Often our extended family will vacation together: my own husband and kids, plus my parents, and sometimes my brother and his family.  But this summer, my parents went somewhere just the two of them.While they were gone, my brother and I worried about them.  What will they do?  Won't they get bored without their noisy brood of grandchildren to keep things interesting?  I felt so sorry for them. 

Dear Heart,I haven't made it a habit of having dialogues with my organs, but I thought I should at least give this a try--stretch those creative muscles, right? I'm hoping that somewhere in the process I can look upon this exercise as someting more than a gimmick, a timely feature on the editorial calendar. I'm hoping that I can reconnect with you, as I have faint glimpses of what being connected to you feels like, and I miss it.

Big Heart!!! Stop this bickering and shut up already. Get back to doing what you do best -- pumping blood to Big Brain sitting up there in the head so she can make the right moves and I can go back to being a lean, mean thinking machine. Seriously, is this faceoff, this tug and pull, necessary? You guys think it is easy for me to sort out the mess you make in my gut, or wherever? Can't you agree sometime? (BB is just as guilty, but I am supposed to write to you, so).

So, um, yeah. This is Mir's heart, here, and seeing as how I don't have a Facebook page, I figured I'd just do that "25 Things" meme here on BlogHer. I know, I'm totally late to the party, but I've been kind of busy. (Shut up. I have so.) 1) My first crush was on an older man -- he was in third grade when I was in second. He fell off the monkey bars and broke his arm, and when he asked Mir to sign his cast I nearly burst. 2) Nothing endears you to me faster than humor. 3) Nothing shuts me down faster than rudeness.

Dear Heart, I am so glad I finally learned how to listen to what you were saying and realized what you had to say was at least as important if not much more so than listening to my head. After childhood our relationship was pretty on again/off again. What with having to find my way in the world and choices about career and relationships the journey was filled with nothing but conflict. You were speaking loud and clear in those days but I didn't know how to listen. I didn't know the secret to a life well lived has far more to do with following my heart than the prescripts for success handed to me by other well-meaning people.

MemorandumTo: My HeartFrom: Heather B. Date: February 10, 2009RE: ApologyIt has recently come to my attention that I owe you an apology. A groveling, on my hands and knees begging for forgiveness type apology. As if pleading will get you to understand why we have the relationship that we do: Fairly normal and sturdy with gentle slopes then sudden drop offs as we traverse this life of ours.

What are our hearts for, really? For Conversemomma of Ordinary Art, her heart is a street musician who conga-lines alongside her, pounding out theme music for her story. The percussion is killer. Her post, Letter to My Beating Heart sounds out stark, personal stories of heartaches good, bad and worse. Who among us doesn't have a few of these flinch-worthy memories? Their true grit makes Conversemomma's lyrical writing all the more rewarding:

Dear Heart, What have you learned in the past 34 years?  Specifically, the last ten, since you've been with That Man You Married?  You've learned love is not for pussies.  Love is not for the weak.

Dear Heart – You really are all over the place. You had an innocent murmur at birth, which more or less means you made an extra sound, a breather between beats. And now you’re oddly palpitating such that I can feel you in my chest, which I really wish you’d stop.

Dear Heart of Mine -- I think you are a floppy heart. You are dear, but dear and floppy. You will never march to a Souza tune. (You have no feet, after all.) Instead of thumpa-thumpa, I think you say "Flop, flobbada -- flobbada, flop." I do love you, but you are a pushover, a wimp, a patsy for a sob story. If I watch a sad movie, or even a sad commercial, you send instant messages to my tear ducts. "flop, flobbada". Soon I end up crying big, wet, cartoon-tears.

Dear Heart: I try really hard to be a good person. I want to make the world a better place, a place where people can be free of gender constraints and just be themselves. I've spent years working on public policy in the nonprofit sector, trying to institute sound programs that alleviate poverty and enable people to live as individuals. Like most idealists, together you and I embody the spirit of a bleeding heart liberal. I'm proud that we work together that way.

Heart: Pascal once said, "the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing." Oh, I know you hate it when I quote people. It's partly why I did it anyway. I can already hear you saying, "I don't give a hoot what Pascal said. What do you say?" It's funny: it's said that the human brain is the most complex organ of all creatures. And you? What are you, dear Heart? A rather predictable four-chambered pump. How wrong they are.