I love that you can hurt me

About the power of our hearts

CARE.CHECK*: How often do you let the ALL or NOTHING trap rob you from the chance to explore what lies at the intersection?

How often does your mind pretend that it is an either/or dilemna, even though your heart is acutely aware of all the true nuances of the situation?

How often does your brain claim that it’s either Black OR White, and how often do you then let your heart show you all the colors of the world?

I hope this week’s letter will feel like an invitation to lean in, to rethink, to feel, to soften, to TRUST, to choose Love, over and over again.

---

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,

Even though it’s been only seven days, it feels like it’s been a very long time since I last got to write to you.

This week was a big one for me and my heart; we had a lot of deep gut wrenching talk, and I’m awed by what I’ve learned! AND I also feel exhausted, because it took a lot out of me to digest it. 

So in my tender state, I want to first take a moment to thank you, from the bottom of my ever-expanding heart, for being here. 

For reading these words. For receiving those that resonate and making them your own. For giving them a new home now that they have flown out of me! For also letting go of those that don’t, because that’s the deepest form of self-care—and when you take care of you, you take care of us all. For allowing me to share who I am on this page, and for seeing me. For the kindness that you show me every week. For the kindness that you’re learning to show yourself, alongside me! It means the world to me. To know that I am friends with souls I have never met—and probably never will meet—in person! Yet, we know each other in the way that matters most… we know each other by heart. What a dream I get to dream wide awake thanks to you!

So yes, thank you dear Care.friend. THANK YOU.

This Earth adventure is beautiful and precious and awakening and grand.

AND this journey can get lonely when we don’t share it with our fellow Earth travelers.

And so, how are you? 

What is one thing that changed you, that softened you, that opened back a door in a forgotten corner of your mind that allowed you to understand yourself better than before? 

I became a godmother on Friday… How miraculous is that? The loveliest most magical tiniest human being was born through the heart and body of the loveliest most magical heartwarming human I know (Aline, obviously), and she asked me to be that little one’s godmother. Me! 

I’ve never felt more lucky or honored... To know that I’m linked to that little soul in such a poetic way fills me up with delight and awe.

I’ve never felt more committed to loving into light every part of my shadow, to make sure that I can show up for that little boy with a completely unguarded heart. To make sure that I can be for him the woman that I needed as a girl.

Knowing that, thank goodness, his mother couldn’t be more different from mine in every way that counts, while owning the few amazing qualities that my birth mother did let shine through her embodied storm. So he’s all set! But still. We need a village to grow up knowing that we’re safe in this world.

And I want him to know from the start, all that it took me 39 years to understand:

That love is everywhere to be found. That he will never regret any scar he gets to live with, because they allow us to connect with how precious our integrity is. And that there is always a choice, always a way, always a rainbow—no matter how hidden behind how many dark clouds.

And on the subject of dark clouds, what is one thing that felt too hard, too heavy, too unfair, too raw and yet that you masterfully overcame? 

Because if you’re here, reading this and breathing, you did overcome it, masterfully. No matter how chaotic it might still look or feel within or without.

Overcoming is not what we’ve been trained to aim for. Overcoming is staying here, staying with. That’s it. Overcoming is going to bed that night, trusting that someday, somehow, relief will come. Overcoming is getting up the next morning, if only to scream, to throw up, to rage, to numb, if only to show up to work. Overcoming is surviving. And obviously you survived! And that takes guts and so much stamina.

Overcoming is also remembering that surviving is the first step and not the destination. Overcoming is holding on to the love and hope that never leaves our hearts.

I’m still navigating that very chaotic relationship I mentioned a few times on this page. With that person that I love dearly and that hurts me so. That person that I have chosen to remain in touch with for reasons that I rethink every morning, and that never falters. That person that permeates every aspect of my past, and that will not be a part of my future for much longer. That person that I refuse to put in a box! EVER. (A person that I’ll call Bob for future reference).

