LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Glory Edim!

Let the waves break over you

Dear Lovelets,

I am so filled with joy and wonder, every time I read in the comments about how this practice is changing your lives, your ways of thinking, your capacity to handle the storms of existence. What we are doing, in our ongoing practice of writing ourselves letters from the Spirit of Unconditional Love (otherwise known as SOUL around here), is nothing short of brain surgery — rewiring our internal mental programming so that we can shift from a panic-driven, self-hating, or doomsday belief set to one of more calm, more tenderness, and more kindness. And the effect of writing these letters is that, while the world does not get any easier, our reactions to it can be transformed.

For example, a Lovelet named Melanie shared last week that after practicing writing these letters for six months, she has noticed a change in herself when faced with a difficult situation. She writes:

“A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in an extended moment, where much fear, uncertainty and challenge were present. Previously, say a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to function, I would have been in collapse, not able to eat or work, in panic, and perhaps fleeing my life. This time, I overcame. I stayed in my life, I was able to work every day and feed myself, in addition to yoga, and gathering and being in community. When my therapist asked what changed, how I was able to ride this excruciating wave this time, I sat quietly and asked my inner knowing — and love letters and support of SOUL, provided during that time, was such a big part of my capacity. These letters, which have also evolved into 2-way conversations, have had such an impact on my inner strength, self-resourcing, and my ability to endure.”

This is not a small thing we are doing here, sweet friends. Every time you open up a notebook and write yourself a letter from Love, you are also opening your heart and your mind to an entirely different way of seeing and supporting yourself. Who could have imagined that in order to better survive Earth School, we needed not more toughness, discipline, and strength, but actually more softness, acceptance, and tenderness? Who knew that Unconditional Love could get the job done, when all other resources have failed? Love knew!

This week we are joined by the wonderful Glory Edim — founder of the wildly popular Well-Read Black Girl phenomenon: book club, social media community, literary festival, and now imprint. Glory is also the author of the debut memoir GATHER ME, which happens to be the current selection of my Onward Book Club! You can join us on my Instagram this coming Thursday, December 4th at 7pm ET, for a live conversation about GATHER ME.

Until then, onward and upward!

Love,
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know about success?

Oh honey, do you remember when Kingsley Amis said something once about how literary awards are meaningless, but of course it’s always nice when one gets them? [This is Amis’s actual quote upon receiving the Booker Prize: “Until just now, I had thought the Booker Prize a rather trivial, showbizzy caper, but now I consider it a very serious, reliable indicator of literary merit.”]

We start this letter with a little joke, dear heart, because we find your ego (the egos of all of you sweet souls in Earth School) adorable and funny. There is nothing wrong with wanting success — except for, of course, the tiny caveat that it won’t make you happy. But success doesn’t have to make you unhappy, either, if you are careful and wise about it. Success can just be a thing like the weather that comes and goes, changes and flows, that is wondrous to behold, and intrinsically neither good nor bad unless you are trying to control it, or letting it control you.

Of course over here at Love LLC, we think that any time you experience a moment of calm, that’s a massive success, but we measure things differently than the human ego does — and by the way, don’t go chasing calmness now as a unit of measurement against which you will compare yourself to others, or to former versions of yourself. We would rather you stayed out of the comparison business altogether, although we know this is difficult for your like.

Destiny gave you the chance to experience a massive wave of success once, a real phenomenon of success, a real “Northern Lights shot through with lightning bolts and rainbows” level of success, and parts of it felt nice and other parts of it didn’t feel nice, and those waves of nice-plus-not-so-nice got so disorienting and bewildering for you in the end that we, Love, gave you a really good suggestion for how to handle your success, which was to walk away from it and take up gardening.

Remember that year when you stopped writing and stopped going out into the public eye, and instead you got down on your knees in the dirt and created an absolutely beautiful cottage garden in your backyard? Echinacea and daisies, foxglove and wisteria, ferns and joe-pye weed, daffodils and tulips, all shot through with climbing vines of cherry tomatoes, snap peas, and beans. You spent days and days out there in your garden, and you got low — really low, right at the level of the soil. So wise, because you felt like you were letting the wave of the phenomenon of Eat Pray Love break over you safely, without your engagement in it, without letting it sweep you out to sea or crashing you upon the rocks, because you were just down there in the dirt minding your own business, helping things to grow. Down there at the level of the earth, and the level of love, where you could not be knocked about.

And don’t you see how when you were in the throes of grief and loss after Rayya died, so thick in pain, we so often stepped in and told you again to get low, to get down on the ground in what you learned to call a “bow down moment” — so you could let the waves of grief and even rage break over you safely, without sweeping you out to sea, or crashing you upon the rocks? Down there at the level of the earth, at the level of love, where you could not be knocked about.

And don’t you see how when you were in early recovery from your addiction and your sober elders told you to hit your knees not only every morning but many times throughout the day, and to humbly pray to whatever divinity you understood to love you — to get LOW, to get down, and to let the waves of withdrawal and yearning break over you safety, without sweeping you out to sea, or crashing you upon the rocks? Down there at the level of the earth, where you could not be knocked around.

Are you seeing the pattern, little one? It is simply this: we don’t want you swept out to sea or crashed upon the rocks anymore by anything — any of the big emotions, happenings, or phenomena of life anymore. Not by failure or success. Not by passion or grief. Not by desire or resistance. Not by extreme happiness or extreme sorrow. Whether it is a lawsuit or an awards dinner, can you show up as the same person, gently loving through all of it? Whether it’s a hospital visit for hemorrhoid removal or a dinner at a five-star restaurant where someone else is picking up the tab, can you be the same person in both places, and extend the same grace and patience to those around you?

For all manner of things will happen, as surely as the weather will change, and then change again. The pairs of opposites, the dvandva, as the Bhagavad Gita calls them (hot and cold, pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, beauty and horror, storms and calm): all of these things will happen, they are destined to happen, and they are also destined to pass.

Can you maybe not get too excited or attached to any of it? Can you stay grounded, our little dear rabbit, down on your knees, or feet on the floor maybe, or hands buried to the wrists in the good, loamy soil of reality?

And what is reality, little dove? Reality is love. Reality is: beyond all the happenings (or maybe underneath them, down there at the good solid ground level) there is a simple truth. You came from love, you are made of love, you are here for love, you work for love, you return to love, and love (the kind of love we are talking about, the kind of love we ARE) does not need to flicker, flame, or fade just because circumstances and destinies change.

So don’t chase success, honey, or run away from it either. Don’t chase anything or run away from anything. Do your work in the world with love, for love, and surrender the outcome, which is none of your business — and as you know, has nothing to do with you. Hit your knees when your ego gets ahead of you, return to the earth, let the world break over you like a wave, but there is not any reason anymore to be swept out to sea or crashed upon the rocks. Stay with us. Stay with me. Let my voice be both your lighthouse and your anchor. Let me be the ground beneath your feet. That’s all you need to know.

Prompt

The question this week is: Dear Love, what would you have me know about success? Looking forward to reading what you all discover about definitions of “success” and what they mean to you, practically, emotionally, in all the ways. And if that topic feels too fraught, you can always, always call in the reserves: Dear Love, what would you have me know today?