We are not ugly.

And we ride out of Duckland at dawn

CARE.CHECK*: What happens within you when you feel unseen, rejected or misunderstood?

What do you make it mean about yourself?

How does your body respond?

What thoughts come up and how do you meet or receive them?

What feels supportive for you in those moments?

Is there support to be found within or can you only find it around you?

I hope this week’s letter will shed a new light on any experience of unbelonging that you might have been through (if you’re a human, there might have been more than one).

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 :)

IF YOU WANT TO LISTEN TO THIS INSTEAD, you can use Speechify :) 

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Hi Care.Friend,

How are you doing today?

How is October looking from where you stand right now?

Did you set an intention for this month? Do you want to share it with me?

And if not, could you set one right now?

Trusting whatever is just coming up…

Trusting that gut answer. Trusting Heart voice.

Just because. Just to see what happens next.

Because intentions matter. They ground us into our hearts and root us back into our guts. They nourish our weary brain and remind us that we have so much more power than what we’ve been led to believe! Just not the kind of power that we’ve been taught to crave.

Alice Walker wrote that “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.” Black women have so much to teach us… Even if born in the most auspicious environments, they still have to find their light and do their shadow work in a world contaminated by patriarchal delusions and racism. This is why they burn so bright. This is why they inspire us at the soul level. Because they know, they just KNOW what it takes. Because they have not been able to rely on the outside world to find proof that they belong or permission to feel worthy.

And when we can’t rely on external force, we have to find within ourselves the only power that saves: the power of LOVE. 

“The most common way people give up their power

is by thinking they don't have any”—Alice Walker

Marianne Williamson reminded us that: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I believe this with my whole heart. I believe in our power. Yours, mine, and everyone else’s. I believe we are made of love and that we came on Earth for the sole purpose of making our sacred dream come true. That this is how we serve the world—and what a beautiful system it is that we would receive a dream that is all at once our inspiration, our purpose, our mission and our reward.

And as I’ve already mentioned HERE, I believe that we were all given a spark, that this spark is what lit up our hearts and how we came to be. I believe that this spark is here to nourish us, to guide us and to keep us alive so that our dream can come to be.

And my spark is singing, and my dream is that by finding my own heart voice I can do my part in helping us all know how it’s done.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us”

—Marianne Williamson

But I haven’t always believed that.

I used to believe that I was alone in a very cruel world. And a few parts of me still believe that. I used to believe that I had done something wrong by being born which rendered me worthless and very dangerous. I used to believe that I was a war criminal. (I didn’t come up with that belief on my own, it was bestowed upon me at birth by my not-fairy Earth mother.)

This morning, I downloaded a Letter from Love as per

Elizabeth Gilbert

’s guidance (you can join the lovelet community HERE, it’s magical), and Love reminded me that to be a war criminal you needed to have participated in a war and killed at least one person.

She reminded me that I do not check any criteria (!).

She also repeatedly wrote that I am NOT a dead german guy, no matter how confused my mother was about that fact.

And she reminded me that what I am is a singing swan.

Swans have fascinated me my entire life…

They are such gracious, enchanting animals. They know about true love and mate for life. They seem deeply aware of how brightly they shine, and they never apologize for their light.

Black swans are just as breathtakingly beautiful and do not seem to mind one bit if some people do not understand that black is the color of love. I’m convinced they cannot mind being associated with the darkness, because they too have observed that the darkness is a nursery of stars.

Swans are highly intentional beings and their embodied self-respect inspires us to bow in front of them. They’re a symbol of wisdom, resilience, harmony and again grace and beauty.

I love swans. And swans have been a lifeline on my healing journey.

When I was younger, I didn’t know how to share any parts of my story. It was just too dark—and at the time, the darkness scared me.

It was too messy, and my armor’s foundation is perfectionism.

It was judged very harshly! and I couldn’t take much more harshness, I was barely surviving.

Twenty years ago there was no discussion around cutting ties with your mother. That was proof that you were a bad person. Which meant that it was proof that she had been right all along!

But at some point you’ve got to decide that if everyone is going to believe that you’re a bad person anyway, you might at least be a bad person & FREE.

Still, it hurt… and I was already carrying rejection and abandonment wounds as deep as the Grand Canyon.

So I found a way to share my truth without challenging everyone’s worldview:

I realized that luckily for me, there was a beloved fairy tale that had been written so that I would not have to make up my own story. I told the truth and simply mentioned my father’s wife as the main protagonist. My Earth mother was my father’s wife after all, but obviously no one would bother to check if we were related—and so my evil stepmother was born in everyone else’s psyche.

Interestingly, when done by evil step-mommy, her ways were suddenly labeled as abusive “officially” and everyone thought I was very justified to have left. I was BRAVE even! (Go figure.)

I went from being a war criminal to being Cinderella, and that felt like a better identity.

But as I mentioned in my previous letter, this is not a very empowering identity, especially when living under patriarchal fallacies. And here I was stuck in the role of the martyr awaiting a shoe-fetishy prince to be freed. 

I had a feeling that it was not working… So, slowly, I started rewriting yet again the narratives.

For a while, I tried to tell the truth in a world that had matured a bit since I had left the house I grew up in. But people were still very uncomfortable with the truth—and I was also missing years of memory, a fact I was not too eager to reckon with—so I chose denial instead and buried myself into exhaustion and Medicine. 