I saw him as a savior once, and it nearly killed me. I saw him as a villain for a while, and that felt like losing touch with one of the most vital pieces of me: the part of me that knows that evil doesn’t exist, even within those scripted in the most devilish behaviors. That part of me that knows that we are all stardust enlivened by love, and that there’s nothing, NOTHING, wrong, sinful or brokenable at our core. That part of me that is not a part, but our essence! That “part” of me that is unconditional love.

The sunny flowers that Aline sent me a while back, because she deemed my surroundings at the time too cloudy. Sacred friendship.

I fell in love with a guy named Kyle a lifetime ago. We worked together and for a moment I believed he was an answer to a prayer! But of course, since I had done nearly no trauma work at the time, he was actually the answer to a wound.

It took me a minute to realize that I was not the only woman convinced that she was living something really special with him. Which is even more shocking since a very close friends was one of those other women. Neither of us had any idea. And neither of us was willingly keeping it a secret! It was just that kind of romance that feels like it needs to only belong to the two parties involved. The kind of romance that I now know to call a trauma bond. 

And so it took being brought on my knees for me to finally look up and SEE what was staring back at me. To free my gut from Denial’s suffocating grip, and to let my body shake me back into reality. 

And I remember telling a friend I’ll call Liz, how ashamed I was to have fallen for his tricks… and her answer stood with me ever since:

“But leo, thank goodness you believed him! Why wouldn’t you? He gave you no reason whatsoever to not trust him and a million good reasons to do so. His actions seemed to match his words. You saw him everyday, and his behavior was consistent for months.  You have several friends in common, and everybody loves him. What kind of person would expect others to be THIS manipulative and disingenuous? I love that you’re someone who believes in others.”

For the longest time, I couldn’t thoroughly understand what she meant (I was way too committed to my own self-blame to grasp it), but I now see what an important point she made.

Recently, I received as a deeply healing response what turned out to be a completely disingenuous answer from Bob. He told me exactly what I didn’t know I was CRAVING to hear, so I fell for it. 

I was in awe. I felt humbled by how much someone can change—especially because I usually don’t expect big personality changes from someone who’s doing virtually no inner work. I thought it was confirmation of how right I had always been to never give up on him. I forgot that I don’t need confirmation for that:

Because I know *in my heart* that it is the right choice and my heart is finally sovereign in my world.

I thought it was a happy conclusion to a very long chapter and went on with my life. 

In hindsight, of course, I can see that I didn’t truly think any of that!

Because to believe him, I had to immediately start dissociating from my incredibly well-honed inner lie detector—and that hurt. I had to refuse to connect dots that I have never seen not linked before. [But Denial is clever, because Denial is a part of us! Denial knows us. Denial knows what to whisper for the inner sleeping curse to enact.]

And so I rationalized why suddenly I was not singing anymore. I scrutinized every other part of my life to understand why my digestion was, again, so off. I wondered why on Earth my eating disordered thoughts were making such a triumphant comeback. I questioned why I was feeling so much restlessness with other male figures during the day. 

And then once my Fight or Flight energy was all spent out—after a week of sleepless nights—I observed my body starting to shut down, as functional freeze took over my experience (you can read about all those trauma responses and the ladder of dysregulation HERE and HERE, if you’re not yet familiar with all the terms I use). 

Thankfully, I now have a few beacons that start shining brighter and brighter the further I walk from my center. 

I remember recounting the conversation to Aline and did not find her nearly impressed enough. I don’t know if it was because she was seeing through the fog or if I was projecting my own inner knowing on her… But I knew better than to get annoyed! So I got very curious. [Denial would never have allowed me to voice my concerns to her, but I found enough heart-connection to stay with my inner inquiry: something felt off leo? What could it mean?]

I also witnessed how resistant I was to bring up that topic with my coach. And when I don’t want to talk to her about a very unexpected plot twist, there’s usually a “good” reason. [So, again, without upsetting Denial by saying anything out loud, I let my heart sit with this question too: why won't you tell her about this? Is there something amiss?] 

With my gut feeling more inflamed by the day, I lovingly patted my belly, promising her that I would soon understand what Denial was preventing her from sharing with me. 

