LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Kyla Cobbler!

Where shall comfort be found?

Dear Lovelets,

I’m going to part the curtain and let you see behind the veil — and maybe some other mixed clichés — in order to give you a glimpse of how we do things over here at Letters From Love Enterprises.

First of all, Letters From Love Enterprises consists of me and my beloved friend Margaret. We met in 1988 (!!) at NYU, when we were 18 years old. Margaret was a stellar student of journalism, and a fantastic wiseass. Our history together is long and rich. I introduced Margaret to her husband (about whom Glennon Doyle said recently, “Wait, Margaret, you’re still married to the FIRST PERSON YOU EVER MARRIED? What?! How does that even work?”). She got me my first journalism job, at SPIN magazine, back in 1993 (she used to do fancy editing stuff with the likes of Harper’s Magazine and such). And now we are in this business together of teaching people how to write themselves letters from the Spirit of Unconditional Love, as a lifelong spiritual practice.

And if you had told me and Margaret 35 years ago that someday our “profession” would be teaching people “a spiritual practice” on something called “Substack,” which is a kind of “social media” that exists on “the Internet,” I think we would have had a lot of questions.

Anyway! That’s what we do! And when our guests say that they are grateful that Liz’s “team” reached out to them, the team they are referring to is, specifically, Margaret.

We spend a lot of time on the phone (in something we call Very Important Business Meetings) trying to figure out who we should invite to be special guests each week, and how best to approach them. Many of the people we have invited to be our guests here are folks we have never met. Some of them are well-known; some are not. Some are people we’ve admired from afar forever; some are recommendations from trusted friends; some are people whom our algorithms served up to us randomly in video clips on various platforms — and we liked them instantly, and found ourselves wondering what the Spirit of Unconditional Love might have to say to them, and through them.

Here’s the thing, though: some of the people we invite to be our guests say no. (Or they say yes, and then, as the deadline approaches, they cancel or disappear — bless them!) Many say that they simply can’t imagine writing themselves a letter from love — that it’s too vulnerable, too scary, too cringey. They report that it feels contrived and weird and artificial, or that they are afraid nobody will answer if they ask the question, “Dear Love, what would you have me know today?”

You would be surprised, I think, if you saw the names of some of the people who simply could not risk the vulnerability of trying this.

(That vulnerability, by the way, is why I put the letters from our special guests behind a paywall, where they are never trolled or harmed by our beautiful community, but only supported and encouraged with such loving kindness.)

We never push anyone, of course.

Well, sometimes we push.

Sometimes I push.

What I suggest to people is this: if the idea of writing yourself a letter from the Spirit of Unconditional Love (SOUL) sounds too scary, maybe you could just try writing yourself a letter from the Spirit of Simple Friendliness? (SOSF). Like, “Hey pal! I see you! I see how hard you’re trying! I don’t hate you!” Just maybe as a start?

Why do I push people so hard to try this? Why do we care so much? Why do we gently encourage everyone to give this practice a try? Because we know the truth that they don’t know yet: it’s going to be a beautiful experience for them, once they surrender into it. A voice of tenderness that they didn’t even know they possessed is going to arrive, and speak words from the heart that they didn’t even know they needed to hear. And the more uncomfortable it feels at the beginning, the more transcendent it will feel at the end. Trust us. We have seen it time and again. We know how things work, over here at headquarters.

Our special guest this week is the brilliant Irish comedian Kyla Cobbler — who has an Instagram account that is VERY worth getting lost in. And she confesses in the intro to her letter that she found this practice to be quite far out of her comfort zone. But she did it. She risked it. And what came through was shining, vivid, beautiful, gentle, radiant, unconditional love. Which is what we knew would happen. Only because it always does.

So let’s talk about comfort zones today, dears.

Let’s see what Love has to say.

And let’s keep going.

Love,
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know about getting out of my comfort zone?

To be honest, honey, we’d actually like to see you spend a little more time IN it.

