CARE.CHECK*: Do you know how good you are?
Are you aware of how precious and worthy you are?
Do you treat yourself like the gift you are to this world?
Do my questions make you feel uncomfortable, unsure, or even agitated?
If so, please read today’s letter.
And please feel invited, always, to write to me about your experience.
In case this letter gets cut in the email, you can click HERE to read the full post now :)]
IF YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO THIS INSTEAD, you can use Speechify, an app through which this Care.Check letter can be read to you by AI Gwyneth Paltrow :)
Hi Care.Friend,
How are you today? How are you right now?
Take a second to notice, to check, to really ask.
To genuinely inquire.
HOW ARE YOU?
I’m everything right now.
It really depends on the time of day and which part of my body or life I am paying attention to, at that exact moment. I’ve traveled so deep into the abyss of my being lately, everything feels both very raw and very LIVELY.
What I mean is that I’m connected to my inner world in a whole new way.
Indeed, my emotions know they’re welcome within me now, that I won’t run away; they’ve realized that I’m learning how to deeply receive them. So they speak to me through constantly shifting sensations.
My thoughts know I will listen to them without reacting immediately (most of the time) and that I'll, at least, try to understand the message they’re trying to bring forth. So they let themselves come to the forefront of my consciousness.
My body knows she’s my priority and my best friend, and that I’m truly committed to honoring her, from now on. So she lets me know what she needs—and I have to witness how much self-care skills I still need to acquire.
Yes, every part of my system knows they’re allowed to be here, which brings me so much self-love, self-connection and therefore self-trust… AND ALSO so much wound awareness.
It means I can’t blame the world anymore for throwing salt at me all day—I’ve realized that salt is not the problem. Because salt landing on integrity and health doesn’t hurt. I’ve realized that salt is actually a gift. An enlightener.
Salt is the proof that something is not quite aligned or integrated within me yet.
That pain is a call for healing… That pain is a call for Love.
* Salt landing on integrity and health doesn’t hurt.*
To open and close my days, I’m currently reading Tererai Trent’s magical and soulful book: The Awakened Woman.
It’s dedicated to what feels dearest to my heart: our sacred dream. And I cannot put into words how validating it feels to me.
I’ve believed that our dreams are holy and precious since the day I was born, but then I grew up in the west… and that deep knowing was not met with the warmest welcome.
We’re sold on the worthiness of achievements and the power of productivity—and completely miss the worthiness of our dreams or the power of Love.
But through her book,
is hugging the little girl inside my heart, with every word. She didn’t only believe in her dreams and how important they were, she made them come true…AND she became one of the most trusted international voices for quality education and women empowerment. Thanks to her, more than 6000 children received education in Zimbabwe where she led the efforts to build 11 schools with her foundation, Tererai Trent International. That woman is a mentor for us all and the embodiment of a miracle.
And one of the key messages in her book focuses on the ways through which we can retrieve our sacred dream, from within the chaos that was created inside of us by decades of constant outside pressure.
She shows us how to remember what feels truest to us, most life-giving and important. She also asks us to reflect on what breaks our heart. For her, it’s the easiest way to reconnect with what she calls our Great hunger.
Our Great Hunger is what we long to do and who we know we’re meant to become, during this extraordinary journey we call Life.
And she believes, just as I do, that this sacred dream is here for a reason. Because it’s our sacred assignment.
* Dreams are holy and precious.*
And my dream has always been—and is today still—to sing, in New York. I don’t know why, I just know. This is who I am meant to be and this is what I am meant to do. That deep knowing is what I call our spark. It’s HOW we love.
Our spark is this miraculous little fire that was put into our heart to guide us while we’re on Earth, to let us know that we have a purpose, one thing we’re meant to be doing, one thing that will always remind us what it feels like to love… and how to come alive.
And what breaks my heart is that most of us have been cut from our spark!
By our culture, by our personal and collective trauma.
We’ve been taught to look outside of ourselves for validation, for a proof that we’re valuable and deserving of the oxygen and space we dare to take. We’ve been taught to idolize our brains and to disparage our bodies. We’ve been shamed out of our own hearts and away from our sacred dreams. We fall into fear and believe that there’s something really wrong with us—and that we were sinful before we even knew how to breathe. And then we spend our entire life trying to fix what was never broken and trying to match expectations that serve no one, destroy our world and suffocate the dreams we were supposed to embody.
So I thought I would write about that today. Because this heart of mine is committed to doing something about it!
* Our Great Hunger leads us to our sacred dream.*
Dear Care.friend, I believe that we are all good inside.
I believe in that dream in your heart, that you might not remember how to tend and listen to, but that is patiently waiting for you to reappear.
