There's no harm in asking.
Questions will always get us faster than answers to where we're meant to be.
CARE.CHECK*: Is there a question that you’re trying not to hear? A question asked by your gut, your heart OR your deepest fear?
Could you let it come up for a few minutes, just to test how it feels?
Fear takes the conversation out of our body. Fear tightens us and agitates us. Fear makes everything feel darker, harder, more urgent and less bearable.
On the other end, our heart and our gut have a very different way of asking… a way that opens, reconnects and softens us. A way that makes everything feel more manageable, more figureoutable, more doable, more spacious.
No matter “who”’s asking, the question will not go away before it has been heard.
So consider giving it a chance to speak.
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,
How have you been? What is one thing you’re really proud of that has happened for or within you since my last letter? (and YES, that can just be breathing. Breathing is hard sometimes).
I’ve been doing a lot of growing up on my little corner of the world. Those past weeks have been tough…
Deep.
Restless.
Profound!
Gut-wrenching… (quite literally)
& Enlightening.
And I'm starting to wonder if the invitation I'm receiving is to let go of two of the things that are dearest to me...
My dream of living in New York forever,
My will to understand what everything means.
Even though my mind is convinced that we (as in my mind and me) are somehow in charge of the entire world—and that we therefore get to decide what joy and peace look like for me—I’ve been living my life from a pretty surrendered place since 2019.
I follow the signs as trustingly as I can & I listen to that voice within that doesn’t quite use words and yet knows how to make itself crystal clear.
When that voice said it was time to leave a 15-years-in-the-making career in Medicine, I listened. It took me 6 months because I don’t believe in burning bridges I can cross—but the decision itself was made overnight.
When that voice said it’s time to move to New York, EVEN IF it meant going back into basic science at first, I listened. I was not excited about the lab part, but I knew New York was worth anything and everything—so I crossed the ocean.
When that voice asks me to cross the street, I don’t wait to see if there’s objective danger on my path, I just cross the street.
When that voice speaks, I listen.
* That voice within that doesn’t quite use words
and yet knows how to make itself crystal clear.*
And right now that voice is saying a lot of things I don’t understand. That voice seems to believe that a lot of the bad news I’m receiving are actually what I need to be experiencing. While my brain laments, catastrophizes, begs for explanation and fights each and every narrative it feels compelled to invite in, that voice remains unphased, grounded, centered, peaceful. “All is well leo, keep going.”
That voice is also slowly guiding me towards a decision that would not only mean moving out of my dream apartment but also maybe moving away from my dream city.
Yes… To my bewilderment, that voice seems to imply it might be time to leave New York City.
And that voice is DEFINITELY saying that I need to stop trying to understand why everything that is happening is happening, because (according to that voice) this commitment to understanding is actually Control disguised as Enlightenment.
And as I previously mentioned, when this voice speaks, I listen. But listening doesn’t mean I’m always able to follow the guidance right away… So I’m following Oprah Winfrey’s advice: "when you don’t know what to do, do nothing.”
Which in itself is also a great challenge for me! I’m not a Do Nothing kind of human… and especially not when everything around me seems to be crumbling down. When my dream seems to be flickering on the verge of a dark hole. When someone I love dearly is dying. When I feel out of options and out of resources. When I feel like my life is at stake and like the walls are closing up on me.
But they say that insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. And I’ve been pushing the walls away my entire life, only to find myself with walls that might look different… but feel exactly the same.
I’ve made ten years plans that I’ve skillfully put on fire only to write the next ten year plan with the ashes.
I’ve let my happiness be defined by the job I did or the city I lived in.
I’ve listened to my fear that said that what I don't control will kill me—not remembering that we can’t control anything, and that only by knowing that can we finally feel free.
* This commitment to understanding is actually
Control disguised as Enlightenment.*
Now, the difference between New York and everything else is that New York has been the inner spark of light and warmth that has sustained me through decades of abuse, neglect and PTSD.
Everything else I have chased during my time on Earth has felt like a coping mechanism, like survival, like a way to die faster and more comfortably. That includes success, romance, wine or the perfect cookie.
On the other end, New York had always felt like a healing force, like finally being, like coming alive and like trading comfort for inner peace.
New York is the greatest connector I’ve ever met as it relates to uniting my heart, my breath and my body. New York has also always fueled and been fueled by my other dreams: to SING, to write, to love wholeheartedly… to embody healing.
