It all comes down to Love
And when we think that's cliche, that's because we forget what love means.
CARE.CHECK*: What do you do when things don’t go as planned, when it feels like it’s all falling apart, when you have no idea what to do next?
How do you speak to yourself? Who do you turn to?
Do you double down on self-care or do you brace from head to toe?
What is your relationship to pain? To fear? To grief?
And based on what you just realized: what is one thing you would like to write today for your future self to remember the next time you’re caught in a storm you don’t quite know how to weather alone?
As usual, for context and offerings to fuel your brainstorming, keep reading!
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, Rick discovered Speechify, an app through which this Care.Check letter can be read to you by AI Gwyneth Paltrow :)
Hi Care.Friend,
What’s new for you?
What’s revealing itself?
What’s settling down?
It’s a lovely rainy day in New York, where the cherry blossoms are blossoming at every corner, and turning Central park into an even more enchanting corner of the world.
I traded my regular Oat decaf latte for a hot chocolate, and I’m letting it warm me up from the inside out.
And I do need warming up. I feel cold, at my core.
I’m in deep exploration of grief right now.
And as I’m discovering yet again it leads me into a deep exploration of love... The love we share, the love we feel, the love we are.
It seems that I had built an armor out of glaciers of tears that are now thawing all at once. It hurts. It’s scary.
It feels like falling apart.
It’s complete groundlessness in a dark fog.
It’s the call of a lifetime I guess… the moment where I let it all be, let it all go, and pray that the view shaped by the tornado and the flood will be even more magical that what is leaving me right now.
I’ve said many goodbyes already in this life. Some felt needed. Some felt unbearable. I’ve also left everything behind more than once. And up until now, it felt more freeing than terrifying, because I was stepping away from Hell and trying wholeheartedly to find my way into paradise.
But this goodbye—or should I say these goodbyes, because that’s that kind of storm—hits differently.
I have no idea who I’ll be on the other side of this—and for the first time, I’m not entirely sure it will be a “truer” me. I’m afraid this one is the one that breaks me, for good and forever… and my coach reminded me that THIS is where I must draw the line between showing up for all that I’m experiencing—without requesting the support of Minimization or its big brother Denial—and identifying with the PTSD flare up that this situation ignited in my psyche.
And what a fascinating adventure it is to learn how to trust yourself so deeply, so fiercely, so completely and so unconditionally that you’re willing to stay and watch your dream burn into the ground, without any proof that your dream was indeed made from the essence of a Phoenix and not from wood… while learning how to question each and every thought that comes into your mind—and the subsequent fear that rushes through your bones and blood, and threatens to end your life.
What an intensive experience of aliveness, of faith, of love.
And what a painful one…
The power of a paradox.
* It’s the call of a lifetime: the moment where I let it all be, let it all go,
and pray that the view shaped by the tornado and the flood will be
even more magical
that what is leaving me right now.*
The good news is I used to live with this nagging feeling that there was more, always more, beneath the surface. That I would never reconnect with all the mud and horror that was stuck in the basement of my mind. That a lifetime would never be enough to uncover half of my own secrets—and that I might never be able to free myself from my own trauma.
And I don’t feel that way anymore.
I feel like I make a lot of sense for the first time in my life. That my limits make sense. That my PTSD is a very normal consequence of what happened to me and therefore a sign of health! and a testament of resilience—not the proof that there’s something really wrong with me.
I used to hold on to suicidal thoughts as a promise that there was always a way out, if no way in was to be found. But all I'm feeling right now is a willingness to come fully alive, to live for my dream, to manifest it and share it with the world. To be heard and to be seen. To be known… authentically.
And since the walls are crumbling anyway, I’m letting my light take a chance to travel into the world—and I’m welcoming the light in.
Recently I heard that new data is debulking the theory that dark matter exists. That it might actually be exhausted light that we therefore fail to see.
Exhausted light! I found this concept incredibly endearing.
And I wonder if that’s what’s coming out of me. I label it as heavy darkness that I’m ashamed to burden my friendships with… but my friends are not saying that I’m heavy to be with. They remind me that I believe in magic and rainbows—and that my trust in Life makes them trust that Life is right here, holding me, and co-creating solutions to this whole mess, as we speak.
So maybe what they’re receiving is not my darkness, but my exhausted light?
