The curse is broken
About the shifts and decisions that actually change our lives
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Hi CARE friend,
How are you?
Has something big happened in the last few days? In the world for sure, but what about *your* world specifically? And what about your inner world? Is there something that needs to be celebrated, acknowledged, released, raged out, mourned or processed more deeply?
Sometimes what can seem like the littlest thing can have an enormous impact on our psyche. Because it shifts a paradigm we were relying on. Because it puts salt (or a balm!) on a wound that we were not aware of... Because it impacts our everyday life in a small but meaningful way.
Sometimes of course the very big things happen too, and even though we intuitively know that they’ve changed the course of our journey, we can’t really know exactly how or how much just yet.
I’ll share a few examples based on the smaller and bigger shifts that marked my week: from the most random to the most pivotal one.
A decision
I have decided to stay in my apartment for one more year. Even if I feel Brooklyn’s call vibrate in the marrow of my bones, I just didn’t have it in me to move at the moment (and to be fair, I didn’t find any apartment calling my name either).
It has only been a year since I last switched homes, and with all my remaining ties to France slowly dissolving as my father withers away, I feel a need for grounding that I had never experienced before... I was telling myself that I needed to wait to have found a place I truly wanted to call home for the long term before letting my roots expand, but the fact is I need deeper roots to stand on right now, in order to rise ever higher.
We need to let ourselves descend to ascend: that’s a truth our culture forgot at its own expense.
And I have been running my entire life, I know how to run! But what my body is begging for right now is for some anchoring. [Especially after the unexpected melanoma plot twist.]
And so I stayed.
And that felt right! But that didn’t feel good. So I am committed to changing that.
We need to let ourselves descend to ascend.
Which brings me to my first incredibly mundane example!
My most recent apartment is much smaller than the one I had before and that applies to the kitchen too. And so the dish drying rack I had was too big for my current sink. I made it work. I told myself it was fine. But everyday I would notice, and have to work around it. So I finally decided that even though “I already had one!”, it made no sense to keep struggling with something that I could change for less than $30.
Funny how the smallest purchases can be the hardest ones to justify to ourselves, right?
And so I now have a perfectly fitted dish rack in my kitchen, and nothing has changed in the world, BUT even I didn’t expect the sense of relief it would bring in my everyday routines. Because it created space and practicality: two things we undervalue easily. Now, instead of feeling slightly annoyed every time I do the dishes, I feel at peace with what I see.
It’s trivial, AND it counts. Just like we can dismiss the pain of a paper cut by comparing it to the pain that would have been inflicted by a sword, BUT getting five paper cuts everyday would still… suck.
Space and practicality: two things we undervalue easily.
Which brings me to a related but somewhat bigger example:
I donated my sofa bed last Tuesday. It was a very hard choice to make because not only did I think it made my living room more welcoming for my New York friends but, to me, it was mostly a bed available for any non-NYC friend who would want to visit. Especially since one of my best friends still hasn’t been able to visit four years and a month later (she has five kids!) and I was still hoping that the stars would align and that this sweet convertible could welcome her soon.
But in the meantime, there was little room to move in my smallish living room (in which I spend a lot of time since I work remotely) and I bumped into the sofa every morning when I did my yoga. It took careful improbably daily calculations to adjust my mat in a way that would allow me to flow without injuring my body, the wall or the couch... And I know how ridiculously superficial of a problem that sounds, but when something happens everyday its impact adds up even when the impact itself is a tiny one to begin with.
Moreover, there are many things we cannot control in our existence, but when there is something we can easily change, it’s interesting to ponder why we’re choosing to remain inconvenienced by our surroundings.
Of course I took solace in the idea that it was very New York to be struggling in a tight space! But there’s something even more powerful than romancing an idea of justified struggle: freedom of movement.
And while recently discussing this with my best friend (who did use that sofa bed more than once), she reminded me that my place is meant to be a safe haven for me… and not only for those who might visit someday.
On top of that, there was another fact heavily weighing on my psyche, no matter how much I was trying to tell myself that it didn’t matter: as you may have recall, I’ve been raised by a hoarder, so living in a room that felt full to capacity (even if clean, decorated, and tidy) was extremely triggering for my nervous system.
I knew I would feel relief once it was gone… I didn’t expect to feel this level of restoration, ease and calm.
Those two examples illustrate how much our habitat impacts us whether we’re aware of it or not! They also highlight how much our direct environment can impact not only our days and moods but our nervous systems.
We have decided as a society that those matters are trivial, but I don’t believe they are.
There is a constant conversation happening between our surroundings and our inner realm—and this is the reason why cleaning, tidying up, decluttering and intentionally setting up our place make such a difference.
And so after those two outside-in examples of transformational shifts, below’s a third and inside-out one.
When something happens everyday,
its impact adds up even when
the impact itself is a tiny one to begin with.
The curse is broken
I’ve written a lot about the curse that my mother cast on my younger self...
When she got enraged, she would chastise me and yell that my “birth had the same impact on Earth as Hitler”.
I know it sounds irrational and incredibly random, but it cut to my core because, as random as it was, it was extremely SPECIFIC. And we all know it’s easier to disclaim a vague claim than a specific one, because specificity implies proof.
