LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Elif Shafak!

Ancestral magic

Hello Lovelets!

Did you know that we each have 16 great-great-grandparents?

Did you know that we each have 64 great-great-great-great grandparents?

Did you know that if you were to trace your ancestors — including cousins and such — back 30 generations from today (meaning about 1,000 years ago, or to the High Middle Ages) your number of blood relatives would be about one billion?

One billion ancestors.

What happened to their spirits, their talents, their creativity when they died?

What happened to their LOVE?

What if you could connect with them?

What if they were here for you?

Our special guest this week, the incomparable and infinitely gifted author

Elif Shafak

, has written a moving and mystical letter from Unconditional Love, in which her female ancestors make an unforgettable appearance and play a powerful role. What little these women may have possessed in terms of privilege and education, they clearly made up for in wisdom and creativity — and I suppose this is true of all our ancestors.

Elif’s letter shares with us the powerful image of her grandmother writing words on small pieces of white paper and floating them in water, in order to create healing spells and prayers.

Isn’t that what we are doing here — each of us, in our own way?

Healing and floating, offering and praying, through these weekly letters that we download from the cosmos — a cosmos which still holds, I dearly believe, the spirits of those one billion ancestors.

What would Unconditional Love want to tell you about your ancestors, if it could communicate the truth to you?

What do you need to hear?

Let us listen. I can’t wait to hear their voices, through you.

Love,

Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know about my ancestors?

Little Pigeon Toe —

You have such a funny story in your consciousness about how you cannot call upon the spirits of your ancestors to help and guide you, because you fear that your ancestors do not approve of you.

You, with all your divorces.

You, with no children.

You, who do not have the real womanly skills — despite your mother and grandmother dearly trying to teach you to cook for a family, to sew for a family, to farm for a family.

You, who hates to stay in one place and make it your forever home (so what a bad homemaker you are) and who prefers “anywhere else” as your favorite destination.

First of all, where in the world did you get this idea that your ancestors disapprove of you?

Secondly, we find it hilarious that you can still — after all the love that we have poured into you — be so emotionally insecure that you can unilaterally decide that a whole bunch of dead people maybe don’t like you, and perhaps are even saying bad and critical things about you about you behind your back.

Cucumber, cucumber, our silly cucumber!

There are two things we want you to know!

One: you don’t know jack shit about your ancestors.

Two: your definition and understanding of the word “ancestor” is woefully limited.

So first, let’s talk about what you don’t know . . .

You see these ancestors of yours in sepia-tinted photos with their rigid posture and stern expressions, looking as if their teeth hurt, and as if their general position on existence is “Well, life doesn’t have much to recommend it, but at least it’s short.” And you hear stories about their struggles and suffering – the infinite numbers of children born in mud shacks on the prairie, the untreated medical conditions, the amputations, the lack of education and opportunity. But none of this is them. None of this tells you about the sounds of their laughter and their lovemaking. Their devotion and appreciation of nature, their talented care of animals, their secret desires and yearnings, their unique creative genius, the risks they took, the feeling of air in their lungs that they felt, their love of a crisp morning pine forest covered with snow.

My child, my little one, why do you think they did not love the world? Why do you think they did not love each other? Why do you think they do not love you?

Stop thinking of your ancestors as the ones who sacrificed everything for your privileges and start thinking of them as the ones who co-loved this world, and you will feel their hearts, and they will be more easily able to guide you and delight in you.

Yes, delight!

Next: the definition of the word “ancestor.” Stop being so confoundedly literal. We’re not only talking about your exact bloodline.

Your ancestors are every woman who ever cast spells. Every woman who ever knelt in a cave and prayed. Every woman who ever escorted babies into this world or the dying into the next world. Every woman who ever wrote songs. Every woman who ever mixed dyes and pigments for paint and delighted in making art even if she was the only one who ever saw it. Every woman who ever formed pots out of clay. Every woman who tended seeds. Every woman who loved her little dog, her little cat, a little bird. Every woman who ever wanted to be alone. Every woman who ever taught herself to read. Every woman who ever knew God.

These are your ancestors, and, yes, they love you.

What do I tell you all the time? KEEP GOING.

What do your ancestors have to tell you? KEEP GOING.

“Keep going” doesn’t just mean survive, or persevere.

It means: keep going into the woods, into the ocean, into the light, into the world, into the creative projects, into the heart, into the storm, into the adventure, into the unknown.

Keep going.That’s what they did. That’s what they want you to do.

You are not alone. Neither were they.

You never could be — neither were they.

Keep going.

They are coming along with you.

You are loved.

Prompt

Elif Shafak’s letter is a treasure chest of ideas and revelations, from the power of literature to the artistic force of children to the nomadic impulse to the twin influences of family and culture. But the thread that spoke to me most was the connection to our familial past. If you’d like to join me this week in contemplating those who came before us, feel free to pose this question: Dear Love, what would you have me know about my relationship to my ancestors?

P.S. There is one more thing I want to add this week! A Lovelet named

Jessica Cox Bingaman

shared recently that she prefers to write her own letter from Love based on our weekly prompt *before* watching my video, reading my letter, or listening to the special guest. Doing so — writing without my influence, or anyone else’s influence — gives her a clearer channel to her own source of Unconditional Love, with, as she puts it, “as little outside influence as possible.” I have heard a few others of you say the same thing (that you write your letters first, and listen to mine after) and I want you to know that I think it’s a brilliant idea. The entire point of this exercise is to learn how to find these voices of love within yourself. So I totally dig it, if that’s what works for you. And some of you have commented that in doing this, you then discover that there were sentences and themes in your letters that were exactly the same as mine, or as our guest’s. Meaning, I can only assume, that we are all tapping into the same source here. Infinite, universal, ever-available LOVE. So, just a thought that some of you may wish to try it that way! Whatever works for you!