I believe your spark is the reason you’re breathing and that it can re-enliven you in a few heartbeats, if you find the courage to move back into your heart and to feel your way back into being.
Oh my dear friend, I do believe this. ALL of you is good. And I don’t have to know you personally to know that. I know.
* Our Great Hunger is what we long to do
and who we know we’re meant to become.*
All of you IS good.
Each part of you.
Even the ones that torture you.
EVEN the ones that hurt others.
Each thought you’re ashamed of, each gift you own within, each so-called flaw you try to hide, each talent you overlook, each so-called shortcoming you obsess about, each emotion you run away from—yes, even the scary ones that keep you up at night—and each behavior you judge relentlessly—yes, no matter how holy or evil they look or feel (or are being labeled by our dehumanizing culture).
GOOD.
I believe that ALL that makes you YOU is good.
Good beyond our ability to fathom how deeply and awe-inspiring good can be.
* What breaks my heart is that most of us have been cut from our spark.*
And why do I believe that? Because I know that all of you is made of Love and that all of you was made to be loved. And in my heart, I know that that Love is made of God. THAT’s how precious you are.
To be fair, I’m not completely sure what the word “God” means to me anymore, but still: I know that God birthed into form is Love! And the only spiritual truth I have never doubted is that Love is sacred. Love is very holy.
* Find the courage to move back into your heart
and to feel your way back into being.*
Now, here’s how I understand Life.
I believe we all have that little spark I was referring to and that it’s actually how we came to be. That spark is our origin. And that spark shines within us from the moment we are conceived and until the moment we leave the Earth.
And the more we listen and embody it, the more we can connect with our true Nature and our sacred dream.
Our spark roots us in self-connection so that our heart can guide us on our way of self-creation. And self-creation is only truly possible when done in devotion to our dream.
That’s how we become who we need! And that’s how we then become the light others also need.
Yes, I believe that’s how we become each other’s beacon of hope, kindness and safety.
The tricky part is that our sparks do not speak to us in a way that our brains can understand. That message has to be translated first, through our body:
It starts as a gut feeling, through intuition. That’s what opens our hearts and allows the love they hold to flow through us and into the world. And AFTER that sacred alchemy, that sacred message can be translated into words and reach our brain.
We can then become who we need to be for our dream to come alive—bringing us more joy and meaning we could ever have dreamed of… and turning us into a gift that the entire world can then benefit from.
* Our spark roots us in self-connection
so that our heart can guide us on our way of self-creation.*
So again, what makes my heart cry in longing and agony is the thought that you might not know that you’re meant to connect and listen to that dream! And that there is NOTHING to fear beneath your skin.
No brokenness to be found. No emotion too raw or shadowy to not be in service—of you, first and foremost, and then of everyone you meet.
It hurts when I hear people accuse themselves of self-sabotage. It hurts when someone thinks they’re damaged goods, irredeemable, bad, worthless. It hurts because I know how it feels!
And I know you do not have to feel this way, ever again.
One thing I’ve been gifted at birth by my fairy godmother (who probably knew I was set up for a rocky start on this planet and needed help) is this acute awareness of how truth feels in the body. It got me through everything… Abuse, neglect, self-hate. It got me to New York! And it constantly reminds me that I’m meant to sing, no matter how much trauma healing needs to happen for me to be able to.
That doesn’t mean I can’t torture myself at length with all the seeds of self-abandonment that were relentlessly planted into me during my formative years… but I know in a way that I cannot put into words what feels true and what does not.
I know that a part of me still believes my mother, who told me that my birth had had the same effect on Earth as Hitler’s life choices (and that is just my birth, that was apparently enough…), but I also know that, no matter how much fear and shame come up every time that thought reverberates through my psyche (which is basically every hour, because that’s not a small legacy to carry), I know that no matter how REAL it feels, it also doesn’t register as truth, WHERE truth lives.
I know that truth opens us up, softens us, enlivens us. Even the truth that hurts so deeply it traps our breath in our lungs. Even the truth that means that something extraordinary is about to end. Even truths such as “I love my apartment so dearly, but there’s no way I can afford the rent increase.” or “I thought we were meant to be together forever and I now realize our relationship is over and one of us must leave.” No matter how earth-shattering and painful it is in the moment, truth liberates. Truth is ALWAYS followed by an inexplicable sense of spaciousness, of expansion, of inner calm.
I know that a lie feels icky, small, cold and lonely, even if it looks good on paper. Even if it was what we desperately wanted to hear! Even if it means we get to keep our current level of comfort—or that things can still appear easy and pretty on IG, for a while longer. Our bodies know… Our bodies are wired for honesty.
* No matter how earth-shattering and painful it is in the moment,
truth liberates.*
And how does our body talk to us? Through feelings.
