Melissa Romo, Author

Happy 20th Birthday !!! Live this next decade with all the fun and joy you possibly can!! We love you! 💕🫶🎂💕🎉🎂💕🎂🎉🫶❤️🎂

❤️‍🩹

Dear 2024,

I tried to love you the best I could. But I often complained about you, wished you away, or thought more highly of the ones who came before you or the ones who would come after.

I wasted your days like stacks of unnecessary napkins that will get left on a restaurant table, unused and forgotten.

You bored me. I watched your sun rise and your sun set, each 365 times, mostly too busy for more than a glance when you performed this feat for me.

I put you off. There is a long list of things I wanted to do, could have done, am able to do or would be better off doing…but I did almost none of them. I was waiting for your next day and your next day until a day would come that suited me for these activities, but none did. You did your best, but most of your days didn’t suit me enough. And now I wait for the year that comes after you, with the same meek intention.

I forgot you. Which day was the day a stranger caught my arm and pulled me back from the path of a speeding taxi? Which day was the day my husband’s flight landed safely on the other side of the world? Which day was the day one of my sons didn’t suffer a life-altering fall? Which day was the day? I really can’t remember.

But, dear 2024, you gave me all of them without expecting anything back. Before we part forever, let me just say: I am grateful you were free of conflicts and disasters in the places where I lived and traveled. Many people cannot say that.

I am grateful you were free of serious illness. There are years before you when I could not say that.

I am grateful you were full of births and news of miracles that touched my friends and family. Death abounds, but yet you continued to surprise us with the insistence of life.

Goodbye, darling year. Thanks for all of it, for every whirlwind second and minute, every generous hour and day. I will speak of you fondly, always.

#2025

Happy 19th birthday to our budding architect ! Papa and I love you to pieces! You changed our lives in all the best ways 19 years ago this morning ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

UA27 DEN-LHR you almost had me as a stowaway. I watched you leave from A30 DEN-EWR across the concourse…



London-Bound Bird

London-bound bird
white nose down, no word.
What a wish I have to follow you
Imagine them all waiting,
Like not a day has passed.

Why can we never be where we are?
Right this way to LHR.
The light spins, moonlit cloud
A high breath set to lift you away
Into the air, gone, we’re blind.

Boarding any moment now
I linger by the right hand row.
I don’t belong, would they know?
In some far off pub, a black dog corner,
Would they let me beg my way on?

Wander wander through my head,
The uplit bridges, feather beds,
The smokey towers, grass and flowers,
Palace ramparts, tunneled refuge.
Would they let me beg my way on?

Wish it, wish it, shard of glass,
Love you lads, once a lass.
Coronations dazzle, the bread to grail,
Fly me to the wistful Common
Misted river, heath and rail.

Moira and Tim, I crave those arrival arms,
The mosaic Queen, love actually charms.
I linger by the right hand row—
first timers, God!, they just can’t know—
The lore and legion, the washed out day,
London-bound bird, Godspeed your way.

To Be the Author’s Dog, To Be the Dog’s Author

She lies at my side in the bed,
her mink of fur shimmering
with every small sigh,
morning slant of light,
the air draws a gentle
rhythm.

I let her sounds wash over me.
The wheeze from her chest,
the chortles from her throat
when some imagined game flits
across her mind’s eye in her field of dreams.

I think my tranquility is a
reflection of hers, but in truth hers
is a reflection of mine,
giving in to my writer,
words on the wing,
the world weightless, we make
heroes of ourselves in our respective adventures.

Her limbs twitch through a chase,
eyes roll brown to white,
her silky lids flutter,
stretched the full length of my bed
in suspended motion.
Then a sudden stillness,
her tail curled elegantly over
her crossed hind legs,
her front paws folded like
a child’s limbs in a nap,
her damp snout landed in a dive between the folds of the duvet,
ears draped like a stole.
She is utter peace, near me,
my moving pen sings her to
sleep.

-Jan 20, 2024

Do you relate to Kathy? Tips in today’s newsletter and all month (🔗 in bio) about how to deal with that uncomfortable hybrid and remote work sensation of being forgotten. It’s not you!

From today’s letter —> “Kathy is a manager for a multinational sports equipment maker that is headquartered in the UK. Kathy finds out one day that a meeting has happened with everyone at her level, in her division, but strangely she wasn’t invited. She assumes there must have been a reason. But what? Is an org change coming? Was she going to lose some of her remit or be removed from a high-profile project?”

Dear 2023,

I tried to love you the best I could. But I often complained about you, wished you away, or thought more highly of the ones who came before you or the ones who would come after.

I wasted your days like stacks of unnecessary napkins that will get left on a restaurant table, unused and forgotten.

You bored me. I watched your sun rise and your sun set, each 365 times, mostly too busy for more than a glance when you performed this feat for me.

I put you off. There is a long list of things I wanted to do, could have done, am able to do or would be better off doing…but I did almost none of them. I was waiting for your next day and your next day until a day would come that suited me for these activities, but none did. You did your best, but most of your days didn’t suit me enough. And now I wait for the year that comes after you, with the same meek intention.

I forgot you. Which day was the day a stranger caught my arm and pulled me back from the path of a speeding taxi? Which day was the day my husband’s flight landed safely on the other side of the world? Which day was the day one of my sons didn’t suffer a life-altering fall? Which day was the day? I really can’t remember.

But, dear 2023, you gave me all of them without expecting anything back. Before we part forever, let me just say: I am grateful you were free of conflicts and disasters in the places where I lived and traveled. Many people cannot say that.

I am grateful you were free of serious illness. There are years before you when I could not say that.

I am grateful you were full of births and news of miracles that touched my friends and family. Death abounds, but yet you continued to surprise us with the insistence of life.

Goodbye, darling year. Thanks for all of it, for every whirlwind second and minute, every generous hour and day. I will speak of you fondly, always.

❤🥂

The “Season of Connectedness” is all about finding connection across team members who work at a distance from each other — hybrid, remote or working across different offices, the effect is the same: despite physical distance, you have a desire to gel!

Check out today’s substack - it’s a round up of November’s tips on the 2nd power mindset of hybrid teams - MEANING! Get yours! 🔗 in bio!

Do you feel like very little of what you do makes an impact? Do you wish it did, and you could feel that great, impactful energy? A fresh, hot letter is out today on the Showing Up newsletter to help you find MEANING in your distributed team! Link in bio.

Our joy for work is derived from satisfying our seeking brain—our search for novelty, for things that satisfy our curiosity. For many of us, our seeking brain is also searching for meaning. Read the first letter in November's series on Meaning at work, link in the bio. I hope this month's content helps you reconnect with what work means to you! ❤️👏 If you already know what it means to you... tell me in the comments and tag a meaningful work friend!!