So I can’t believe that I was wrong about New York! But that doesn’t mean that my current timing is the right one for this love affair to move forward.
Maybe I’m meant to travel the world for a while... Maybe I’m meant to witness that me knowing that I don’t want to live in France does not mean that New York is my only option. Maybe I need to free New York and myself from this attachment that weighs heavily on our relationship.
Maybe I need to go find some lost part of myself somewhere else, so that I can come back here, whole and full of love to give—instead of relying on New York to help me find this love within and around me.
Maybe New York was my ego’s latest attempt at codependency!
And maybe I need to collapse and let go of all that I believe I need to protect me… and maybe I need to be away from my great love, to let myself unravel completely.
* Maybe I need to collapse and let go of all
that I believe I need to protect me.*
Today’s letter is not meant to be inspirational—and that’s reassuring because I would be failing miserably.
Today’s letter is meant to offer you what I’m struggling to find right now.
The words of someone who wasn’t on the other side of it when they wrote about what they were experiencing and yet still believed that everything that was currently breaking them into pieces was happening FOR their greater good.
Someone who doesn’t say it out of toxic positivity. And no one could accuse me of that right now—I pour the last ounces of courage I have into functioning when I’m with someone I care about or at work, and the rest of the time I either let myself shut down or cry. NONE of this feels good. Or necessary. Or like a blessing! I just trust the calm that I can feel at my core, beneath all the turmoil that keeps me awake each night and in pain all day long.
Someone who trusts that being reborn implies that we have to let ourselves die first… and that the birthing part of the story is probably the most terrifying of all.
Someone who’s willing to say I believe, I trust, I hope, WHILE diving into their wounds—and not from a place where all that’s left of the storm are rainbows and empowering scars.
Because I am so deeply grateful to all of those who made it and then took the time to tell the story. They inspire me daily. They remind me to keep walking, to keep showing up no matter how many doors close in front of me—and to keep breathing more and more deeply, no matter how much it hurts to breathe when breathing means feeling the immensity of your own anger and grief. They showed us that it can be done, because it has been done! and that’s the only proof we need to know that it will be done again.
Because I am very appreciative of the artists who put their pain on the page, on a music sheet, in front of our eyes to show us that pain is a normal part of the human experience—that there’s nothing wrong with me, that pain can be seen, acknowledged and felt.
* Being reborn implies that we have to let ourselves die first.*
But I’m lacking a companion in my hopeful distress.
Someone who can say: “Yes it hurts! Yes it sucks. Yes it’s terrifying… and, No: it might not turn out okay, so please let yourself cry honey and accept that what seems to be leaving might be leaving indeed” AND someone who also believes with their whole heart, with their entire being, that “this is part of a plan, of a greater story, of something that includes me but isn’t centered on me. That THIS is how my dream will come true even if it means that this part of the dream was never meant to be and that only good will come from this… eventually.”
Because letting go is meant to be scary—since controlling is the most universal trauma response.
I’m sharing all of this today, because I cannot come to this page and tell you how much I trust Life, God, Reality, The Universe, Love (choose the word that feels like Awe to YOU) and then back up when I don’t get exactly what I want in a time frame that suits me.
I can’t tell you that your dream will lead you home if you let yourself come home into your dream and then let my fear take over, when my dream needs me to listen more intently.
I can’t tell you that self-connection is the pillar of our lives and how we become who we were always meant to be—and therefore who the world actually needs us to be—and then refuse to listen to the sensations that curse through my body and reshape everything I thought I believed in.
I can’t tell you to believe that every storm comes bearing a rainbow, as Maya Angelou taught us, and then only write about the rainbows I already secured without sharing first how the storm looked like BEFORE the rainbow appeared.
* Your dream will lead you home
if you let yourself come home into your dream.*
So here I am in front of you, humbled, scared, somewhat discouraged and disintegrating.
And here I am also softened, trusting, hopeful and slowly appearing.
And as Aline and I remind each other daily: Two things can be true at once.
Therefore it can LOOK like everything is ending and feel like everything is beginning.
My hope is that—in hindsight—this letter will remind us of two promises that are written on my fridge:
“There is a bit of magic in everything.”
&
“Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
So…
TO BE CONTINUED.
With kindness, love and light—because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.
Always,
leo