The only question that matters.

The only answer that serves.

CARE.CHECK*: What lights you up?

What would you do today if there was no tomorrow?

What would do even if you knew for sure that you will fail?

What feels sacred to you? Holy, magical, precious, enchanting even?

What would you give your life over if you were not afraid that it’s selfish or that it means that you’re a so-called bad person?

What is that one thing that makes it all worth it—the fear, the pain, the wound, the exhaustion?

What makes your heart beat faster, and even more importantly softer?

Hold on to that. THAT’s your reason. That’s the question you’re here to answer. That’s your spark. That’s your answer.

Let’s talk about why we heal. Let’s talk about why we free ourselves.

Let’s talk about WHY, precisely.

I love you.

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 In case this letter gets cut in the email, you can click HERE to read the full post now :)

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Hi Care.Friend,

How are you?

What is the best thing that happened to you since last week? It can be small! It can be huge... Just take a moment to take it in.

And what is the thing you love most about you right now? Bonus points if you CANNOT choose only one and have to list many.

Today I want to write about one of the most important shifts one can make on their healing journey. It is a remembrance that the goal of trauma healing is Life. That it’s NOT the other way around. 

We do not live to heal, we heal to live. 

I had started to lose sight of that those past few weeks.

Actually, now that I think about it, I had started losing sight of it since last November, when I went to Byron Katie’s school for the Work and took an extremely deep dive into my entire conditioning… and it reached a new height since September, when I started unpacking those last suitcases I had never found the inner safety to look at before.

Awareness is gold. Awareness is light! But awareness and capacity do not always go hand and hand.

Just like with physical work out, too much thought work is actually counterproductive. And it’s even truer with embodiment or energy work. More really isn't better.

Slowly, lovingly, and patiently are the guideposts when reclaiming our sense of wholeness.

Just as with everything organic and holy, there’s a rhythm to healing.

First, a grain is planted. Then it is nurtured and taken care of by the darkness until it is ready to sprout. That’s when it finds its way to the surface and starts growing. And many nows later it will start blooming.

If all we do is plant all day, there will be nothing to harvest. We will fall deep in the darkness, and nothing will be able to take root and expand. 

Because there also needs to be water and light for a seed to become a tree and for a tree to give birth to its flowers.

That’s why there needs to be some focus in our healing. There needs to be an intentionality that grounds our heart and attention onto what is calling for Soul energy to be reborn.

This is where our sparks and sacred dreams come in.

Healing for the sake of healing is valuable, but it can backfire pretty quickly. Indeed, if all we do all day is healing work, it betrays the fact that we feel broken and, TRAGICALLY, all we end up doing all day is reinforcing the belief that we are broken.

Which we aren’t. Which we cannot be. We. Just. can’t.

We can be hurt. We can feel disembodied because we’ve lost the key to our inner temple. We can feel disheartened because our heart has been locked away in an impenetrable bunker by our inner protectors. We can feel disintegrated into a million different pieces (what Dick Schwartz and IFS would call parts, you can read more about that HERE) and have no clue how to make them work together again!

But we cannot be BROKEN. It’s just not a thing. 

We’re energy. We’re not made of glass, we’re made of soul. 

The goal of trauma healing is Life.

It’s NOT the other way around. 

And so it is very important to create some sort of harmony between what we’re healing from and what we’re healing for.

I am very lucky in that regard because I know my spark by heart:

Singing is my spark. Singing is my reason.

I didn’t go on the trauma healing path because I wanted to overcome my stormy past, I couldn’t care less at the time! I didn’t even remember most of what had happened to me before my twenties. No.

What I wanted was to sing and my body couldn’t do that anymore… so I used my love for singing as a guiding light and entered the inner dark forest of our unconscious without a second thought.

Everything I’ve tried, I discovered while researching what was needed for me to rekindle and reembody my heart voice.

How to free my larynx. How to unlock my hips. How to release my shoulders. How to unfreeze my rib cage. How to unnumb my legs. How to unfist my hands. How to soften my jaw. How to unfocus my eyes.

How to find permission to breathe again. How to find the courage and build the capacity to feel the feelings that came up once I started breathing again.

How to come back into my body and into my heart so that heart voice can flow into my body and into the world again.

How to overcome the terror that I will be hurt again if I am seen and heard.

How to trust that I can be free AND loved.

How to KNOW that my voice matters.

Singing is my reason, healing is the way. This has been my truth since 2019 and this is why I have such a deep understanding that the darkness only leads to the light we’re so deeply yearning for! 

But recently a part of me got a bit greedy. That part wanted my dream to come true RIGHT NOW—and so I started unconsciously shifting into using singing as a way to serve my healing journey. 