The problem is that before even getting to feelings, we’ve been prejudiced against the beauty and wisdom of our bodies.
We live in a culture where the brain is seen as the only trustworthy part of our anatomy.
And that is a tragedy because our brains are computers, not creators. They were never meant to guide us! They were meant to follow the directions of our guts and hearts, as well as the guidance of Nature and the Divine.
When in charge, a brain is LOST! It can only reproduce what has already been done, get stuck in comparisons and binary concepts, while generating shame and fear. That’s it. The brain uses the past to shame us for not being good enough and the future to terrorize us by stating we’ll never amount to anything. That’s because the brain is all alone up there! But it doesn’t have to be like that for one more minute.
You get to reintegrate your brain into your body. And even if Western Medicine is convinced that the body is a moron and the source of all evil, you can easily test our wrong that hypothesis is… You just need to let yourself come back into that temple you were given to live in, while you’re down here.
Welcome home my friend…
And now let’s review how beautiful are those feelings we’ve been taught to dread and vilify and forbid.
* Our bodies are wired for honesty.*
I started somatic work in 2020 and that’s when I had my first glimmers of awakening out of denial and a trauma-filtered reality. That’s also when I realized I would have to learn how to FEEL.
So that journey within started by reconnecting with my anger.
Anger… I was TERRIFIED of it.
I thought anger was dangerous, evil, toxic. I didn’t know yet that this is because we mostly talk about the shadow side of anger. Which is the OPPOSITE of anger actually!
Because aggression is not rooted in anger, aggression is anger avoidance. Aggression is what happens when we refuse to feel our anger and project it on the world, in a hopeless attempt to free ourselves from it.
Anger is meant to be fiercely embodied and understood. And what I have learned is that, when you do that, Anger turns into Love.
From that alchemy, then comes a kind of wisdom that cannot be taught—because it can only come into this world thanks to the portal that anger creates, when partnered with our heart.
THAT Anger is what changes the world. That Anger is how we know what is right and what is wrong—and how we understand that it can never be defined by anyone or by one set of rules. That those concepts are beyond fluid, and both deeply universal and incredibly personal.
[Isn’t it one of the most extraordinary paradoxes defining our journey on Earth? How we can only truly find the whole if we let ourselves find our uniqueness? Because our oneness lies at the core of our authenticity—and this gorgeous authenticity that we sacrifice in our thirst for belonging, is actually the only key TO belonging. Which means it is also the only path that leads to soulful heartled connections.]
So yes Anger is love. Anger is the power of love turned into human form. Anger is how we can say NO MORE.
No more projecting shadows we’re trying to outgrow, on a world that only gives abundance and love. No more separation based on concepts that were created by human brains (which includes money, gender, nationalities, religions, desirable physical traits and basically any feature that could make us ever think that our beautiful differences matter more than our ability to love).
Anger is how we can stop enabling abuse by telling ourselves that there’s nothing to be done or by numbing ourselves into denial. Anger is how we can know that we’ve been lied to by folks who were lying to themselves, and that OF COURSE there is another way, OF COURSE there is a better way, the way of Love.
Anger is love. So please, my dear Care.Friend, do not fear your anger for a second. Anger is fuel. And, once again, Anger alchemized into love then fills you up with wisdom. So listen to your Anger. Don’t react, lean in.
There’s nothing to be afraid of, no matter how close you get to your Anger. Find a safe way to connect with it, to move through it, to dance, scream, sing, run, write or shake through it! Give it a safe place to be and you’ll witness in awe that your Anger would never dream of turning against you or against ANYONE else.
Your Anger does not want to separate you from others, your Anger wants you to reunite with your true nature. And your Anger might say that someone’s behavior is unacceptable (because a lot of our behaviors are unacceptable!) BUT true Anger will never say that they need to suffer because of it! Anger will show you that neither YOU, nor anyone else, deserves to suffer because of it.
And Anger will show you how to make sure that vicious cycles cannot use you too… Anger births cycle breakers. Anger is love.
* Anger births cycle breakers.
Anger is love.*
Now, to be fair to Anger, I was even more scared of Grief…
I thought that if I ever started crying, I would never ever stop. I thought the pain would kill me. I thought Sorrow would become my entire life and identity. I thought it would drown me.
And once again, that has not been my experience. My experience has been the perfect opposite.
Because Grief is ALSO Love. Jamie Anderson wrote that “Grief is just Love with no place to go”. And what I've discovered is that Grief actually has a place it can take refuge in, if we let it: our hearts.
Nothing could have prepared me for the depth of love that would come from the expansion that Grief created inside my heart. Pain doesn’t come from Grief, it comes when we resist it. When we dress it up with Fear—or worse, when we dress it up with Shame! It comes when we run away from our Grief, and live right at the border of that ocean of tears that we were never meant to carry in our chest the way we do. That ocean of tears is actually supposed to run through us and into the world… to clean our wounds and free our voices.