And when I arrived stiff as a wooden doll on my yoga mat yesterday morning, I promised myself that I would at least mention in my next coaching session that something has disconnected me from me. 

So yes, I took it very slow. I met myself exactly where I was, restless, then angry, then mesmerized, then clueless, then tortured by cravings and then numb. 

I welcomed the contrast between the beauty of what was happening around me (New York, my songs, my budding theater community, my friends, Care.check… Aline’s baby!!) and what was happening within.

It’s always very interesting to question without judgment what makes us feel like we’re moving backward when everything around us is moving us forward.

I gently awakened my singing until singing could start softly awakening me. I kept on writing, even if nausea had replaced relief as a byproduct of my morning pages. I prayed for guidance to a God I suddenly couldn’t remember having felt connected to. I meditated and trusted that it would “work” its magic somehow, even though I couldn't seem to drop into the magic of meditation. I committed to a tender, patient, humble observership of my experience—AND IT PAID OFF.

It did. Yesterday, almost at the end of the precious hour I spend weekly with my coach, I woke up. Everything realigned. Denial’s house of cards collapsed on a floor made up of all the broken promises of my past. And suddenly, finally, it all made sense again.

The grief was all-encompassing. The inner silence was deafening. The nausea made it hard to breathe. And underneath it all, I found what I had been yearning for for days: my Self. 

I fell back into my soft and fierce and humble and fiery open heart, and I let myself come alive again.

I spotted the knife in my back and grabbed it with the kind of strength I so often forget I possess. The kind of strength most of us women have been shamed out of embodying. The kind of strength this world desperately needs us all to reclaim within ourselves, today. 

I heard myself whisper: “OMG, I know what happened! OMG, there was a conversation with Bob right before it all started to go South… OMG, of course, he didn’t mean what he said! Oh. My. God. I fell for it. I believed him. And I abandoned myself again to be able to… THAT’s why my entire system is shutting down.”

And I held on to the light and compassion that enlightened my coach’s face while she asked: “And how beautiful that is that after all this time, you still hope. That there’s no killing hope out of you. Can you forgive yourself for that?”

And what I heard her ask is “can you CELEBRATE yourself for that?”

And Yes. I. Can.

I LOVE that I believed him. I do not love that Bob hurt me last week, but I love witnessing that he still can. I love knowing that EVERYONE can. Because I love those moments where I get to know for sure that I embody my core values: Kindness and Optimism. 

I love that I still know how to TRUST, after all that happened to me! I love that I’m still willing to trust him, after everything he did to me.

Of course, that’s because I’ve made sure that the impact of his lies would now be minimal at worse and non-existent at best. I’m not glorifying abuse in any way, I’m just celebrating the fact that most power dynamics take two sleepwalkers to survive and only one awakened soul to unravel. And that in some specific cases, if enough distance can be built, safety can be restored even when the other person is still scripted in abusive ways.

And he told me once that he would never forget how I chose to trust him again when I had no reason to. How it changed him. And I know that that is true.

I love that even though that conversation was not what I thought it was, it was still a thousand steps in the right direction. Because around the lies, there were also some important truths that I wouldn't ever have received if I had shielded myself from him entirely. Because we receive it ALL, or we receive nothing. (I wrote about that HERE). 

I love how strong my heart is and knowing that our hearts can NEVER be broken! Only softened and expanded.

I love how my heart connection grew ten fold through this ordeal, because I refused to embrace Cynicism’s cowardice. 

I love that I’m trying to share my truth with all my close ones right now and that I get to truly witness how some of them embrace and welcome it, and some of them get triggered or enraged by it. It shows me the power of vulnerability. How it cuts through all pretense. And it shows me how much we need contrast to be able to bring sight where blindness once resided. Trauma is a relational injury after all… and only within relational containers can we truly mend what was severed.

I love that it hurts me when you lie to me, because that means I have relearned how to let you in! That I have let myself love you—and love is what it is all about. And I love that I’m mostly surrounded by people who would never lie to me—no matter how much the truth scares them or of how much they’re afraid that their truth will scare me away.

