you for reading, for returning, for staying with me through these loveletters, these moons, these tides of change. It means more to me than I can say.

With love,
Anne Barlinckhoff

P.S. If you feel like someone you love might need this, please pass it on. Love multiplies when shared.