LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Joseph Kibler!

The grand cathedral of disappointment

Dear Lovelets,

As part of the amends process of 12-step recovery, I get to have the fun of looking back over the wreckage of my past and seeing who I have harmed, and who I need to try to make things right with. It’s a blast! (Actually, it is a surprisingly tender and beautiful experience, when approached with an open heart and an open mind.)

But sometimes it’s unclear, when I reflect on my past romantic relationships, whether I did harm to someone or if they did harm to me. Or if, at least, they did MORE harm to me than I did to them? And if I already apologized for my part of the chaos, is that enough? If I already apologized 25 years ago, am I in the clear? And would it do more harm to them if I showed up in their life again with an amends letter?

It isn’t always obvious what the best or most ethical path is, and my sponsor doesn’t always know either. After all, we are only human, and can’t always have the right answers.

It is at times like these that I will often write a letter to the Spirit of Unconditional Love (SOUL around these parts!) and ask for guidance. Recently I asked Love if I needed to make amends to a certain ex-partner with whom I’d had a very disappointing relationship. Love had this to suggest: “Before we talk about making direct amends, why don’t you see if you can go a year without talking shit about him?”

Yikes.

I wasn’t sure I would be able to do that. Talking shit about this guy (even decades after the last time I ever saw him) is kind of a fun little hobby I have. I treat myself to disparaging him from time to time, because I guess I get a little bump of dark pleasure from it, as vengeance for all the ways he disappointed me. But is it serving me, to be so bitter? Is it helpful? Is it necessary? More than anything, is it possible for me to stop?

“While you’re at it,” the Spirit of Unconditional Love suggested, “why don’t you stop talking shit about anyone — whether they are still in your life or not? Why disparage anyone at all?”

Oh jeez. Sometimes I’m sorry I asked.

So I just want to say that I have started a day count — just like I did when I put down drugs and alcohol — to stop, one day at a time, speaking about anyone who has ever been in my life with mockery, cynicism, negativity, criticism. Even those who have disappointed me! I’m on Day 3 right now. What I’ve noticed already is how carefully I have to monitor my speech. Each word must be chosen with discernment and a thoughtful heart. You know what? I kind of like it. It feels better already.

I’ll let you know how it goes. But I am committed to cleaning up the words I speak about other human beings. Because as the true saints have always taught, there are no “other” human beings.

Our subject today is disappointment, dear hearts — as brought to us by the radiant, wise

Joseph Kibler

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Here we go, brave explorers of the heart. Here we go!

Love,
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know about those who have disappointed me?

Little sparrow, I love you.

Let me just begin with this. I love you. You are loved. You are held, seen, and cherished. Your preciousness is absolute.

And so is theirs.

I know the list of names, dearest spirit. I know as well as you do the list of names of those who you thought were supposed to hold you, help you, show up for you, uplift you, support you. I know the ways they let you down. I know all the stories. I know it all. Every precious, sacred, hurt moment of it. Every wish that things could have been different. Every strain of longing on your heart. Every night spent weeping in loneliness and despair. Every morning waking up tired, wondering “Who’s got me?” — and feeling that nobody was there, and that the entire world was on your shoulders.

I know it all.

We could make an argument that everyone is doing the best they can — and although that is true, it is only an argument (and an unprovable one, at that) and you well know, that is weak tea for a broken heart. Those words never made anyone feel better.

Instead of showering you with lame homilies, we invite you to come with us into a cathedral of grandeur — into the vast, quiet, sacred, infinitely beautiful space that is your heart. It is a magnificent heart. What it took to build that heart is years and years of disappointment. Each stone in that cathedral was quarried from a mountain of hurt. Each tiny pane of color in the vast stained glass windows was a moment of loneliness, a feeling of abandonment.

Your disappointments, my love, have not closed down your heart, but created it — forced it to mature and expand.

You would not possess the heart that you do if everyone who was supposed to have taken care of you had taken care of you. You would not have needed the heart that you have if you had never been hurt or betrayed. You would never have come looking for us — for the Spirit of Unconditional Love — if your needs had been met by your fellow humans. You would have been able to just tra-la-la through life — shallow, superficial, unflinchingly confident. Unnoticing of either extreme darkness or profound beauty. Unfamiliar to pain and therefore indifferent to the pain of others. Instead, my love, a poet’s heart, a mystic’s heart, was forged within your chest with every disappointment. A cathedral of grandeur. A work of beauty and honesty.

Your heart, your heart, your beautiful heart — a heart that is forced to learn to love the world not as your mind wanted it to be, but how it is.

Those who disappointed you have been instrumental in forging you into the person you are today, my love. They forced you to find love elsewhere because they simply did not have it for you. They pushed you to either die of sadness or go on a journey to the center, to the true source of love. They made you find your own ground of being. They built the cathedral of your heart with you — and yes, even for you.

We would not have had it any other way, sparrow. We would not have YOU any other way — and we can promise you with the blazing light of a thousand suns that you have needed those who disappointed you even more than you have needed those who showed up for you. Co-creators of a grand and searching heart. That is what they are, each and every one of them.

Without them, you would never have found us.

Without us, you would never have created this community.

Without this community, you would never have reason, day after day, week after week, to keep discovering who and what you are.

And for that — as well as their own inherent preciousness — everyone who ever disappointed you is holy.

We love you. We love every single one of you. But only always.

Prompt

This week’s theme is yet another universal one: though the details vary, is there a human on Earth who has not been let down by someone?

If you like, you can share my question: Dear Love, what would you have me know about those who have disappointed me? Or if you want to zoom out a bit and take a more general approach, you can try posing this question: Dear Love, what would you have me know about disappointment?