Oh wait. We didn’t say our greetings.

Dearest feather from an owl’s underwing, dearest slice of life, dearest crack of fresh air: good morning, we love you, and we are so glad you slept last night. Rest is what we wanted for you, and rest is what was found.

And why was rest found last night? Why?

Because around 5pm yesterday afternoon, after an exhausting day — no, an exhausting week — of talking about yourself, Rayya, sex and love addiction, drug addiction, death, grief, loss and shame; tired in yet another hotel room; missing your dog and your own bed; and on the edge of tears after trying all day to solve an urgent logistical problem in your life that is located on the other side of the continent, which you cannot solve because you are not there; your head spinning with desperate attempts at solution despite the fact that there was absolutely nothing you could do about that problem yesterday from 2,500 miles away; staring at your phone as if it were your god who has all the answers, even though all the phone was saying to you was EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY, EMERGENCY . . . we told you to stop.

We told you to give up.

We told you to turn off your phone and not turn it back on for another 12 hours — until right now, actually.

We told you to take a hot shower and cry in it.

We told you to leave your turned-off phone in your hotel room and to go for a walk, with a novel and a bottle of water in your bag, and go find yourself some air, some sky, some trees, some natural evening light, some food, maybe a little present to buy yourself as a gift for working so hard.

We told you to go find yourself some peace.

I guess you could say, going back to your question, that we instructed you to please, please, please get into your comfort zone.

Honey, in your experience, very few souls except us have ever told you to give up. You grew up in a realm of WORK HARDER. You were raised in a culture of PUSH IT. You came of age in a country that prided itself on being an EMPIRE. You marched to the promise of YES WE CAN. You cheered for athletes who said YOU DON’T WIN SILVER, YOU LOSE GOLD.

But we, so many times, have told you the opposite. We told you to quit. We begged you to quit. Please don’t win silver or gold, honey. Please don’t even place. Please don’t. We told you to stop fighting to save your marriage. We told you to stop fighting to hold your family together. We told you to stop fighting to make that difficult friendship work. We told you to stop fighting that same ten pounds forever. We told you to stop fighting the natural course of your aging. We told you to stop fighting your neighbors over their political views. We told you to stop fighting the truth, one truth after another, year after year.

Little softness, why do you think we want you out of your comfort zone? Why do you think we want you on the edge? Is there not enough discomfort already — in this realm of the Earth? In this realm of Earth School, in this body, in this moment of history? Is maybe the problem that discomfort has been so normalized that you don’t even notice how much of it you carry?

We are Love. We are Unconditional Love. Why would we want you in the challenge zone forever? Why would we want you to be captain of the struggle bus?

When you turned off your phone yesterday because your spirit and being were vibrating with panic, you suddenly realized that you had to go to the bathroom — that, in fact, you’d had to go to the bathroom for the last two hours but you kept deferring it because you were pushing, pushing, to fix, manage, and control a situation that you could do absolutely nothing about.

Why would we want you so jacked up with discomfort that you don’t even know when to go to the bathroom when your body tells you to?

Little pillow of the heart, listen. There has to be somewhere in the universe you can turn to where the message is not GO HARDER. Let this be that place. Let us be that place. Let your own heart open to yourself and be that place.

Do less, fail more, submit to your limitations, admit defeat, dial in some performances, go the extra ten feet rather than the extra mile, give 30 percent, be the ninth best version of yourself — whatever it takes, honey, please, we are begging you now with all the love in the cosmos: please find comfort.

We are here for you always and we love you always. Just the way you are.

Now rest, so we can keep going.

Prompt

This week, I encourage you to think about your comfort zone: what is it, where is it, do you want to be inside it (and why), should you be outside it (and why)? Of course, our answers will change according to the seasons of life we’re in and other factors, but fear not: your answers today will not go on your permanent records!

So just for today, join me in asking this question: Dear Love, what would you have me know about my comfort zone?