The truth about truth

Truth is not a fact, a choice, a thought or a thing. Let's talk about where truth is.

Hello my caring friend,

How have you been?

But really?

Like in three sentences minimum and with at least two layers put to light on the emotional side of it. I’m not just asking… I want to know.

We rush through those answers… We’ve been trained to ask them to people we don’t have the time or space to listen to, and to answer them as succinctly as we can to not alienate those we deeply care about.

But how did we convince ourselves that our truth is alienating?

When did we forget that our truth is our most precious offering to the world, to our heart… to each other?

I’ll write about Truth today. It feels important. It feels needed.

*** ABOUT TRUTH

I heard Glennon Doyle complain that nothing felt true enough in what she was reading, hearing, receiving until she read magical

Andrea Gibson

’s poems (if you want to be changed forever, please read her bucket list HERE). 

I could deeply relate to Glennon’s plea.

I believe we all share this longing for a truth that is truer than the truth we’ve been taught to settle for. I believe we all crave that sense of liberation and awe that can only be experienced when truth is pulsing through every inch of our weary bodies.

I believe we need truth more than anything else—and this is why the world can look like a very scary place very often. We forgot how vital embodying our truth is.

People are cut from their truth, because they’re cut from their bodies.

I’ve lived that way for the better part of my first 35 years… and I know how dehumanizing it feels. Living from the neck up. Stuck in an universe written into being by misguided thoughts.

Those thoughts sound captivating and tend to be spoken by a harsh uncaring inner voice. They often tell us that we're not enough, not doing enough either and that everybody is mean and that everything sucks. 

Those thoughts always pretend to be true and factual. And we forget to check if those so-called facts are real.

*** ABOUT WHERE TRUTH CAN BE FOUND

Truth cannot be found in the mind. Truth is experienced through our body.

Indeed, the body allows us to sort through our thoughts. Whenever we become aware of a thought, we can test it on our system. If the body opens, expands, if our breath deepens—and no matter how much it hurts!—our truth has been awakened.

Truth does not always feel good, it’s not meant to! It’s meant to feel true.

Truth does not feel good when truth is the bearer of bad news, but truth always feels better than its opposite would—because it’s… true. 

Truth feels liberating no matter how high the cost of that liberation is. There is no cost too high to pay for truth, because it is the price of a life of integrity, connection and awe. It is the price of a life that feels sacred and holy. It is the price of a world that we belong in, inherently.

For instance, no matter how much I’d love to believe that I don't miss my friend this morning, I only feel relief when I acknowledge that I feel sad and lonely. That I wish she were here, that I could hear her voice and tell her about all that happened yesterday. That I’m wondering how she’s doing, what she’s learning, what feels heavy, enchanting, wrong and true for her right now.

When I pretend that “all is well”, that I don’t need us to connect that often anyway, that I’m not worried there’s a problem she’s not sharing, I put a fake smile on my face, trying to make myself taller to compensate for how small I feel. I let my body contract, tighten, and barely breathe. However, when I let the part of me that feels abandoned, rejected and scared that it’s “the beginning of the end”, share her longing for reassurance and relief, I feel my chest soften, my breath reach my belly and my back lengthen! Yes, I also feel my fake smile fading… but I also feel love rushing through my veins to hold and support me.

I can then fully realize that a part of me is deeply struggling and that I don't have to wait for my friend to call to feel safer. I don’t have to pretend I’m okay to feel better! I can just be with myself and wait it out. Breathing out the fear… and breathing in love. Understanding that some very ancient wounds of mine are bathing in salt at the moment. Of course it hurts.

I can trust myself to get me through it all, because I’m someone who says and holds… the truth—to the world and even more importantly to myself. I don’t experience myself as a happiness bully or a gaslighter anymore. I embody the compassionate adult that I am: one who can tend to the needs of her inner children.

We cannot trust someone who lies to us, we cannot trust someone who invalidates us, we cannot trust someone who rejects us! And still we all wonder why we struggle with self-trust?  

Lying to ourselves doesn’t only hurt our relationship with ourselves, it just doesn’t work. It’s as simple as this. Something’s gotta give… If we want to be able to lie to ourselves, we must disconnect from the part of us that knows what is real. That’s a very dangerous way to live.

*** ABOUT LYING TO OURSELVES

Everything in Nature has been designed to serve… and this is why truth feels so right in our bodies.

Because we need it.

Truth is our place of power, and truth is essential to our ability to love and trust. Truth reminds us of what MATTERS, to us.

It prevents us from believing we can do it ALL alone, when our thirst for connection and shared love is one of our most fundamental human needs. And truth also reminds us that our power is within, when we try to outsource our sense of self, of agency, of worth.