It was subtle! So subtle it took me two months to even notice it. To realize that I was now singing if I felt ready to unlock something else to explore, instead of healing so that I could reach a new depth in my heart song. To become aware that if my optimism was intact, my sense of awe and wonder was suddenly less accessible. To grasp that I was not so much shifting away from my future to ground in the present moment—what I thought I was doing—but actually starving my future vision to anchor in the current consequences of my childhood trauma.

Now, I’m sure those phases have a place too on the journey I am in. I won’t judge myself, I was doing my best. I had beautiful intentions! To be HEALED. To be free. 

But those are not states, those are paths we follow on our way to reembody the wholeness that is our most basic birthright. 

Healing is a never ending adventure that starts when we take our first breath (or does it start even before that? ) and that will only end when we transition (or does it ever?).

Freeing ourselves is the call of human existence and I’m pretty sure there is always another layer of freedom that we can reconnect with and reclaim.

Healing and freedom are not achievements.

Those are not before and after moments. Those are INVITATIONS. Those are companions and guides that help us as we recover our spark and surrender to who we need to become for our sacred dream to come true.

We all deserve to find our inner freedom. We all deserve to find as much healing as one can receive and embody. Freedom and healing are beautiful energies that cannot NOT benefit others as much as they benefit us. Freedom and healing are how we reembody the Love we are and reconnect to Magic of all that is (including us). 

But again, I believe we need to have a deeper reason to commit to those journeys, because in both cases, we can get lost in the struggle of it all and forget that they’re here to bring us back into joy, ease and heartwarming Love.

Healing and freedom are invitations.

Healing work is tough. It is not for the faint of heart.

It takes commitment. A fierce willingness to face all that scares us the most and to feel all the pain that got stuck deep within us in the first place BECAUSE we didn’t know how to feel it into completion. It requires us to face all our demons and to radically own our part and responsibility in everything that happened to us—knowing that part can be 0.00001% and that our responsibility can simply be to learn how to integrate it and how to never pass it on. It asks for embodied humility, which can only be found in deeply rooted self-love and self-esteem. 

We haven’t been modeled any of those things. We embark on the journey of uncertainty with no maps and no guarantee! The struggle is REAL. 

Freedom work is just as tough. It is not for the weak of heart.

It demands a devotion to Truth and Love. It calls for wholehearted awareness of all our thoughts and choices. It can only be born from the inside out and true freedom can only come from complete surrender… which means we have to surrender our shield and sword first and before entering an arena full of many metaphorical and some literal gladiators. It can only be born by mastering the art of self-trust and discernment. It depends on our ability to decipher mirrors and projections. It asks us to ask all the questions while finding solace in ever-changing answers.

Again, we haven’t been modeled any of this. We leap into this lake of uncertainty with no prior training and no guarantee! The struggle is REAL. 

That’s why we all know a lot of people who look aghast and devastated because of all their “healing” work.

We know a lot of activists who lose themselves into war in the name of recreating peace.

Because the struggle is real. BUT it’s just not the whole story.

Indeed, healing and freedom are the path, not the destination. We need to know where to put our feet on the ground, yes, but we ALSO need to connect with what surrounds us and with the horizon.

And so we need to know why we’re choosing to heal. We need to know in which name we’re seeking to be freed.

Embodied humility can only be found in deeply rooted self-love

AND self-esteem. 

The goal of trauma healing is Love. The goal of trauma healing is JOY. The goal of trauma healing is connection—to our dream, to those we love, to the beauty of Life, to the awe of this human experience.

The goal of trauma healing is to remember how whole and worthy we are to receive our inner gifts and to watch our dreams come true. 

How allowed we are to follow what we love and to bow to our desires. 

How it is actually what we are meant to do while on Earth—and how it is only by being who we’re meant to be, that we can do what will truly make us feel satisfied and at peace, which is how we will truly serve the whole.

The goal of trauma healing is Life. Which means that the goal of trauma healing is to FEEL alive. To feel joyous, inspired, embodied, safe, guided and supported by the magic and kindness of Life. To feel loved…

So please Care.friend, let’s promise each other today that we will remember—and remind each other—that, yes, trauma healing is beautiful and life-GIVING… *But* that the goal of Life is NOT trauma healing itself.

Trauma healing is the mean, not the end.

The goal of trauma healing is Life. Life is Love. Love heals all.

So the goal—and the way!—of trauma healing is LOVE.

What do YOU love, dearest?

That's the only question that matters.

That’s the answer that will guide you home, where you belong—healing, enfreed, the embodiment of your spark and on your way to your sacred dream.

Love is the reason…

AND Love is the solution.

How perfect and loving is that?

With kindness, love and light—knowing that all three are born in the sacred darkness that we do not need to fear anymore.

leo