This story does not serve
About our collective wounds, about the stories that prevent them from healing, and about Love
In case this letter gets cut in the email, you can click HERE to read the full post now :)
Hi CARE friend,
How are you? I’m asking, I’m really asking.
The world is in so much pain right now, and we’re all so much more sensitive than we know.
There’s no escaping our nature, they’re no closing our hearts so tightly that the cries of the collective cannot enter.
Because we’re connected from the inside out just as much as we’re connected from the outside in. And what we can try to escape from, by shutting our eyes and covering our ears, will still reach us through the Love that beats our hearts.
Because Love wants to know, because Love cares, and Love is who we are. No matter how disconnected from our core we are.
And so I really want to know: How are you? What do you need right now?
And whatever that is, can you give it to yourself with the same devotion and tenderness that you would if facing a wounded child? Even if only in the smallest way?
We are all deeply wounded children right now and we can only offer others what we have. So let us give ourselves the support, hope and nurturance that we’re all both yearning to receive and longing to offer.
Time to tend to our hearts
Tending to our hearts is not superficial, frivolous or selfish… and it cannot be an afterthought. Tending to our hearts is how we connect with our depth, our wisdom, our strength, our courage and not only our ability but our willingness to Love fiercely, unapologetically, unconditionally, every inch of and being in this world.
Tending to our hearts is the most responsible, generous, empowering, life-sustaining, life affirming and life-serving choice we can make. Tending to our hearts is our most pressing and our most sacred assignment.
Because we cannot change others—we’ve all tried, it doesn’t work—and that’s because WE’RE NOT MEANT TO.
We don’t know better than others, we know different. (I wrote about it HERE).
What we can do however is heal and liberate ourselves! And when we do, it benefits everyone.
That’s how we change the world.
By tending to each and every part of the whole…
So the only way to make sure that everyone is deeply cared for is to promise each other that we’ll all start by taking care of ourselves. And ONCE we’re full (of hope, of love, of strength… of Life), we can make sure to share all our resources with each other.
That’s how we undo the effect of the terror of lack.
If we’re all self-responsible and self-sourced, we know that we can give wholeheartedly without questioning what will be left for us. If everyone is self-responsible and self-sourced, we know that they will neither take more than they need nor more than what we can offer.
And here’s another thing that I’ve been meaning to write about:
The stories that hurt women
There are a lot of messages in our culture that harm women on a daily basis. We’re becoming more and more aware of them, and women are liberating themselves from those self torturous narratives and reclaiming their inner fire, inner enchantment and inner power. It’s the most beautiful thing to witness and experience.
We’re remembering that we were never fragile little beings who needed a man to protect them. And we are not brainless little creatures drowning into useless feelings either.
We’re reanchoring into our hearts and bodies, thereby healing our psyches and realizing that there’s more to a human being than their left brain.
Actually, the left brain is the one part of us that has as much power to achieve as it has to destroy. That’s the one part of us that should be kept in check and that’s also the only part of us that wants to render everything else futile and meaningless.
So yes, things are changing at the deepest level for all people who identify as women as well as for all folks who are connected with their inner feminine and committed to harnessing its strength, magic, wisdom and well of care.
But there is also a need to look at the stories that drive men’s state of affairs.
And I believe that there’s one foundational message ingrained in our collective psyche that is deeply hurting men and potentially both fueling and explaining many men’s unconscious hate towards women and their will to control them.
There’s another story that does not serve
It’s this idea that in case of emergency we should save children and women, first and foremost.
I agree for children obviously. They’re either defenseless tiny humans or vulnerable young people in our care, and they’re our most precious offering to this world. They’re embodied love who haven’t yet forgotten that Love is the only answer to what ails our world… and they rely on us to find their way safely into adulthood.
They’re the most enchanting part of us in the now and they’re the promise of a future that we might not get to be a part of. They’re pure, innocent, and it is our responsibility and privilege to keep them safe.
Nelson Mandela reminded us that “There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children”, and I will add to that that the way we treat children on the personal level is a direct reflection of our connection to our inner humanity and of where we are on our healing and self-reclaiming journey.
So YES. Let’s always make sure the children are safe first and foremost.
And that does imply that one or a few adults need to be designated to guide them to the shelter… but that does NOT imply that some “kinds” of adults matter more than others.
The priority is to get the children to safety with SOME adults to tend to them, regardless of gender—except maybe if there are some very small babies who need their breastfeeding mother, but again it’s not so much about the adult, it’s about the child’s most pressing need.
And once the kiddos are safe, the priority is to make sure that as MANY of us can be spared. There is no requirement for gender segregation at any step of this process.
We all matter. We’re all important. We’ll all be missed! (And if we’re not, it will be because of our behavioral patterns and life choices, not because of the gender we identify with or of the sexe we were assigned at birth).