Believing that we’d be better off alone on an island is a protection mechanism against the fear of being hurt. Believing that we cannot go through the day without our people is a protection mechanism against the fear of disappointing ourselves. The truth lives in the middle.

The truth is we’re better off living on a safe island, on which we know how to live and thrive on our own AND on which we live surrounded by those we love and who love us, so much so that we do not have to do it alone.

On our way back to wholeness, we must therefore first and foremost make our way back into our truth center.

We must relearn how truth feels like, and commit to feeling our way into integrity. We must pledge to prioritize a life full of sorrow and awe, and not a life of superficial ease.

We must also hold the paradox that the only way to feel better is often to feel worse first—and sometimes a whole lot worse, for what feels like a very long time.

IT’S SO WORTH IT! and it takes courage.

IT PAYS OFF! and it requires a massive investment upfront.

Slowly coming out of denial, I’ve heard myself often share with my coach that “it’s getting worse in the past”.

And it really is.

I’m a creative optimist, and I have rewritten a lot of my narratives to make them look prettier, more acceptable, easier to overcome. It was a commendable attempt at making a wrong thing right… but once again, that’s just not the way it works.

Truth doesn’t care about being convenient or digestible, truth cares about being true. Nothing else, nothing more.

Revisiting my own tales, I see the lies that tried to put a pink filter on what looked way too damn dark... I thought that redeeming the villains in my mind by unbending some arcs of the storyline, would allow me to forgive what I decided had not been done.

Surprisingly enough, it didn’t help at all. I’ve learned that forgiveness is not really a thing. Forgiveness really means to understand… and I couldn’t understand the players' choices when I pretended they had been dealt different cards and/or had used them in a different way.

We need to see and accept people for who they are in order to love them at that deepest level which is unconditional.

And only through unconditional love can we understand what it takes to forgive. Only by naming the hurt can we heal. Archibishop Desmond Tutu taught me that.

It feels counterintuitive for some reasons that acknowledging how much pain we’re in is the way to forgive deeply, and yet it’s the only solution.

I cannot forgive you for stabbing me until I’ve let myself witness how deeply it cut. Indeed, only after having thoroughly assessed how deep the wound was, can we properly tend to it. Any surgeon could second that. And only after having properly healed will we be able to forgive the one that wounded us. THAT’s how it works.

That’s why no matter how much truth hurts, truth is the only way to heal.

* On our way back to wholeness,

we must first and foremost make our way back

into our truth center. *

It’s getting worse in my past—and in many ways those closest to me might think that I’m not getting better… that I’m getting worse even? That this trauma work is NOT working, and that I should stop exploring! (I mean they would never because those closest to me have the capacity for truth and sorrow, they choose love over fear, and if I’m honest—theme of the day I guess—they hold my sadness a lot better than I can).

But what I’m learning is that trauma work’s magic lies in the unraveling…

It comes from those moments when the pain that couldn’t be processed finds its way to the surface, in the present moment when it is finally felt, when it hurts so much we believe we’re about to die… only to find out what it feels like to be alive again—or for the first time. 

* Only after having thoroughly assessed how deep the wound was,

can we properly tend to it…

and heal. *

*** ABOUT CHOOSING TRUTH

Some say truth will piss you off first, some say that truth hurts, some say that truth feels energizing, others say that truth feels grounding or empowering. It all depends on the way we uniquely dance our feelings.

But one thing is certain, everyone agrees that truth is liberating.

Truth is worth it.

All of it is: the gut wrenching anguish AND the embodied joy. The terrifying nightmares AND the enchanting awakenings. The loneliness, the reconnection, the view from the top of the mountain, the gravity of the deep sea. It’s worth it. Truth is worth it.

And truth is not a fact, a thought or a choice.

Truth is a feeling.

Truth is not written in our minds, truth is remembered through our bodies. 

Truth is not polite, concise, well-mannered, stable nor sweet.

Truth is bold, loud, messy, everchanging, and unapologetic. 

I invite you to join me in a world where nothing feels certain, definite, secure or neat.

I invite you into a world of mystery, magic, courage and vulnerability.

I invite you on a path drawn by Integrity, paved by Bravery, lit by Love, regularly watered by Grief and, more often than not, sunkissed by Joy.

I invite you on a path that leads to the arms of Peace.

I invite you on a path called Truth.

Care.Check: What is one thing that you’ve never shared with anyone until now?

Could you schedule a special time to share it with a trusted loved one this week?

If that feels too vulnerable, do you want to share it with me?

If that feels too vulnerable can you share it on a small piece of paper that you will then burn or bury?

Can you take a chance on Truth—and trust that what will happen next will be pure… magic?

---

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

Always,

leo