LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Joél Leon!

This is intimacy

Dear Lovelets,

I want to start with a trigger warning (we have never done that before, despite all the sensitive subjects we cover in this safe community) that my letter this week contains references to fentanyl and to suicidal ideation. Don’t worry — it all turns out okay (better than okay, in the embrace of unconditional love) but please do be mindful and protect yourself, if these subjects are dangerous for you in any way.

I also want to thank all of you who share your own letters from love every week in the comments section. (For newcomers, or those who have been sitting poolside and just watching all this while — which is totally okay! — if you ever want to share a letter that love has written to YOU, we would love to see it. Just post it in the comments section at the end of each newsletter. And also, you must be a subscriber in order to make comments. We keep that one-dollar-a-week barrier up, just to keep the comments section absolutely safe — and it absolutely works: not a single troll on this social medium, in more than two years of love letters. It feels like a miracle!)

I make it a point to try to read all your letters, not only because the Spirit of Unconditional Love (aka SOUL) often speaks to me through your voices, but also because I want you all to feel seen. Please believe me when I tell you that I know — I deeply know — how important it is to be seen and acknowledged, especially when you are sharing something as vulnerable as a letter from love.

My very favorite comment this week came from a Lovelet who didn’t even post a love letter! Her name is Clare, and what she shared was simply the truth about her life at exactly that moment. Our subject last week was burnout, and Clare wrote:

“I am too burnt out to even think of writing anything. Just to tune in. I just want to huddle somewhere and listen to these letters over and over. Thank you for this community. Thank you for you. Wishing everyone another year. Pepita, I love you, sweet baby.”

Clare, just so you know — what you wrote was and is a letter from love. Love tells the truth. Love understands overwhelm. Love knows that sometimes huddling in a corner is the best we can do. Love never asks us to do more than we can. And I can personally promise that Pepita loves you too! As do I. As do we all.

Our special guest this week is the luminous poet, author, father, and community member Joél Leon, whose radiance on social media drew me and Margaret in, and compelled us to invite him into our world and practice here. Thankfully, he said yes.

Thank you all, for continuing to say yes from love — even if you are huddled in a corner. We see you, and we love you. Let’s keep going.

Love,
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know about being seen?

Oh, our little muffin tin, we see you. Can we start with that? We see you.

We see you. We see all the layers and ages of you. We see the cards that you play and the cards that you hide, and the cards that you THINK you’re hiding, but which everyone can see anyway. We see your strategies and fears. We see your whole entire history, and the histories of all the people who are part of your histories, and we see all their strategies and fears as well.

And we see that there is no hope for you, and we say this in the most gentle, loving, and even amused way. There is no hope for you except to surrender to how terminally loved you are. You are doomed, my child. You are doomed to be loved by us, no matter what you do or don’t do. No matter how anyone sees you or doesn’t see you.

But let’s move on to the story that you don’t want to tell. Let us tell it for you. It’s important, sweetie. It’s such an important story.

On the day that Rayya died, eight years ago this week, you took the four or five remaining unopened prescription boxes of fentanyl, the fentanyl that was on hand for Rayya’s pain, with each box containing several patches with an enormous deadly dose of fentanyl each — and instead of giving them to the hospice nurse to dispose of safely, you tucked them into your suitcase and took them home with you to New Jersey, where you put them into a safe in your closet . . . for what?

For “just in case.” And what was the “just in case,” darling?

You know the answer. You were saving those boxes of fentanyl just in case you ever found yourself in unbearable physical or emotional pain, so that you would have an easy and painless exit if you needed one.

And in doing this, in squirreling away this deadly drug for yourself, some future version of yourself who you feared might someday be in unbearable pain, you felt like a genius. You felt safe. You felt like you could handle anything life had to offer, because no matter how bad it got, you could escape if you had to.

A year later, you came into 12-step recovery — not for drug or alcohol abuse, although you certainly used drugs and alcohol for relief and for escape — but for sex and love addiction, which was killing you. You found a beautiful sponsor, who led you through the 12 steps. You put down your addiction, and all its associated behaviors and affiliated substances, and every single day you went to meetings and raised your hand, and you allowed yourself to be seen.

But you kept the fentanyl. And you kept it a secret. Those boxes in the safe were nobody’s business but yours, you decided. Those boxes of deadly drugs were your little private thing — your escape hatch from the terrors and weariness of Earth School, should you ever need to get out fast.