I then proceeded to only mention my father ever, letting people assume that my mother was dead and that it was the reason why I was an oncologist. (It was not that far from the truth, my late aunt we had shared a home with had always felt more like a mother to me anyway and she was the reason I had become an oncologist indeed.)

Now what does any of this have to do with swans?

I’m getting there, please bear with me.

Swans seem deeply aware of how brightly they shine,

and they never apologize for their light.

I tried to compensate for my worthlessness on the Oncology ward and was watching my body shut down with a mixture of resignation and fear. I was still scripted in the glory of martyrdom (the irony…) and I felt inadequate, lonely and ugly. That was until 2017, when out of despair, I stopped long enough to hear my heart’s silent yet deafening cry…

Whatever this was, “this” was not working, and I had to try something, anything, if I wanted to be able to survive long enough to prescribe a few more chemotherapies.

That’s when I suddenly remembered that what had saved me as a child was SINGING.  

And again in 2015, when my childhood therapist was killed and when all the conversations we ever had came back, all at once, to shatter my denial and unlock my until-then frozen c-PTSD,

When the daily flashbacks started, leading me to conclude that I had gone crazy (we learn next to nothing about trauma in Med school—the little we learn being both hopeless and extremely pathologizing—and we learn NOTHING about trauma healing),

When I realized that I had nothing left within me and that there was no way I could take another terrifying night of assault by memories that made no sense to me,

I suddenly heard myself sing a song I had just met two days before:

After the storm, by Mumford and Sons.

In that moment, something reawakened within me.

That song literally saved me… In many ways, I credit it as the opening theme of my. my healing journey.

“And after the storm

I run and run as the rains come

And I look up, I look up,

On my knees and out of luck,

I look up.

Night has always pushed up day

You must know life to see decay

But I won’t rot, I won’t rot

Not this mind and not this heart.

I won’t rot.

And I took you by the hand

And we stood tall

And remembered our own land,

What we live for.

And there will come a time you’ll see

With no more tears

And love will not break your heart

But dismiss your fears

Get over your hill and see

What you find there

With grace in your heart and 

flowers in your hair

And now I cling to what I knew

I saw exactly what was true

But oh no more

That’s why I hold

That’s why I hold with all I have

That’s why I hold

And I won’t die alone

And be left there

Well I guess I’ll just go home

Oh God knows where

Because death is just so full

And man so small

And I’m scared of what’s behind

And what’s before

And there will come a time you’ll see

With no more tears

And love will not break your heart

But dismiss your fears

Get over your hill and see

What you find there

With grace in your heart and 

flowers in your hair”

—Mumford and Sons

And so in 2017, I started singing lessons again. And so in 2017, I started coming alive again.

A year later, I had rebuilt enough self-respect and energy to leave the highly abusive place I was working at, and went on to see if the grass would be greener in another hospital.

It would take me another year to remember that my dream had never been to become an oncologist: that was not the call of love, that was an answer to a wound.

No… What I had always wanted to be was a singer in New York and a singer in New York I was going to be.

Now why is there still no swan in that story?

That’s because until that moment I had believed myself a very ugly duckling, and I was still looking for redemption in Duckland.

But, actually, there HAS been a swan in that story all along…

Me.

The swan singer… From one of my all time favorite artist Akira Kusaka

That’s how we reclaim our power, dear Care.friend. By finally understanding that we are not who we were told we should be. We are who we are!

And when we remember who that is, everything shifts—in an instant, forever, for the better, it all turns back into magic.

Does it mean that everything will be easy from there? Absolutely not.

Finding your swanhood is only the first chapter of your inner book of healing. But it does close up the book of lies that so many of us were scripted into against our will.

And it changes everything because, suddenly, we can remember that we belong just by being. That we are not meant to change in order to be loved, and that doing so is actually very dangerous!

Because it will get us stuck with some amazing and well-intended ducks—and MANY not so amazing nor well-intended ones—with whom we can only learn how to fit in, by sacrificing our spark and our sacred dream on the altar of conformity.

We are meant to love who we are so fiercely and wholeheartedly that we can embody our beauty and light, and ease-fully find our swan tribe. Because they will see us right away… and because we will feel our way to them intuitively.

Yes, it might require upsetting some ducks… and it will for sure require moving away from Duckland.

No, you might not be able to retrieve all your possessions—and you might not be able to retrieve anything at all.

BUT you will never regret making the journey from Duckland to that not so far away Swandom that your heart always told you existed. 

And your Swandom might be in the same physical place that Duckland but you will know that you have moved because the light will be different.

The sky will be an awe-inspiring kind of blue and the night sky will melt you back into the well of love that created you. You will be surrounded by swans who believe in, inspire and adore you—and your biggest struggle will be finding the words to let your swans know what they mean to you. You will know that you’re home not because someone else or some paper said so, but because of how your body feels, moves and rests. You will feel your spark grow and glow and your will watch your dream come alive, bathing in the joy and gratitude that we can only truly experience when surrendered to the warmth and embrace of our own hearts.

And so please, please, PLEASE, remember that you’re only just a swan lost in Duckland anytime you wonder why you feel ugly or inadequate.

Also, remember that your inner swan knows how to fly AND how to dance both on water and on land… so she’s got you! and if you let her out, she will always lead you home.

Because the good news is that Swandom is only EVER a song or a heartbeat away. And Swandom is already alive and well within you.

I’ll meet you there! And I’ll see you next week,

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

leo