Interestingly, when you really think about it, saying that women come first is as insulting to women as it is to men.
It’s insulting to women since it implies that we’re either weak beings who need to be saved by men (we are not) or heartless people ready to step on someone else’s head to survive (we are not).
It’s is insulting to men, since it implies that they do not matter as much as everybody else (they do).
Men and women have all been indoctrinated to believe that what this world needs is martyrs! But that’s not true. The solution is not for us all to die at the altar of someone’s else’s needs. What this world needs is LOVE. The invitation is to live at the altar of our treasured humanity—ours and everybody else’s.
The reason we say that hurt people hurt people is mostly because when a wounded part of us has felt utterly powerless in the past, they registered that the solution was to become the one that holds power. They do unto others what was done to them in a desperate effort to not feel as a victim anymore, realizing too late that becoming a perpetrator solves nothing and that it is a far greater burden to bear.
It’s the most tragic vicious cycle and it takes tremendous integrity and courage to step out of it and find one’s way back into one’s heart! But that’s the only chance at redemption we have, because only our hearts can show us the wound and pain that blinded us out of alignment.
And I believe that if you’re not aware of how painful it can be to be told your entire life that you are worth less than children and women (aka everyone’s who is not a man), you’re going to unconsciously want to compensate by creating systems that make you look—at least in some areas—more valuable than them. And you’re for sure going to double down on your rejection of anyone who doesn’t stick to the rules of gender.
Fear and hate always can only take form into this world through the root of our unattended wounds.
I read somewhere that when women get trapped in the idea of taking over men and to simply reverse the current order of societal organization, they’re actually keeping the patriarchy alive—they’re just dressing it as a woman.
I deeply agree with that.
To me, feminism is not about hierarchy, it’s about bringing us all back where we belong: on Earth, in each other’s arms, and focused on meeting our own needs, so that we can serve our communities, Nature, and this mesmerizing world by embodying the Love we are.
It’s not about finding the “better sex”, it’s about restoring the harmony, inside each and every one of us, between our inner feminine and inner masculine. That’s how we can then connect with each other as human beings, instead of gendered concepts.
We need to stop putting women in cages that they’re only allowed to escape to step occasionally on a pedestal. Women are not victims, goddesses, whores, angels, the problem or the solution. They’re human souls in a female body who identify as women. Nothing less, nothing more.
We need women back where they belong: grounded into the dirt, blooming towards the heavens.
And we need to stop putting men in boxes that they spend their entire lives trying to fight and destroy. Men are not protectors, predators, leaders, warriors, the problem or the solution. They’re human souls in a male body who identify as men. Nothing less, nothing more.
We need to bring men back where they belong: grounded into the dirt, blooming towards the heavens.
[I did not include trans folks and gender fluid people in the last two paragraphs because it seems to me that they had to transcend those gender constructs already to be able to exist in a culture that hadn’t made any place for them… and that while they’re facing even harder projections to weather and overcome, they are at least somewhat spared from those I just listed above.]
What we need right now
What we need more than ever is to uncover the narratives that trick us into believing that we could ever be so different from another that it justifies throwing our own hearts into an unforgiving acid lake of Hate.
What we need more than ever is to remember how worthy, precious, special, valuable and LOVING each and every one is as our core.
What we need more than ever is to stop ranking, weighing, controlling, attacking, despising or idealizing everything.
Our differences are what make our oneness WHOLE. Our differences are pavements on the road of unconditional love. Our differences are how we remember who we truly are and can embody again our one collective heart.
Our differences are not there to separate us, they’re here to show us how much Love we’re able to feel and bring into this world.
Men are not better than women and women are not better than men. No human being is better or worse than another because of the way their body is shaped, the gender they identify with (if any) or the way they’ve been conditioned to think, behave or pray. No human being is better or worse than another one no matter how many mistakes they’ve made or how many achievements they brought forth.
We so desperately need to remember that, in our innermost heart, we all know that.
We need and we love each other. We’re meant to be each other’s keepers, not each other’s judges.
Yes, our entire world will change overnight if we can just find the courage to remember that…
Our entire world will change overnight if we can just find the courage to remember Love.
The path of remembrance
The path of remembrance starts with being more mindful of the stories we tell ourselves, no matter how cemented in our psyches they are and no matter how good on paper they look.
If the story doesn’t lead to connection, if the story disempowers even one character in order to empower the other, if the story doesn’t serve EVERYONE, this story does not serve. PERIOD.
If the story doesn’t come from AND lead to Love, that story does not serve and needs to be erased and rewritten.
Now let us all choose to remember that we’re the one holding the pen, and that we can choose who will enliven our finger: our wounded brain or our enlightened heart.
Sending you kindness, love and warmth—knowing that all three are born in the sacred darkness that we do not fear anymore.
leo