Then one afternoon, about two years into recovery, you were having a really hard day. You glanced over to the closet in your bedroom where the safe was, the closet that contained the fentanyl, and you had a brief thought: “I could always just . . .”

And in that moment, there was another thought. Let’s call it a moment of inspiration, of awakening, of recovery. You thought, “I wonder if this is the kind of thing I’m supposed to tell my sponsor about?”

But you didn’t want to! You didn’t want to lose your ticket out of life, in case of unbearable suffering. You didn’t want her to tell you that you had to dispose of the drugs.

But something else (hint, it was us, it was the Spirit of Unconditional Love) made you pick up the phone and call her anyway, and tell her the thing you did not want anyone to know about yourself. You told her about the fentanyl and why you’d brought it home with you after Rayya died, and why you were keeping it — in case you were ever in unbearable emotional or physical pain and you needed an exit. And you told her why you were hiding it. Because, you said, you were afraid someone would take it away from you, and then you would be trapped in Earth School with no way out.

And what your sponsor said next was nothing less than miraculous. Absolutely shocking.

She said, “Lizzy, I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud of you for telling me this. I’m so proud of you for letting yourself be seen. That’s what intimacy really means — letting yourself be seen. Right now, what we are doing, having this conversation — this is intimacy. This is the opposite of love and sex addiction. This is honest intimacy. You are letting me know you.”

And you said, “Are you going to make me get rid of the fentanyl?”

“I can’t make you do anything,” she said wisely, “and I’m not here to tell you what to do. But can I ask you just one question? Did it ever occur to you that if you were ever in unbearable emotional or physical pain, that somebody might help you?”

No, my little sweet bird in a teacup. No, my love, our love, the love of all the ages. No. It had never occurred to you that if you were in unbearable pain, someone might help you. Which meant, my child, that you were already in unbearable pain.

You, who had a thousand friends. You, who would help anybody. It never occurred to you that anyone would help you if you asked for help, because you didn’t have much experience with asking for help, because you only knew how to hide your pain, not how to share it. Because you — who were living your life in plain sight, in the public eye, in interactions online, with literally millions of people, and famous for writing incredibly intimate memoirs — you STILL didn’t know how to really let yourself be seen.

This is what we mean, love, when we say that we see all your layers, all your strategies, all your tricks and tools of hiding in plain sight — because being seen still can feel super crazy scary to you.

Well. Back to our story.

Your sponsor said this: “Just for the record, Lizzy, if you were ever in unbearable pain, I would help you. And I know a lot of other people who would, too. But you have to let us know. That’s the thing. You have to let us see you.”

She stayed with you on the phone while you walked to CVS and deposited the fentanyl patches in an iron box made for that purpose — for the safe anonymous deposit of dangerous drugs. She told you she was proud of you. And after you got off the phone you felt more vulnerable than you had ever felt in your life. You no longer had an easy escape from Earth School. But also, maybe for the first time in your life, you no longer needed one.

Sweetheart, keep letting yourself be seen. And we aren’t necessarily even talking about taking up a lot of room on the big global stage — in fact, we might be asking you to dial that back a bit in the coming year. But keep risking intimacy, sweetheart. Real intimacy. Let the people who love you not just love you but know you. Keep practicing what it feels like to reveal, rather than to conceal. And keep coming to us for reassurance that it is, indeed, worth it to let yourself be known — not just the fun parts, but the deadly scary parts, as well.

We are so proud of you. We always are. We love you. We always love you, and we always will. We loved you the day you squirreled away those drugs, and we loved you the day you were brave enough to reveal that secret to a trustworthy person, and we loved you when you dumped them in the trash, and we love you right now, when you are letting yourself be seen all over again.

This is what it means to be here, my love — to really show up for the curriculum of your life. And you are not alone. Help is available at all times, as you have learned —from friends, from strangers, from us. Help is available from those whom you can see, and those (us) whom you cannot see, but who can always see you.

Let’s keep going. You’re doing great. So is everybody else. A pluses all around.

Prompt

To the introverts and wallflowers among us: don’t be fooled by the implications of the term “being seen” — we don’t mean that to be seen is to be looked at, scrutinized, judged, that we are subjects for an audience. We mean that to be seen is to be known. And that means that this is yet another seemingly universal prompt, because who among us does not want to be understood?

This week, please join me in posing this question to your Spirit of Unconditional Love: Dear Love, what would you have me know about being seen? And if that feels too vulnerable right now, remember that, as always, you can substitute the weekly prompt with our original, forever prompt of Dear Love, what would you have me know today?