And it was not about my personality or my actions, it was centered on my birth. It was not a comparison to any vicious man, it was a link to one of the cruelest men to have ever lived. And it was not any of those cruel men, it was Hitler, who rarely appeared in any conversations in my non-jewish French family in the 90s. Finally, it was not “only” about enabling abuse, hate or terror, it was about causing a genocide. That was the impact that was implied.
So it was the absolute worst kind of legacy any human heart would ever want to carry... and yet she was adamant, the verdict was irrefutable—and I had no hope for salvation since we were talking about my birth: aka an event that had already happened.
I have been working on this belief for years. I’ve tried everything to release it—but as Byron Katie often teaches: we cannot let go of a belief, we can only provide what is needed for the belief to let go of us.
Because we don’t choose our thoughts, we don’t even create the vast majority of them! Mostly we inherit them from our family, our peers, our culture and then our job is to get very curious and let our heart investigate which thoughts serve us (and the world) and which only makes us suffer..
It was quite obvious from the start that this prophecy was not serving me so curious about it I got for sure.
I looked at it rationally. I went as far as comparing the number of people we each had injured or killed (!). But again, it was about my birth, not about what had happened after that…
Of course I also did Byron Katie’s work on it, but the belief stayed on.
I worked on it somatically! And since then the pull had lessened, but the spell was just too strong. Up until now nothing had “worked”.
Anytime anything goes wrong, anytime I feel the tiniest hint of frustration, I wonder… is that how it begins?
No matter how many times anyone would tell me that I am kind, loving, nurturing, compassionate or that my presence, my work or my art are healing, there would be this voice inside of me thinking: “True or not, that will never be enough to compensate with the impact that my birth had down here. You don’t understand! There’s just no hope for redemption here.”
I was invited by many friends, guides and healers to give back that story to my mother, to realize that it was not mine to carry, but I just couldn’t because… what if she was right? What if she had seen something that no one else apart from her could have seen?
I needed to keep myself in check at all times—to a level of inner tyranny as my trauma coach likes to reflect back to me.
But this week, in one fateful conversation with one of the most gifted healers I have ever had the chance to meet, it all clicked.
We don’t get to know what allows us to suddenly solve a puzzle we have been working on for years, but my gratitude is boundless. And they do say that miracles are not events but changes in perspective… and there are moments when we can indeed witness that Life doesn’t only have our backs, Life has our hearts.
And so here is what suddenly dawned on me: My mother was born in 1944.
So here’s our first cue to why it finally makes sense for Hitler to be part of the story.
On top of that she was born to a 16 yo or so mother who was shunned and outcast by her entire family (that is her parents AND her 13 brothers and sisters) for becoming pregnant out of wedlock.
The grandmother I remember was a cruel, vicious, highly abusive, emotionally manipulative, and cold-hearted woman who destroyed her daughter’s self-esteem and injured mine in ways that I am still recovering from. She rejected the path of forgiveness and she never found her way into any kind of healing—she didn’t know she had that choice. And I will make no excuse for the woman she became, BUT I can easily find compassion for that teenager whose entire world collapsed that year, amidst a brutal war.
And that’s when it hit me.
How suddenly that absurd torturous claim could make sense to a mind twisted by grief and a deeply wounded psyche! How it could even make sense to compare the impact of someone's birth to Hitler. Because that year, my mother’s birth had the same effect on my grandmother’s life as Hitler’s indeed: her pregnancy cost her her sense of belonging, love and safety.
The fact that she would make my mother pay for this is appalling but again, as someone who understands trauma so intimately, I can understand what happened to this very young woman and understandably troubled mother who suddenly felt like she had lost everything.
Which means that this story was never about me. My mother was not talking to ME! She was just reenacting. And that also explains why I had this nagging feeling that the story didn’t belong to her either… That I couldn’t give it back to her because it wasn’t hers.
I thought it meant it was mine to carry, but I now see how it is neither hers nor mine. This story belongs to the karma of my late grandmother. This story is… dead.
I cannot fully put into words yet the impact that this realization had on me. I dropped into my body and into the floor like never before. I felt so anchored, so present, so supported, so sturdy.
The light in the apartment changed… Everything looked brighter, crispier, kinder.
And as I wrote this morning in my morning pages, not only a new chapter but a new BOOK of me can start now—because now that I don’t have to make sure that I am not “Hitler”, I can be me at last.
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I will stop sharing soul-searching prompts for the time being because I am not sure that this is what any of you is looking for when coming to this page. Please do let me know if you miss them though!
My hope here is to create a space where we can know that all within us matters, that all within us is good, that all within us has a purpose. That even the most gut wrenching story deserves our attention because there is healing, forgiveness, compassion and peace to be found at its root. That our voices matter more than we know because they are the vessels Love needs to sing Herself into form and into the world.
My hope is to be a beacon on your path of self-reclamation by sharing mine as vulnerably and as unapologetically as I can.
My hope is to find the words that allow our heartsong to awaken our spark, so that our sacred dream can take precedence over the noise of the world, and so that we can become who we truly are.
My hope is that we can co-create this space as a safe haven where we can fully connect with that reclaimed beautiful self, thereby creating ourselves into the gift we’re here to receive and offer.
Please do let me know what feels most helpful and needed, and please know how appreciative I am of your energy and of your choice to be here.We can become who we truly are.
Sending you kindness, love and warmth—knowing that all three are born in the sacred darkness that we do not fear anymore.
leo