A night that heals

it's all about love

CARE check*: What does the end of year mean to you?

What feels holy to YOUR heart?

How do you want to show up for those days that can feel like the most sacred celebrations or the most dreadful masquerade depending on our environment and how free we feel to define them from the inside out?

What do you need right now to feel empowered to live your life in the way that your heart needs you to?

How can you build more space for your joy, your ease, your comfort?

How can you build a safe place for your grief, your overwhelm and your fears to find shelter if there’s a storm?

I hope this week’s letter will feel like an invitation to reclaim what feels holy and sacred and true and loving to you, and to trust that it is ALL that matters.

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In case this letter gets cut in the email, you can click HERE to read the full post now :)

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Hi CARE friend,

How are you? How are the holidays meeting you?

What does this season mean to YOU?

Is it a source of joy, inspiration and warmth?

Is it a challenge, an energy drain, a money puzzle or a cross to bear?

It’s Christmas eve as I write those words and I woke up to snow swirling in the rising sun’s glow. Which means that my very first white Christmas has begun! Oh how enchanted five year old leo would have been… And how enchanted as she danced inside my heart.

The meaning of Christmas has changed a lot for me over the years…

I was raised catholic and that anchored within me a feeling of awe and devotion that still vibrantly inhabits my body on Christmas night.

I also believed in Santa Claus as a kid and I will never let go of the magic and sweetness of trusting that there was an entire village of generous fairy gift makers, working alongside a cute couple who knew that the happiness of children was worth living for.

Adding to the heartwarming nostalgia, my father had a very large extended family so Christmas actually felt quite safe and festive until my late teens. There would be at least 20 of us at every meal at my paternal grandfather’s house in the South of France... and my father was always the happiest when reunited with the ways of his bloodline. In parallel, my mother was on her best behavior and more importantly, she genuinely loved Christmas—there is a generous soul hiding under anybody’s armor of trauma, so gift giving always brought a warm glow on her face.

But after the family patriarch died at the beautiful age of 104, this yearly moment of reprieve withered away—and very soon after that I was to leave my parent’s house and go no contact with my mother anyway.

It then took a few years for my father to decide to spend Christmas Day with my mother and Christmas Eve with me… and *if* I was invited to a family event, it was under the condition that my mother would be present too, so of course I couldn’t go.

That’s how Christmas became associated with the stigma of being alone on that one night and day where the social contract dictates that you should be anything but.

Which is why I chose to be on call on Christmas night as soon as on-call nights became a part of my life (which is early on in France since we enter Med school right after high school).

And there is magic to be found when those who come to receive care and those who come to deliver it spend Christmas together in a country like France, where pretty much everyone celebrates it because it isn’t seen as a religious holiday by most.

It would take yet another decade for me to realize that the only way I would be able to reconnect with the magic of Christmas that my heart was yearning for, would be to give myself permission to spend it on my own terms—on the other side of the world, in the arms of my greatest love: a city called… New York.

A city I call home now.

I have felt sad at Christmas, more than once, but I have never felt lonely.

To me, Christmas is the night where Unconditional Love shines through every heart in order to remind the world that there is hope to be found in every star, every sunrise, every sunset and every beating heart on Earth. (This morning I could also see it reflected back to me in every snowflake dancing in front of my windows.)

It is a mystical night that once yielded the power to pause a war!

And even if I don’t identify as a Christian anymore, I still believe that Jesus existed, and I cherish his teachings and guidance… To me, he spoke the truth of LOVE.

And Love is reason enough to celebrate. Love is something that we all know exists—if only in the bewildered eyes of a newborn child.

Love is something that some convinced themselves to fear and disrespect, but it’s also the only one force that can never ever leave one’s heart—no matter how frozen and barricaded that one heart got.

Love is what is linked to the idea of Christmas for most of us, whether we are religious or not. Love transcends all beliefs and traditions... because Love is our essence.

