Sticker taped to mirror in Gender Neutral bathroom

Lovebombing, in the most general terms, is when you anonymously leave notes or small gifts for people to find. It can be in a public space, such as a grocery story (like leaving notes that say “You are beautiful exactly as you are” in the diet food aisle), library (putting messages of hope inside books about depression or addiction), or where you work (leaving notes that say things like “The way you smile and say hello always cheers me up” in someone’s mailbox), or it can be a private or more personal space, such as leaving cookies on your neighbor’s door step, or putting a note on someone’s car windshield.

message from a “secret admirer” on my car

This will be the third time I’ve lovebombed the building I work in. It’s relatively anonymous — except for that I blog about it and post pictures on Instagram. Even so, there are still people I work with who’ve never figured out it was me. Next week is the last week of classes, with finals after that, so everyone is feeling stressed, fatigued. Add to that the recent presidential election results, the dwindling daylight and increasing cold, and it feels like people could use some encouragement.

I put up tearable flyers, pictures with quotes or a poem, and “you are beautiful” stickers in our employee mail room, the two spots we have microwaves, the women’s bathrooms on all four floors and a few of the men’s, over the water fountains, and in the stairwells and hallways.

My supplies

Student lounge area

“The Thing Is” by Ellen Bass, bathroom stall door

Ethnic Studies is on the 2nd floor of our building, and they had this really cool Post-It collection.

I added something, a bit bigger than a post-it but hopefully they won’t mind. It was one of my favorite flyers I made to hang today.

I know that some people might consider this naive. And yet, we lose students to suicide every year. Many of them (and us) are struggling with anxiety and depression, and with the current political climate and some of the things happening in the world, many of us are afraid and confused. Leaving some anonymous love laying around isn’t the worst thing you could do. I made sure I didn’t get too political so no one felt left out, and I tried to find a few things for the main doors into the men’s bathrooms that weren’t too feminine. And as I taped things up, I held the intention in my heart that the person who needed a particular message the most would find it, that I would put it in the place they’d see it, and that it would somehow help them.

If you’d like to try a lovebomb, (I highly recommend it, makes you feel good and cheers up the people who find them), some of my sources for flyers are:

• Kelly Rae Roberts has a really great flyer in this post you can download.
• Kindness Over Matter has tons of free printables.
• Susan Piver shares lots of great images and quotes on Instagram.
• Grammarly shares some good stuff on Instagram too. Here’s one I used today.
• When I find a quote I like, I Google it and see if anyone has made an image using the quote. If the person has their name or url as part of the image, I make sure to leave it intact on my print out. One thing I did this time was to use a few images from Emily McDowell because she is just SO good at mixing encouragement with the messy stuff of life, at not glossing over the bad things but also not losing her sense of humor. I made sure to include her studio logo on the two I printed out, and I’m going to buy some stuff from her shop to balance the karma of that.
• If I’d had more time, I would have used images from Unsplash, added quotes in PicMonkey, and done some myself.

I know as soon as facilities goes to clean the bathrooms, my flyers will get “cleaned” too. Hopefully a few people see them before that happens and feel at least the tiniest bit cheered up.