The Purple Party Birthday
I'm already to show up 💜
Dear Starlight,
Today, I’m celebrating the Purple Party Birthday of yesterday.
This past week, I learned more about readiness.
I wasn’t ready for the version of the birthday I was creating and hosting.
I wasn’t ready to share my new website.
Both of these were impulses—desires I committed to a month ago and took action on. I set the expectation, the deadline, and the pressure to perform.
—-
This week was already overflowing with commitments. I spent three days and nights in the deep woods with our extraordinary Place Corps teenagers, followed by a demanding 12-hour workday bookended by community meetings. That left me just one day to pull together a brunch party for thirty people—something I had somehow failed to imagine asking for help with, even though the entire purpose of the gathering was to invite future support. Hmm… Work in progress.
Driving home late Thursday night, exhausted, grocery shopping for party supplies, my mind raced with all I didn’t have ready—no decorations, no tablecloths, no finished website to share my new offerings.
Between red and green traffic lights, I asked myself: Who was I trying to be ready for? And what version of “ready” did I really need to be this weekend?
I realized my idea of readiness meant being completely finished. Done. Then I thought about a jigsaw puzzle—how the fun is in the process, not in the completion when the picture of the cat and tulips is stagnant versus the many pieces that can still become anything.
That reminded me of this past summer when I ran a team retreat. I hadn’t felt “ready” then either, yet I knew I thrive in responsive, creative environments—ones with space for play and improvisation. When I allowed myself to design a structure that honored my creative process, it turned out amazing. I only needed to trust I was already ready and already enough.
With that in mind, I asked myself: What can I do already?
I decided to lay out all my different fabrics like a crazy quilt to cover the massive banquet table. I invited guests to bring something beautiful to help co-decorate the table. And I embraced that this—this collaborative, imperfect, joyful approach—was exactly what I love most. It was already enough.
And the website, what if, instead of unveiling a finished product, I shared it as a work in progress? What if I invited early readers? What if I was ready for that intro step instead? And what if at the party I encouraged others to recognize their own gifts—to create a giant gift swap of being who we already are, doing what we already love?
These steps felt WAY more vulnerable—and far more aligned with my original intention: to share my gifts with more people and to ask for support in sharing them further.
And so, the Purple Party Birthday happened the way I could only ever wish for: my way. Playful, funny, colorful, imperfect, joyful, bright, creative, and collectively brilliant—woven together by the beautiful hands and hearts of everyone present.
A birthday gift arrived wrapped tightly in bonds of perfection cut loose as party streamers revealing I’m already enough. I’m ready to share my gifts as I am today; as an ongoing WIP. A lifelong jigsaw puzzle changing and revealing the picture that one day will be my lived journey.
I never expected to see purple in it, but here it is:)
***But, my dear departed sister forewarned me, “You are going to be an old lady who loves purple.” She said with a cackle sixteen years ago.
—--
And yes, the Purple Party is political. Party committees are forming. If you’d like to be part of the movement, let me know. Purple is the color of nobility, magic, becoming and belonging—the color of the suffragettes who declared:
“Purple is the color of loyalty, constancy to purpose, unswerving steadfastness to a cause.”
May that cause be joy and good for all!💜💜💜💜
PS. I’ve made Purple Party pins—do you want one?
Happy Birthday to a beautiful and inspiring woman. xx