And even though, some don’t know how to love the dark parts of our humanness, most of us know how to love tired creatures wholeheartedly.
* Since the walls are crumbling anyway,
I’m letting my light take a chance to travel into the world
—and I’m welcoming the light in.*
Yesterday, I had an excruciating conversation with one of my childhood upbringers; and they put salt on most of my wounds when I was not looking. I felt it before I understood it.
That rush of anguish. That familiar pull of despair... This unsettling feeling that something has gone terribly wrong, but that it didn’t quite register yet, because the horror story was hidden in between the lines of what they were saying.
So I tried to reconnect with everything I had just heard, and to walk back the cat of what had been revealed. And when it hit me, it hit me hard.
That “this again??” feeling. That “I cannot believe we’re back here…” desperation. The RAGE that comes from being dragged back into what I have sacrificed everything to escape! The fury that comes from knowing that I’m expected, yet again, to comfort them from the pain that they are causing me.
That vicious cycle that makes you want to die and kill at the same time but that entraps you instead in a cage that hope cannot enter and love cannot reach.
But then something extraordinary happened.
I felt the fiercest “no” arise from the core of my being… and I told Hate and Shame that I was done playing.
That it had to end.
I chose Love. I chose Peace.
* I felt it before I understood it.*
And it was like seeing them for the very first time. No filter of angelism to try to erase what was actually happening. No projection of evilism to try to make sense of what they were doing with me. I could see both their pure innocence and the width of their unconsciousness. I could see that they were just as dismayed as I was at what they had just done to me…
I could see that they would never want to hurt me—and that they would stop instantly if they could link the impact with their actions, instead of confusing intentions and results. I could see that they love me.
I could see that I loved them—and that was the greatest proof that my love is unconditional, indeed.
I knew that it did not mean anything about me AND that it did not define them. I knew that we’re all doing the best we can… and that none of us has any idea of what we’re doing.
I knew that my need for explanation was gone and that I had moved back into my heart. I knew that we were both lost in the darkness and that now there was only love to be found.
It was a deeply transformative experience.
It did not lessen the grief, but it lessened the fear. It deepened the grief actually, but that’s okay because grief is love… so it softened me. It opened me. It expanded me.
It started to turn parts of the dark sea that all this unfreezing created in my lungs and eyes, into a light blue lagoon that promises to delight and cleanse me.
I didn’t sleep or eat much these past few days… but I have loved and received love, wholeheartedly.
And love has a healing power that continually awes me, as I’m witnessing my own re-alignment through this terrifying unraveling.
* I ended the war by forfeiting my defenses.*
And so here I am today, humbly, tentatively sharing what’s going on with me.
I hope this will make you feel less alone if things look bleak, hectic, incomprehensible or suffocating around you too. I hope that something in there will feel like a hug and like a promise that something good is always coming—no matter how much it hurts, no matter how unbearable or unsurvivable an event or story arc might seem.
I hope you will find on this page a mirror of how our humanity stems from our humanness—and that grief comes as a change maker, who brings in its wake showers of love and lakes of beauty.
I hope we can all remember that we have each other—and that when we cannot find each other in the outside world, we can reconnect with what defines each and everyone of us within.
I hope I will have good news to share very soon and that it will become the most inspiring story! And I know that every tragedy doesn’t come with a happy ending.
I also know that it’s okay that it doesn’t. Not because it feels good or fair, but because that’s just what is: We live in a world where loss and betrayals and fear are parts of the journey. They’re universal components of what makes up the Earthian experience, and they’re never what we wish for ! but they do serve a purpose on our way to becoming who we were meant to be: armorless, compassionate, open minded, kind hearted, unconditionally loving beings.
I hope you arrive there through joy! And I accept that I was meant to make my way there through suffering.
Maybe it all changes now though? Maybe you can only build a dream that lasts from a heart that is free to sing…
Maybe those glaciers were too heavy to carry for the little girl inside that only ever had one dream: to live in New York and in songs. So maybe once the glaciers are gone, I’ll realize that room was made for an endless flow of love to come in and free her! and for her love to flow out through my singing.
Maybe that’s what healing feels like.
Maybe this is how I will meet the greatest love of my life… me.
With kindness, love and light—because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.
Always,
leo