Oh hello — I approve of you!
I approve of every single one of you Lovelies!
I just wanted to tell you that.
But I also know that my approval can only take you so far, and that if you do not hold your own self in tenderness, friendliness, and respect, then my approval will ultimately not be able to save you or heal you.
“It’s an inside job,” my beloved Rayya Elias always used to say, about the hard work of getting emotionally and spiritually healthy — and that is exactly the job we are doing here with this Letters From Love project. We are doing the inside job of healing our hearts, from the very center outward. And we are doing it side by side.
Our special guest this week is the funny, kind, luminous Kate Bowler — who is a professor of religious history at Duke, an author, a cancer survivor, and a relatively new friend of mine. She also sends the best care packages, filled with stickers and banners and toffee, just because she is that sort of person. Kate’s letter from Love is about healing that part of herself that has always thought there is something wrong with her. The great, aching, lost part that has always been convinced that if she could only gain the approval of others, she would be okay.
Oh, little Kate on the school bus with your messy hair and your backpack filled with crumpled pages, and your fear that something about you is all wrong: we see you and we love you. Thank you for growing up to be Kate Bowler. We love her, too. But more importantly: SHE LOVES HERSELF.
Have a beautiful week!
Love,
Your Lizzy
Dear Love, what would you have me know today about my approval seeking?
Oh my love, my tiny sparkle of glitter stuck in the weave of the great cosmic carpet — please believe me when I tell you that you cannot afford to play this game anymore. This game of constantly tap-dancing and tiptoeing for approval has become far too costly for you to survive, my love.
Actually, approval-seeking is not a game. It is an addiction, and like all addictions it will kill you (not to be dramatic, but really it will). And like all addictions, it will leave you hungrier in the end than you were when you reached outside of yourself for that relief in the first place.
And here’s another secret: approval seeking doesn’t work, anyhow.
If you had any idea how little control you have over other people’s thoughts, feelings, judgments, and opinions about you, you would first be astonished and then you would be liberated. Because YOU CANNOT CONTROL THE INSIDE OF OTHER PEOPLE’S MINDS, no matter how hard you try.
Once you seriously grasp the truth of this, you will immediately want to demand back all those hours you have squandered trying to massage, manipulate, and manhandle people into loving and approving of you. They either will love and approve of you or they won’t, little duckling. And either way, you are okay.
I know that bending yourself into the shape of a 20-sided Dungeons and Dragons die has always been a survival tactic for you (“Which face must I reveal here,” you have always asked, “in order to stay safe from these people?”). But I have told you this before and I shall tell you again: the survival tactics that you learned in childhood did not keep you safe then, and they will not keep you safe now.
Where, then, is safety to be found, if not in keeping every person in the world (whom you seem to think is your responsibility) happy at all times?
Safety is to be found in this conversation with ME — a conversation in which I will continue to teach you how to become your own secure attachment.
Safety is to be found in the pause in which, instead of promising your life away in order to immediately appease an upset person, you WAIT. You ask that person for time before you make a commitment, so you can feel your way into an honest answer. You learn how to say, as you said to a beloved person the other night who asked for more than you felt you could healthily provide: “I love you, and beyond any other obligation in my life, I must prioritize my own mental health and well-being, so: no.”
Safety comes from learning how to say no, and noticing that people actually can survive their disappointment in you, even if the relationship does not survive it.
Safety comes from realizing that you can survive your own disappointment in THEM, when they do not give you what you want.
Safety comes from remembering, as Byron Katie taught you: “How do I know I don’t need something? Because I don’t have it.”
Safety comes from knowing that you have me, and that I can supply your emotional needs.
When you demand the love and approval of others, you make them into your Source, into your God — and where is the possible sense of happiness in that, dear one? Why would we ever have even placed Source so far outside your own heart, so far outside your own being?
Why would we not have provided everything you need right here, within you, as close as your own imagination and heart, as close as this conversation?
You are well, my love, when you can hear my voice.
Can you hear me?
Good, then you are well.
That is all you need to know.
Stay with me.
Love,
Love
Prompt
As always, Lovelets, you are welcome to use the standard prompt for this practice, which is solid gold in terms of summoning Unconditional Love. It goes like this: just write down on a piece of paper “Dear Love, what would you have me know today?” And then write down either whatever you “hear” in your head, coming from Unconditional Love, or whatever you imagine that Unconditional Love might say to you, if it could talk. But if you would like to mix it up a little, or drill down and get more specific, you can use this prompt instead: “Dear Love, what would you have me know about my approval seeking?” Or, of course, you can do both! For me this is a daily practice so there is room for all kinds of questions.
Good luck, precious ones, and I can’t wait to read your letters!
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