CARE.CHECK*: what is your relationship with the darkness?
The word, the idea, the metaphor, the experience.
How does your body respond to reading the question?
Now… how does your heart answer when you ask your heart specifically?
And what about your gut?
Has it shifted at all recently?
And what comes up for you when receiving the invitation to build intimacy with it?
I hope this week’s letter will help you see the darkness differently.
And I hope that this platform is helping you KNOW that the Mystery of Life and our emotional realm are not the sources of human beings’ despair… but powerful invitation to embody our humanity.
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 :)
Hi Care.Friend,
How have you been?
I’ve missed writing to you.
What is one thing you did recently that you’re in awe of?
What is one gift that you let yourself receive—be it from yourself, from Nature, from the God of your understanding or from a loved one—with open arms?
What is one thing you’ve learned (or relearned) and now know for sure?
It’s only been three weeks since my last letter, but it feels like a lifetime ago to my heart. This September has irremediably changed me and my surroundings.
I had a feeling that it would but we’re never truly prepared for life-altering change, are we?
And that’s okay—we don’t need to.
Preparation can be good but preparation also tends to bring rigidity, while change calls for subtlety, fluidity, seaweed-ness, water energy.
This portal I just walked through was themed…
I told the Universe I was ready to descend within me even more, and the Universe sent the guides and events I needed. (The Universe always delivers.)
Now, I might have descended kicking and screaming—because our healing and spiritual journeys are about undoing, unlearning, chaos, mystery and surrender…. not harmony—but descending, I did. And I'm so proud of each and every part of me. It was a terrifying ride, but it was so worth it.
I’ve written this many times before—and I will probably keep on writing this until the day I leave this Earth: THE DARKNESS IS A NURSERY OF STARS. And I’ve now come to believe that the color of Love is Black.
So it’s hiding in plain sight! Love is the invisible thread that we call the Universe and that unites us all… Light is what comes out of it.
We’re never truly prepared for life-altering change.
Last Wednesday was the climax of this particular story… and I fell into the Night’s arms with my every wound exposed and buried under a blanket of salt.
I did not know that I would survive that night. I didn’t know that I wanted to. I just knew that if my time had come, I would be led out of his world without needing to intervene—so I waited it out.
I let my body cry and, for once, I could tolerate the sounds of my own crying. I celebrated that small ounce of success, amidst the flood of grief, rage, despair and terror. I hadn’t been able to free more than 7 tears in the last 7 seven months, so it felt both like breaking open and like breaking free.
It was excruciating, but it also felt needed.
I also let myself tell God that I couldn’t understand anything of what was happening and that, even though I knew it was impossible, it felt like She had abandoned me. Because to its core surrender is very simple, surrender is Truth.
And on the surface, it looked like I was losing everything… like I had reached the end of the road and that the joke was on me: my dream had not been coming true after all!
No! Trauma Brain was proclaiming (as trauma brain does). I hadn’t woken up from my trauma coma five years ago and found my anchor back in the awe-inspiring magic of reality. Ha! Of course not. I had in fact become delusional for a while and thought that it was possible to escape… BUT the horror and dryness of my past had caught up with me.
Trauma Brain was adamant (as Trauma Brain always is): it was time to go “back”—and I was not to expect that it might be easier to take now, because the conditions would actually be even harsher. After all, I had tried to leave! I deserved to be punished.
Preparation can be good but preparation also tends to bring rigidity,
while change calls for subtlety, fluidity, seaweed-ness, water energy.
Now I did notice that the stories, though overwhelming and overpowering, did not have the same all-encompassing hold on me that they used to.
The ghosts and closet monsters were screaming and masquerading all around me—relentlessly—but under it all, I could still hear Heart voice’s lullaby whispering “oh honey, are you sure??”.
And at times, when I could follow a breath back home into my core, I could feel a sturdiness in my gut that reminded me that “it’s all right, this pain is here to awaken me to what I need to know to build capacity for my desires and for my sacred dream. Only good will come from this… I KNOW that Life is unconditionally loving and kind. I KNOW it. So that the story I’m hearing cannot be the whole story.”
