LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Callie Miles!
What would you have me know about mistakes?
Hello Lovelies!
We have our youngest special guest this week on the newsletter — my beloved friend Callie Miles, who is 18 years old and whom I have known for all those 18 years. I wanted to invite Callie to share a Letter from Love with us today for two reasons — one, because she is so young (imagine how wonderful it is for someone to have discovered their own internal connection to Love at such a young age!) and two, because she is an incredibly gifted songwriter, and I wanted to see how Love would speak to her through music.
Just as last week, when the illustrator Stephanie Chinn told us what it felt like to let her perfectionism soften so that Love could flow through her paints and pens, Callie has let us see behind the curtain of her own creativity, talking about the fears and insecurities that she has to set aside every day, in order to let Love flow freely through her music.
Some of you have commented that writing love letters to yourselves is difficult at times, because you don’t consider yourselves to be “writers.” And I get it! Not everyone is comfortable with writing. Yet Love wants to find its way to you in any manner that it can — not only through words, but also through drawing, through music, through movement (this is a good idea: I need to ask a dancer to show us what Love looks like when communicated through dance!), through cooking, through gardening, through acts of service, through touch, through tender connection with animals, through interactions with what we amusingly call strangers, and through the astonishing, ever-unfolding spectacle of nature.
Once you start asking it to make itself known, Love can be found nearly everywhere. And it won’t rest until it finds its way all the way home to your weary heart.
Let’s keep searching, in other words, wherever we can, and in any way we can.
Let’s keep going.
Have a beautiful week — I can’t wait to hear what Love has to say to you today!
Dear Love, what would you have me know today about mistakes?
Little Fluff — Why do you get so overwhelmed with shame when things go, in your parlance, “wrong”? What do you think “wrong” even means? What is the cataclysmic fear that lurks beneath that shame?
Are you afraid that the world will fall apart if you make a mistake? If anyone does? Don’t you see that the world is falling apart already? And don’t you see that the world is also knitting itself back together constantly into brand new forms, after all the breakdowns? And don’t you see how the world starts breaking down again immediately again after regenerating, and then it grows again and changes and falls apart and changes again? Don’t you see that the world is always moving in both directions, darling: both collapsing and generating, generating and collapsing — and all at the same time? That’s all the world ever does, my love. That’s what it’s supposed to do.
Why do you think the breakdowns are wrong — whether on the global scale or in the most intimate little collapses and “failures” of your own life? Even the continents break apart, child, and there are mountains beneath the water that were once covered with vast meadows, and there are deserts that were once seas, and all of it will collapse and regenerate and collapse again and again, and so will you.
What use is there in trying to control this? Why does it need to be controlled?
I say this with all fondness, honeyhead, but shouldn’t you, as a creator and a careful observer of the world, already have noticed all this? Shouldn’t you have seen this by now? Haven’t you lived this billions of times? Don’t you know that the great Creation in which you exist, and which you are participating in, is not static, nor does it ever pause, nor does it only move in one direction — toward some ideal, toward some perfected and heavenly completion, in which all will finally appear right and perfect to your frightened eyes and then you can relax at last? Is that what you’re waiting for? How long are you willing to wait for that? Does it even make sense to wait for that? And then what — supposing that perfected plateau is ever reached? And then what will happen?
You know already what will happen, don’t you?
Because you have already stood many times in absolutely perfect moments, haven’t you? And then what happened, right at the peak of that perfect moment? Something broke, something moved, something changed. Someone had to stand up and go get a sandwich, or go to work, or leave, or die. It had to end. It all melted away, so something else could be born.
Collapse and regeneration, my child, is how things work here. The only mistake you could ever make is to believe that mistakes can, in fact, be made. Disintegration holds just as sacred a role in the way of things as integration. It’s what you signed up for to experience when you came here to Earth School — you signed up for the whole wild, unstable-appearing curriculum of it. Stop trying to perfect it. It’s like trying to polish the face of the ocean — why?
The only thing that can ever be perfect is the love that carries you through all the changes. And that love is me. And that love is you. And that love is all of us gathered here. And that love is always. And that love, my dearest little twitchy frightened one, is the only thing you can hold onto that will never move, never fail, never leave, never collapse. Trust me on this.
Be not afraid. Go gently and trustingly into the apparent chaos, because it is not chaos at all. Hold me close. I love you! Have a beautiful day.
Prompt
This week, perhaps you would like to ask Love what it thinks about the mistakes you have made (or believe you have made!) in your life? And please remember, dears — you never have to follow the weekly prompts! Many of you have shared that you are creating your own spontaneous prompts, asking Love on a daily basis for guidance and information about whatever you are struggling with or confused about in that moment. Keep doing that! This is YOUR Love, and it is here to help you however it can.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.