I am committed to live with an open heart. I am committed to feeling it ALL.

Because we either feel or we don’t and I am not going to let my inner protectors close my heart against my will any longer. That is NOT a solution, that is the beginning of the end—and my story is not over. Our heart is the source of our strength and the home of our aliveness. And I want to come alive fully before I die—not live as if I was already dead.

I also love that I’m loving me more and more (and more!) and that now I take pain as a sign to LET GO—and not to double down.

I love that I’m understanding HOW to still feel safe with Bob, by learning how to spot the light trying to find its way through the shadow and by releasing the compulsion to get lost in his shadow anymore.

That’s because I don’t feel responsible for his shadow work anymore! I only feel devoted to mine. Which allows me to love the gift that his shadow now represents:

His shadow allows me to become aware of mine… and my light grows every time I choose to rely on my heart, instead of armoring up. 

I now love that I trusted Kyle all those years ago! 

I love that we can get hurt by others because that’s the proof of how tender and loving we are. And most of all, I love that we also have within us not only the cure but the vaccine to that hurt. 

And I’m not talking about turning the soft, warm, skin of our chests into some icy cold metallic repellent. Suffering is NOT avoided by trying to shield ourselves from the pain. (I wish it worked, but it doesn’t.)

Pain is a part of life and the more I welcome pain, the more I worship it. Pain is the most loving teacher. Pain keeps us alive, pain keeps us whole, pain keeps us in integrity. Pain allows me to reconcile the fact I do love Bob and that I can’t believe in most of what he tells me. That’s what is—and that’s okay.

Pain reminds me that if I choose to succumb to the temptation of an All or Nothing solution, I will lose myself. Because if I choose to believe everything he says blindly, I will stop loving me (and that won’t allow me to love him either, so what’s the point?). And if I resort to not believing anything he shares, I will have to pretend I don’t love him… and by doing so I will, again, stop loving me. I lose either way.

And if I lose me, you lose me. I wish we were taught that! That you can only be truly there for me, if you are here for you first and foremost. What a different world we would have… How gloriously you would shower yourself into love—and how enchanting that would be to witness and mirror.

So the way out of suffering, is to let pain in. To be so open and committed to our own receptivity, that we let it ALL in. That’s how we learn that pain met with an open heart turns into love—and that even though pain is unavoidable, when we open ourselves to the world, what we mostly receive is not pain anyway, it’s LOVE. 

The only way I can prevent myself from ever getting hurt again is through ways that will prevent me from ever feeling love again. And THAT dear Care.friend, is a price I will never accept to pay! And neither should you.

We ALL want to love, deep down. We ALL want to feel loved inside and out. And that’s beautiful.

Your heart is not only unbreakable (I wrote about that HERE ), your heart is also pure, enchanted and magical. In the truest forms of those words. Your heart can bring everything back into its essence: which is either illusion or love. Once turned back into illusion, it takes one breath to let go of those crosses we were never meant to put on our shoulders. Once turned back into love, everything else becomes holy and life-giving.

This morning I woke up nauseous, griefful, on my knees, afraid... AND this morning I woke up excited, full of hope, self-connected and ready to keep crawling with enthusiasm! Because I can see the horizon. And it’s radiant, warm, colorful and the embodiment of my dream come true: The horizon looks like LOVE. 

Let’s surrender our armors to the altar of our hearts, my dearest Care.friend.

Let’s embody the kind of courage we have been taught to call “weakness” or “falling apart”.

Let’s feel it all until we can witness that feeling doesn’t kill us, it enables the opposite phenomenon: feeling makes everything SACRED. 

Our light grows every time we choose to rely on our heart,

instead of armoring up. 

Minds tend to hurt one another, but hearts only ever heal everybody.

So we’re safe dear ones because our minds can be fooled, mistreated, disheartened (!), confused or hurt, but our HEARTS can only love…

And WE get to choose who will lead us from morning till dawn and then throughout the dreamland at night: We get to choose our hearts.

We get to choose… LOVE.

I’ll see you next week!

With kindness, love and light—because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.

Always,

leo