And by the end of Thursday, I had entered the next chapter… and everything had shifted.
Our healing and spiritual journeys are about undoing, unlearning,
chaos, mystery and surrender….
not harmony.
By Thursday evening, I was bathing in Magic. And I was invited to dance below an avalanche of goodness, tenderness and news-that-make-it-all-worth-it.
I was about to live out one of the most enchanting weekends I’ve experienced as a human soul, a week-end that would leave me feeling seen, known, welcome, cherished and received. I was about to meet new people who felt instantly like long-lost soulmatey friends. I was about to meet a new teacher that would feel like a glass of fresh water after a 20-mile walk outside when it’s 110 degrees. Aline was about to tell me that she’s coming with my treasured little godson to start 2025, my 41st year, and my 5th decade on Earth, with me! I would have received confirmation that I will be able to stay in New York FOREVER. And a huge before/after moment would have happened on my journey of reconnection with my authentic singing voice—the one thing I’ve been praying incessantly for months, for… YEARS!—and ever since my inner song was shamed so brutally out of me.
I fell into the Night’s arms with my every wound exposed
and buried under a blanket of salt.
I don’t like that I’m writing around the specifics of the story, but I must also honor that I'm not ready to share it. Not today at least. And on this page, we’re also learning how to honor our capacity.
It all took a huge toll on my body… and as someone who’s lived with insomnia since March 1998, it’s rare for me to be unable to deny that I am physically exhausted! Yet, there’s no way to deny it right now—and I’m fine with that.
I’m fine with everything right now: the unraveling, the rumbles, the groundlessness, the grief.
I’m fine with everything because I’ve never felt more like ME.
And I’ve also never experienced so much awe, so much magic! and, yes… healing.
Because meeting our Grief is NEVER the end of our story, it’s always how our story truly begins.
And that’s the message I have for you today my dear Care. friend.
Do not fear the darkness, do not fear the grief. There is nothing to fear from pain because pain only comes when we need it. When we need to pay attention. To pay attention to what is hurting us, what is draining us, what is putting us in danger, or what could kill us. Or to pay attention to what could be softer, kinder, so much simpler. Pain is a very dedicated, loyal and benevolent friend and couldn’t care less if we’re aware of it or not. Pain loves us unconditionally… so pain is not asking for our love in return.
Meeting our Grief is NEVER the end of our story,
it’s always how our story truly begins.
Healing is not a destination, it’s a journey, a choice, a way of life.
It’s a decision to find our way back into center—and to then LIVE from that very sacred place from which Life flows through and out of us.
It’s a remembrance that the world is created from the inside out—and that if we want a better world, our power lies in changing the one we’re projecting out.
It’s a pause that allows us to become aware of the narratives that determine our sense of reality—so that we can take back the pen from the collective unconscious and start writing the story we were born to embody.
It’s an invitation to surrender the shield to the ground—and to let Mother Earth nurse us back into wholeness.
It’s a call to let the fire of our hearts melt the armor we think we need—and to then witness in awe the power of our own love.
It’s the inspiration to become sovereign again in our own inner realm—and to take FULL responsibility of our lives, our thoughts, our wounds, our shadow, our emotions and of the treasures that lie within.
It’s a gentle urging to reclaim the gifts we came into this world with—and to finally fully receive them: fiercely, humbly, UNAPOLEGETICALLY, and wholeheartedly.
It’s a process through which we are led to understand that we cannot give what we do not have—and that only by filling our own selves with unconditional love, soulborn wisdom, life-giving fuel and embodied grace can we offer to this world what it needs most: us!
The darkness is a nursery of stars.
And I’ve now come to believe that
the color of Love is Black.
With kindness, love and light—knowing that ALL THREE are born in the sacred darkness that we’re learning to stop fearing together.
leo