We feel like we’re drowning when we grieve, because we don’t let ourselves grieve long enough to realize that we’re not only able to breathe through water, we can relearn how to breathe from our heart.
Grief is love, my darling friend. So I wish you to find a safe place to land—and one of those places is your vibrant heart—and to let yourself experience the holiness of Grief.
Because when felt with your whole heart, Grief too will be alchemized into Love… and from that alchemy will flow into you the most sacred and unconditional form of kindness.
A kindness that will change your life! And also change the life of those you love with your whole heart (a heart that will grow with each brave tear until it can love absolutely everyone).
So please give a voice to your grief. Give it a place where it can vibrate, flow, create and find liberation. Use music, touch, smells, prayers, powerful visuals. Share it with yourself, with your sacred friends, with your community, with me, with our world.
Let yourself grieve to show us the depth of your love... And be ready to receive ours.
* Nothing could have prepared me for the depth of love
that would come from the expansion
that Grief created inside my heart.*
Hopefully, something in you does recognize that Anger and Grief could suffer from an unfair reputation.
But what about Fear? And what about Shame, right?
Am I saying they’re good too?
I absolutely am.
Last week, I wrote about my realization regarding Shame. How Shame, like Fear, is not love. Shame and Fear are little entities here to AWAKEN our capacity to Love. They’re meant to be felt in order to be filled up by our own Love.
They’re here to show us what is wounded, uncared for, leaking, exiled within us. They’re here to let us know that we’re in danger, because parts of us have been cut from the only true healing elixir available on Earth, LOVE.
They’re an invitation to go inside, slowly, patiently, tenderly, safely! (that’s a key word here, we don’t jump into our own shame without first making sure we have a solid anchor into Love).
They’re a path into self-connection and into a kind of self-liberation I would never have guessed could come from such a horrid feeling, from such a sense of hollowness and decay.
If you struggle with shame (and who doesn’t?), I invite you to read last week’s Care.Check and to find the most loving mentor, while you let yourself discover that once again there is nothing to fear with Shame—because Shame, once filled with love, turns into a MAGICAL travel companion: compassion!
Just as Fear, who filled with Love, turns into Courage.
* Shame and Fear are little entities here to AWAKEN our capacity to Love.*
So here’s a summary of what I believe at the moment—and of course as for any spiritual seeker and truth devotee, that changes quite often; however I notice it changes in form but never in essence.
I believe that you are a soul in human form. A soul that has been given a body to walk the Earth, in which there is a heart that was created to guide you, and a brain who’s meant to be the humble servant of the system.
I believe that within your heart, you have a spark. And that that spark is your origin, how you came to be, what keeps you alive. I believe this is what makes our heart our center and our compass, our sacred guide.
I believe that when we’re walking on the path we’re meant to walk on—in order to be who we need to be, to embody our gifts and be able to then share them with the world—we feel joy, awe, gratitude, curiosity, compassion, a grounding peace and an empowering sense of calm.
I believe that those so-called good emotions are the signs that we’re on the right path.
I believe that a spark well-cared for turns into a sacred dream, so that we never lose sight of the horizon, while we’re called to focus only and always on the next right thing—according to our SPARK, and not our culture—the next right step, focusing on right here right now, this sacred minute, this once-in-a-lifetime moment.
And I believe we must follow what makes sense to US. I believe that it can only be determined by listening to our gut and that felt sense of truth (never by trusting blindly what our conditioned mind proclaims).
I also believe that Grief and Anger are there to let us know how deeply and fiercely we love—and to redirect us every time we step off the trajectory that our heart and dreams are guiding us to follow. They’re the safeguards that keep us on our tracks.
And I believe that Fear and Shame show up every time we’ve stepped out of alignment, every time we have a wound we’re not tending to. I believe they’re misunderstood guardian angels—only trying to guide us back into Love, when we go astray.
I believe that all of you is good and that you’re a miracle.
I believe that you’re needed, deserving, worthy and precious. I also believe that being deserving and worthy has nothing to do with what we think or do. I believe you are, just because you ARE.
And I believe that only by remembering that—and it’s simple, but very hard—you can be sure you will have met your purpose on Earth.
Because our only purpose is to be the love we are… and beneath our defenses, we are nothing but Love!
So meeting our purpose is actually much easier than we’ve been told. We met that purpose with our first breath... We’ve been our purpose ever since. We’ll be our purpose until our last breath.
And so our reward is also our essence: Love.
That’s how good you are.
Believe in the goodness of your being, my dear friend.
I believe in YOU.
With kindness, love and light—because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.
Always,
leo