It doesn't unfurl like silk, release a scent, flutter in breeze. A stem draws moisture, a channel of nourishment as well as fortitude. A stem feeds something beautiful. A stem is a backbone.

Nurturing isn't just about hope or prayer, as welcome as those gestures are. It's about resources and food and water and shelter. Literal, tangible, everyday caring—the very same we do as parents. Picking up and putting away. Wiping and lifting and stirring supper with one hand while tussling a scruffy, three-foot head with the other. This is the nurturing that makes souls safe, keeps bellies from rumbling. It is plain and often unseen and yet it keeps whole families straight up and down, growing taller.

For a while, until we need not be, we can be Haiti's stem.

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Bright and early this morning, the virtual doors opened at To Haiti with Love, an online fundraising auction and gathering of creative spirits.

René came up with the idea six days ago. She emailed me and I responded by cannonballing into it, landing on top of her head. The generous people at Squarespace agreed to play host and within hours, emails were fast and furious and our community of artistic friends responded without hesitation.

With all proceeds going to the St. Joseph's family of homes for children in Port au Prince, Haiti, we're selling a Mondo Beyondo pass from the lovely Jen Lemen and Andrea Scher, a parade of beautiful (and many familiar, in these parts) photographic prints, original artwork, clothing, a coveted Shutter Sisters flash bulb necklace, my mother's unspeakably wonderful bird mobile, homemade maple marshmallows, and a ski getaway in a historic cabin in Telluride, Colorado. The Dread Crew's own Sydney Smith has even contributed an original, one-of-a-kind illustration that you're going to have to pry out of my sobbing, wanty hands. That's just to name just a few of the treasures up for bidding, and more items will be added every day—so visit often throughout the week. We've got such fabulous items waiting in the wings I can hardly keep my grinning mouth shut.

As photographers and authors and painters and toymakers and quilters, we offer what we know. Useful things, beautiful things. All tangible. Perhaps it's not the same as being able to pick up, dust off, offer embraces and warmth as proximity would compel us. Perhaps it's much, much better. It's the means and the resources from which self-nurturing springs.

Go there now, and browse, and bid. Tweet about it. Share it on Facebook. I'm being bossy because it's for good. The Canadian federal government will match our funds raised if we can get it into Haiti's hands by February 12. Shout it, cheer it, shop it. Are you an artist? Have something to offer? Let us know.

St. Joseph's nurtures Haiti's future innovators and artists and leaders. It creates family where there was none. Let's nurture them in that good work.

This post was borrowed from today's Shutter Sisters, because I've been up past 3 AM for three nights now, and I have cut-and-paste tendonitis and blogging cramps and look like a wild boar. So forgive the self-piracy. Off I go to collapse, and to dream of Rungi Chungi.