Em bé ơi,
It’s 5:51 AM, and I’m writing to you while you sleep beside me. This has truly become a ritual. I’ve been up since 3:30, contemplating and rewriting what I want to share with you - something that’s been on my mind for months, especially as 2024 comes to an end and 2025 approaches.
Today, I want to talk to you about values, which are vital because they serve as a compass, guiding our decisions, actions, and priorities and helping us live with intention and purpose. I recently created a list of personal values and wrote a manifesto to help ground and guide me. It’s become my personal bible, offering clarity on the life I want to create for myself, for us, and the career I want to rebuild. To keep the momentum going, I thought it would be helpful to outline a list of family values I hope we can embrace together, even though you’re still so young.
Some of these I’m already practicing, and others are aspirations that I’m working toward. As we grow, our values will evolve too. From time to time, we’ll revisit them. But for now, let’s begin with these:
Our Family Values
Core Values
Prioritize emotional well-being and personal connection by honoring, supporting, and creating a loving space for all feelings and emotions.
Maintain physical and mental well-being through healthy habits, movement, and a kind relationship with food. Appreciate and honor foods in their most natural, wholesome form, eating with joy and in moderation, balancing mindful eating with making meals moments of connection.
Cultivate self-love through positive body image, trust in our intuition and a healthy sense of personal worth.
Foster grace and harmony in ourselves and our living environment by slowing down, moving with awareness and calm intention, staying organized, contributing to cleanliness, speaking kindly, and treating one another with respect.
Protect and honor boundaries for ourselves and others, cultivating mutual understanding and trust.
Other Values
Foster faith by trusting in a higher power, embracing surrender in uncertainty, and deepening connection with our truest selves and the flow of life.
Practice gratitude, self-reflection and mindfulness, finding joy in stillness and the art of doing nothing.
Take responsibility for our well-being and how we show up, embracing humility, accountability and growth through imperfection.
Build resilience by approaching challenges with courage, adaptability, and a willingness to learn.
Always lead with kindness and compassion, making decisions and taking actions from a place of love toward ourselves and others.
Choose personal truth over societal or cultural standards while respecting the unique perspectives of others.
Embrace creativity and authenticity in self-expression.
Discover and create beauty through simplicity, nature, and a sustainable lifestyle centered on mindful consumption and respect for the earth.
Celebrate life’s milestones, big and small, while savoring joy in the everyday moments and intentionally creating space for play, fun and wonder.
Cultivate a lifelong love of learning, curiosity, and exploration.
Cultivate a healthy relationship with money by viewing it as a tool for creating value, contributing, and building freedom.
Define success on our own terms, focusing on purpose, impact, and well-being, rather than comparison, achievement, or accumulation.
Honor and explore diverse cultures, traditions, and perspectives, while staying rooted in and deeply connected to our own.
Practice generosity by helping others and contributing to our community, while proudly owning what’s ours and comfortably asking for what we need.
Show kindness to everyone while being intentional in choosing friends, building our inner circle one relationship at a time.
I look forward to watching you grow, with these values guiding the person you become. And I am so grateful to grow alongside you every step of the way.
I love you,
Mommy
In 2023, after becoming pregnant with my daughter. I decided to wipe my Instagram clean and stepped away from the world. Now, as my daughter turns one, I feel ready to reengage. Follow me on Instagram as I rebuild my feed and my life.