LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Deirdre Lewis!

Road dogs

Dear Lovelets!

Would you like to hear a wonderful story about saying yes to life?

A few months ago, our special guest, my long-lost friend

Deirdre Lewis

, was driving down the freeway in Los Angeles when she saw an enormous, handsome dog trotting along the edge of the road, dipping and diving amidst the speeding cars. Without a second thought, she pulled the car over, opened up the passenger door, and — in an exquisite ballet, as though they’d had an appointment to do this forever (maybe they did) — the enormous dog (think: WOLF) jumped into her car, sat down like a perfect gentleman, and then went home with her.

Deirdre, being a good soul, spent the next weeks getting him vet treatments and trying to find this dear fellow his home (he was untagged, un-collared, and his huge paws were burned from walking so long on the scorching hot pavement) but there was no home for him to go to.

Except hers.

“I can’t keep a dog,” she kept saying — especially such a ginormous dog. She didn’t have the space in her apartment for him, she didn’t have land for him to romp upon, she works full time, this had not been her plan . . .

Yet the dog, whom she started to call Nino, had already settled into her place, where he seemed quite happy and where he behaved with patience and kindness toward her and everyone (animal and human) that he ever encountered. And while she kept saying that she absolutely couldn’t have a dog, he kept gazing at her with his kind and wise eyes, asking: “Are you absolutely sure about that?”

Until, at last, she said YES.

Which, I suspect, he always knew she would, because that’s the way it was always going to go.

You can read all about this encounter here on Deirdre’s Substack,

Snaps

. Essentially this is a perfect example of what life can look like when you start saying YES to it.

You slow down and open the door, and love jumps into your car.

Friendship arrives.

The next right action becomes simple, obvious, surprising, and more beautiful than you could have ever planned.

Our topic this week is saying yes.

What does the Spirit of Unconditional Love (SOUL) want you to say yes to, right now, in your life?

In a world where it seems everyone is suddenly hiding and panicking and hunkering down in frozen terror, what and where is your next yes?

Open the door, hop in, here we go!

Love
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what do you want me to say yes to?

Angel pants, this one is simple: freedom.

I’m going to let you in on a secret. Freedom is your assignment for this lifetime. It’s your mandate, your covenant, your mission. I’m here to help you with it. Everyone is here to help you with it.

My little recovering codependent, my little Cancerian, my little Enneagram 2, my little love addict on the mend, my little one who once described herself as a combination of a golden retriever and a barnacle, my little clinger, my little people pleaser, my little good girl, my little face-reader and temperature-of-the-room taker, my little anxious attachment trauma wound, my little “I’m going to continuously abdicate the responsibility of my own life onto others and try to make them take care of me forever”-er.

LISTEN.

None of that is what you truly are. It’s all been a big misunderstanding, and that misunderstanding was designed by the game, by the matrix itself, to see if you could find your way out of it. To see if you could find your true self in all that mental chatter and clatter and need and distraction. To see if you could get free of it. For that is what you are here for.

Freedom.

We find your freedom delicious!

You think of yourself as the least likely woman to ever become a crusading example of rebellion against the status quo, because of how much you feel you have always needed the love and approval of the world, but honey, you don’t need it. That’s the actual truth. You don’t need a bit of it. That’s the literal, actual truth.

What you need, to thrive, grow, and create, is freedom — freedom to a rare degree, freedom to an even radical and outrageous degree. Freedom to a (perhaps to some people) offensive degree.

Freedom from enmeshment, freedom from toxic loyalty, freedom from stale old culturally assigned duties, freedom from approval seeking and the need for image management, freedom from manipulation and being manipulated, freedom from lies and half-lies and the massaging of the truth in order to be more loved or liked, freedom from telling everyone what they need to hear — are you getting the message?

FREEDOM. Freedom. Freedom.

That’s what we want you to say yes to.

We want you to know that every single one of your relationships is voluntary. We don’t care what history you have with anyone; when it stops tasting like freedom, we need you to exit.

We want you to know the deliciousness of actual choice. We want you to know that everyone can walk away from you, or scorn you or, lol, abandon you (as though you could ever be abandoned when you have YOU, when you have us, when you have the Great Mystery, when you have your curiosity). Everyone can walk away and you’ll be fine, little coyote. You’ll be just fine. Trotting off into the world with your tail up and your nose in the air and the dirt under your feet alive with possibility and adventure.

This is what we want you to say yes to.

Whatever residual part of you still believes it’s impossible —that there is so much you have to do, so many obligations and duties that you must respond to, so many people’s feelings and needs that you must babysit, heal, and adapt to — we want you to let all that go.

Trust us. Don’t worry how anyone else is doing it. Please: trust us.

Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Don’t back down one inch from it. That’s what we want you to say yes to.

We hope we have been clear. Follow up if you have any further questions — but the answer will always be the same: freedom. We love you radically, immensely, complexly, completely, and with greatest joy.

Prompt

A few years ago, a friend told me that her New Year’s resolution was “to say yes more and to say no more,” meaning that instead of gratuitously declining invitations out of habit, she’d consider each one and maybe push herself to get out a bit more. But she also didn’t want to keep saying yes to other kinds of obligations that didn’t serve her, that she’d been agreeing to out of politeness, with some people-pleasing sprinkled in.

It’s probably a good idea for us all to take a regular inventory of these habits, right? This week, let’s begin together by posing this question: Dear Love, what should I say yes to?

My new book, ALL THE WAY TO THE RIVER — in a way, all about unlearning my lifelong practice of too-eager yesses and learning to choose myself and the always, always-right voice of Unconditional Love instead — will be released on September 9th! I wrote this book for me, in order to really understand what happened during my wild ride of a relationship with my beloved, the one and only Rayya Elias, and how it changed us both. But I also wrote it so that anyone who recognizes in themselves the patterns of external love, comfort, and approval-seeking we talk about here will know there’s a better way. You can click HERE to find all kinds of ways to pre-order. ❤️