So probably because so many gather, all around the globe, to celebrate the bonds the love that binds them in the name of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and/or indepedently of any religion… Love seems to be reborn each year in December, even more radiant and invincible than before.

Yes, Love!

This is what Christmas simply means to me now: celebrating Love.

Christmas eve reminds me of the hope that every newborn brings on Earth and that children are meant to be honored and welcomed as the absolute treasure that each and every one of them are.

This night sheds light on the beauty of solidarity found in the harshest and loneliest of times, symbolized by the struggle that encountered Jesus’ young parents.

And dreaming that, as I sleep, there’s a force of Love, led by angelic reindeers and traveling across the entire world to deliver the gift of feeling cared for to trusting little souls rewarms my heart for the entire year.

I also deeply appreciate how we decorate our homes and our streets—as if to cocoon our bodies into the embrace of winter—and how easy it is to meet with genuine kindness and appreciation the eyes of a stranger in December. It feels so obvious that we want each other to know that we are loved and that we matter and that things will be okay… somehow, someway.

Because Love is real and there truly is magic to be found on Earth: The magic of LOVE.

And finally I love connecting with my friends—my beautiful chosen family—and offering them a symbol of how much they mean to me… I love getting to know their own customs, their Christmas & Hanukkah stories, and the joy and grief that this time of year awakens within them.

I love knowing that I can either help them amplify that goodness or help them carry what feels heavy on their shoulders.

And most of all, I love debating with anyone who will listen whether we can really be CERTAIN that there is no winter wonderland, hiding beneath the veil of our willingness to trust that Magic is just as real as the songs we sing about it…

To me, Christmas is the night where Unconditional Love shines

through every heart in order to remind the world

that there is hope to be found in every sunset,

in every star, every sunset and every beating heart on Earth.

As with everything else, I see how benevolent Life is with delivering to me my wildest dreams one at a time, so that I build the capacity to receive them and feel the joy that they bring.

In 2021, my dream of spending Christmas in my New York home came true! This year, my New York Christmas started under the snow. The next phase will be to have a white Christmas in my New York home with those I love most… but ALL IN DUE TIME.

For now the joyous phone calls, loving letters, texts and gifts will be more than enough to bathe me in awe. Especially since this year I am also bursting with excitement because my best friend and baby godson will be there in 10 days to help me celebrate my 40th birthday in the most soul nourishing way!!

Because yes, I will be spending this Christmas alone and, true, I still can barely walk so I won’t even be able to go to the park to make this day special… but I do not feel lonely at all.

Mostly, I feel grateful.

Grateful to have made it this far on my path of realignment. Grateful that I can sing and see the New York sky while I write to you. Grateful that there is NOTHING that can permanently take away our ability to love... How miraculous is that?

Christmas eve reminds me of the hope that EVERY child brings on Earth

and that children are meant to be honored and welcome

as the absolute treasure that each and every one of them are.

If this week was good to you CARE friend, I pray that it will fuel your spark into the fire that will enliven your sacred dream for the year to come.

If this week is hard for you my beloved, I pray that we can remind each other that this is only a chapter and that we’re holding the pen that can take our story in an entirely new direction.

I also want to extend an invitation to all the grieving hearts that might be reading these words to remember that Grief, once felt and alchemized, turns into kindness—and that tears come from sacred water that allows our pain and wounds to turn into gold and awe… So let them flow!

And please, my beautiful Earth fellow, know that a griefful end of the year is not a wasted one—contrary to what I was once taught, nothing to be ashamed of! It is a very holy portal into what the world yearns for: UNCONDITIONAL LOVE.

We are only ALWAYS the answer we are looking for.

May we reconnect with the divine inner light that is reborn every year within our heart AND may we embody this light for a world that needs it more than ever.

May we also remember the sacredness of the night and that the darkness is just as important as the light, because…

The darkness is a nursery of stars.

Merry season of LOVE to you all !!

With kindness, love and light—knowing that all three are born in the sacred darkness that we do not need to fear anymore.

leo