The price of admission has changed
About Authenticity (and the opposite of Love)
CARE.CHECK*: What is the price of admission to your unique beautiful sacred magical life?
What are the non-negotiables? What are the pre-requirements?
And if it feels hard to name them, that only means you need them even more.
We GET to experience you. You’re a gift and you’re precious—and it’s not about becoming a diva or falling into a bath of narcissism… Those traits come up when we don’t believe we can be loved for who we are. Ironically, excessive self-esteem stems from the same source as a lack of self-esteem. It’s the ego telling us that the others are more than us or so much less than, because we feel separate, othered, alone…
That was my greatest lesson of my year of HUMILITY: Humility takes tremendous amounts of self-esteem.
Humility comes from knowing no one is special because absolutely everyone is. Humility comes from knowing all we have to offer and how precious it is to receive.
What is the price of admission to your fountain of love?
And if that question doesn’t work for you, use this one:
What makes you feel known, acknowledged and seen?
If you don’t know instantly, know that you know the answer deep inside, so dive in.
And if you feel called to, keep reading for context and support on the way in.
[In case this letter gets cut in the email, you can click HERE to read the full post now :)]
Hi Care.Friend!
What’s new for you this week?
What’s revealing itself? What’s coming to a close, what’s beginning?
Nothing? EVERYTHING? You don’t know?
It’s hard to know sometimes… and that’s okay.
It’s been an interesting journey on my end, since our last letter.
I met some new magical people thanks to the Letters from Love community, created by Liz Gilbert. I also met some truths within myself that will not let themselves be tamed again. I reclaimed a new part of my formerly frozen body thanks to my last singing lesson with Sylvie… and Rick and I made progress on You Can Love. This song feels like a much needed blanket of love and courage while I tiptoe my way through my recent winter storm.
And one thing is becoming clearer than ever… There's a new price of admission into the sanctuary of my heart.
** ABOUT THE PRICE OF ADMISSION
It came to me through Monday’s daily poem, and more precisely it came to me through the burning fire of anger that had woken me up that morning: If you don’t want my wounds, you don’t get my joy.
And that truth applies to me too. I’m done denying the parts of me that got me here, that saved me from those that were meant to protect me, and that made the sacrifices that allowed me to continue and to pave my way back into Love, one dream at a time.
If you don’t want my wounds, you don’t get my joy. (And as I was rewriting those words just now, a rainbow appeared on the wall in front of me. How magical is that?)
Because my joy didn’t come from nowhere. My ability to wonder at the marvels of the world, my ability to spot hope in the darkest corners, my ability to listen with my whole body and heart… my ability to be the friend I am and to share all that feels meaningful and to spread joy COMES from my wounds.
What I’m being told is magical about me now comes from the wisdom and joy that was alchemized through the fire of my anger, and then washed anew by the ocean of sorrow that flows through my Mermaid soul.
I am not my trauma—but I am who I am because and thanks to them too. There’s no denying that.
* There's a new price of admission
into the sanctuary of my heart.*
It’s not the first time I try opening up about my struggles with my people, but it’s the first time I do in real time (when it’s raw and vulnerable) or beyond my sacred inner circle—and it’s a fascinating experiment.
Now obviously, I’m not telling strangers in the street or job acquaintances that I’m facing impossible choices, but I’m being honest with those who tell me that I’m their friend and that they love me.
And I had been bracing myself for rejection… Abandonment in the midst of grief—or should I say abandonment BECAUSE of my grief—is one of my greatest fears since that fateful April day in Paris I wrote about HERE.
But what I had not seen coming however was silence. A complete blanking out from the person I’m talking or writing to... No attack, no support. AND NO acknowledgement.
As if I had shared nothing, as if it wasn’t important. As if it was possible to ignore or overlook… As if it was just too much to take on or too little to bother responding to. As if it wasn’t going to change me forever… or maybe because it is going to change me forever and because they just don’t want me to change—now or at all?
(Now, of course, as we explored last week, deep down I know it says nothing about me, nor does it define them in any way. It shows only their capacity. And this awareness of capacity plays in two ways: the capacity one has to meet us where we are on that day, and the capacity they have to meet us where we are ever. So here, I waited several days before concluding that those beautiful friends just didn’t have the capacity to hold what I’m going through… and NO I’m not making it mean anything bad about them! But we do get to choose who gets our joy and we do get to honor our needs to be surrounded by people who have capacity for our wounds.)
**** ABOUT THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE
They say that the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. And that’s why we’re now realizing as a society—or in the trauma-informed circles within our society at least— that the wound of neglect can be the most debilitating of all the drivers of trauma, in a long-term setting especially.
Physical abuse will leave you injured and terrorized, emotional abuse will leave you feeling worthless and humiliated, sexual abuse will leave you numb and feeling ruined… Any kind of hate breaks the mirror of love you were looking at and it takes a lot of patience, courage, compassion and care to give ourselves the time to reclaim each and every tiny piece of broken glass, and make the mirror whole again—this time safely standing inside our own hearts.
The hidden gift of that ordeal will be the realization that the world is created from the inside out, and that the cure for hate is always here waiting for us, beneath our scars, beneath our skin, in this sanctuary we get to reclaim and call home.
We are the one we were looking for in others and learning that is priceless. The lucky ones will learn this while being showered in light by those they love, but it will be the same journey through the darkness nonetheless:
Because when there is no darkness, there are no stars—and the darkness is not the obstacle to light, it is the origin of it. So in some ways it might be easier to find the motivation to dive into our shadow world when the world outside seems dark and inhospitable, than when we can find comfort and solace in the stories that surround us.
