Letters to Viv: The Fae, The Bread, and Me

On joy, language, and learning to trust the Fae again — because magic feels better than cynicism.

Letters to Viv
Open, soul-packed letters to the kind of human I write for: the curious, creative, exhausted by the hustle, and craving something more. I’m writing to you (and me).

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Dear Viv,

I spent October in Ireland.

Even the Toronto Blue Jays made the World Series. Unfortunately, they didn’t win.

Ireland did, though, elect a third female president with 63% of the vote.

An Artist Basic Income is rolling out because someone finally did the math and realized imagination is profitable. For every euro given to artists, €1.39 is returned to the economy.

A nation investing in creativity. It’s about time someone figured that out.

I turned 46 here. A birthday surrounded by moss, magic, and butter. No drama, no crisis, just a woman rebuilding from the inside out, with a side of black pudding.

I’ve walked through pagan circles and church ruins, knocked on fairy doors. Wandered ring forts that hum beneath your feet. I believe in the Fae again; magic, mischief, all of it. Because why not? Magic feels better than cynicism, and frankly, the Fae have better boundaries than most humans.

I’ve stood in ancient forests that whisper secrets, boglands that smell like history and home. The ground here has a pulse, tar black and sweet as treacle. I swear it speaks in vowels.

And the eating, Viv.

My God, the eating.

I’ve eaten like someone who has finally quit performing restraint.

Brown soda bread, still warm from the oven.

Black pudding, crisp and salty.

Chocolate before noon, because I can.

A cheese-and-onion crisp sandwich, the Irish staple. If you know, you know.

Every bite, joy. The reckless, unapologetic kind. I didn’t count, I didn’t question. I just ate.

I’ve spent years chewing guilt; this month, I swallowed freedom.

Somewhere between the butter and the bog, I started dreaming again. Properly dreaming. Big, delicious, irresponsible dreams. The kind that makes you scribble on napkins and believe that life can be both practical and poetic.

Ireland reminds you that dreaming isn’t a luxury, it’s a sport.

You plan, you scheme, you talk about it over pints. Someone always knows a cousin who can help.

I’ve been writing here, too. Ideas falling out of me like confetti.

I’ve realized I’m not meant to dabble in storytelling. I’m meant to live inside it.

It’s in the soil, the songs, the way people here can make tragedy sound like a punchline.

That’s the thing about the Irish, Viv.

We’ve survived everything: famine, colonizers, Catholic guilt and still, we laugh.

We tell stories. We pour tea. We say “ah sure, you’ll be grand” even when you’re not.

It’s not denial. It’s defiance dressed as charm.

I’ve been speaking bits of Gaeilge again. Stumbling, proud. Grá, love. Fáilte, welcome. Sláinte, to your health.

Every word feels like a homecoming. The sounds sit differently in my mouth, rounder, slower, sacred. The language remembers me, even if I’m still remembering it.

And through all of it, I’ve felt them — my people.

The ancestors who built stone walls with hands that prayed and cursed in the same breath. The women who kept the songs alive, the men who told stories by the fire.

I swear I’ve felt their laughter in the wind, their approval in the heat of a whiskey.

So yes, I came here to reconnect.

And I did, to my roots, my joy, my appetite, my imagination.

Ireland gave me back my voice and the courage to use it loudly.

I’m leaving with a full heart, a full belly, and a notebook that could burst.

New stories are already tapping their feet, waiting for their cue.

Grá,

Tanya

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