In any case, hate hurts and scars us and changes things forever—either dragging us to Hell (where we get trapped in survival patterns such as blame, people-pleasing, obsessive fixing or denial) or until we find our way into a cleansing ocean of tears and can be rebirthed through the fire of our indignation.
But then there is neglect… And neglect does not feel like hate, it feels like indifference. And indifference IS the opposite of love.
* The opposite of love is not hate,
it’s indifference.*
****ABOUT NEGLECT
To be fair I don’t believe there’s a true opposite to Love herself, but there’s definitely one to feeling love. When someone hates you, it feels awful but, in some ways, it acknowledges that you matter. When someone is indifferent, the youngest parts of us lose the only way they could know they exist at the time—which is in the eye of someone else.
Indifference does not only look like lovelessness, indifference feels like embodied invalidation. It feels like a negation of who you are and what you’re going through.
It’s not attacking your needs, it’s rendering them irrelevant. You’re not seen as an inconvenience, you’re just not seen at all.
It feels like receiving a note explaining to you that you’ll be allowed to be a part of this world again when you’re willing to put a cover on your wounds. [Because you can feel whatever you want, as long as you make sure that no one has to cope with it too.]
We shame those who perpetuate cycles of fake happiness on social media, but we forget that we’re the ones who trained them to do that in the first place.
“Please tell me that you’re okay.” “Oh no, please don’t cry.” “I NEED you to be happy.” Aka Be Okay so that I can be.
We get very confused on what is our side of the street and what is not. We focus on their thoughts, their emotions, their reactions, their ways. The impact they have on US—and we forget to check the impact we have on them.
It applies to our capacity for others to honor their wounds and to when someone puts salt on ours.
“Please don’t react to my unconscious behaviors and just go do your work so that I can act in whichever way I want.”
We cancel others on a whim but we renounce any accountability of our own. We indulge in self-blame and worry, and wear them as a badge of honor that means that everyone else should take care of us and accept us exactly as we are… But that’s not the way it works.
We don’t get to tell others who they can or cannot be—and we must have the courage to refuse to be defined by other people’s capacity and preferences too.
* We are the one we were looking for in others
and learning that is priceless.*
The truth is we are who we are—the joy, the sorrow, the anger and the ability to love, alike.
We are our wounds and we are the meaning we found in them. We are the shadow and we are the light. We are the problem sometimes, the solution often and we are more importantly neither. We. Just. Are.
So if you want my joy, you have to look at my wounds too. You don’t get to choose the parts of me that fits and you don’t get to cast parts of me out. I get to experience the entirety of you or none of it. I don’t get to cut you into pieces and only keep the ones that fit with mine... If I want your light, I welcome your shadow with the same open arms.
And it works both ways of course: Some of us are so scripted in misery, that we cannot tolerate not having company on that dark side of the moon we refuse to leave. And that’s not okay either! If you want my wounds, you also need to look at my joy. If I need your shadow, I must also honor your light.
What I'm trying to say is that we don’t get to select which parts of others—or of ourselves—we love and which parts we ignore.
That doesn’t mean we have to follow everyone on every path they take… That doesn’t mean we have to read every blog post, learn about every email, listen to every song, understand every project. That doesn’t mean we have to share every opinion or dream… That doesn’t mean we help with every issue or tend to every wound!
Of course not.
What it means is that we have to ACKNOWLEDGE it all. I don’t get to choose that your politics or your art or your job or your partner or your sport doesn’t matter just because I don’t personally care. I can’t ignore your pain because I’m trying to escape from mine and to stay tucked in toxic positivity or denial. I don’t get to ignore your joy because what I love is when we both complain together or if I’m addicted to common enemy gossip and drama. We can decide not to talk about certain things together because it leads nowhere, but we need to still hold space for the truth that we don’t share—just as we celebrate the truths that unite us.
So if you don’t want my wounds, know that I understand. It feels so heavy and so scary and so unfair, God knows I’m trying to tune out too! But I won’t. And so I can’t let you ask me to deny them when I’m with you...
I can’t surround myself with those whose behaviors feed my fears that I cannot be loved when I’m in pain.
I’m done accepting to be the giver of joy for those who don’t have capacity for my pain... Indeed, my joy comes from my ability to feel & my ability to feel includes the beauty of joy AND the reality of pain.
When we only want the glamour and the beauty, we can befriend fictional characters, Hollywood stars and shiny instagramers. We can also surround ourselves with nice people who live on the surface of the world, where there are things we talk about and things we never share.
When we want true connection however, we need authentic human friends. And authentic human friends hurt just as often as they laugh (or should I say hopefully laugh as often as they hurt, as this one is not a given).
Authentic human friends weather the darkest storms before they have rainbows and sunny days to share. Authentic human friends have blind spots, unhealed trauma, debilitating fears and frustrating shortcomings they need to be witnessed for and loved through. Authentic human friends thrive when we can look at them with compassion and gratitude for their courage to be true and raw. Authentic human friends also have enchanting stories, bottomless open hearts, once-in-a-universe gifts and wells of wisdom to offer and share. Authentic human friends will be in awe and gratitude every time YOU share your rawness and truth with them.
Authentic human friends will offer their authenticity and welcome yours.
* We need to still hold space for the truth that we don’t share
—just as we celebrate the truths that unite us.*
So here is the new price of admission into the sanctuary of my heart:
If you don’t want my wounds, please know that I love you AND that we are done.
If you don’t want my wounds, please know I will miss you and that I understand! BUT if you don’t want my wounds… you do NOT get my joy anymore.
Because I’m done being ashamed of my wounds… It would make no sense! No. Because I know by now that when you give me a little bit of time and the tiniest proof of support, my wounds always turn into love.
With kindness, love and light—because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.
Always,
leo