LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Medinah Ali!

The sun does not stress

Dear Lovelets!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, my dears!

My favorite day of the year is January 1st — coming in hot, right on the heels of my LEAST favorite day of the year, which is dumb New Year’s Eve.

This year, I did what I always do at the turning of the year: I went to bed early on the last night of the year so I could get up early on the first day of the year, and go for a walk in nature. My ritual is that the first wild animal I see (pigeons and squirrels and rats don’t count) is my guiding animal presence for the year, and I trust that that animal has all the information I need about how to show up for the next rotation around the sun.

This year, here is the first wild animal I saw, wading knee-deep in a mudflat on the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica:

Awesome, perfect, ideal, hooray! In a year in which I am publishing a new book (more to come on that soon) get ready for me to be RAUCOUS AND CONSPICUOUS, with a LOUD GRATING CALL as a good clue to my presence!

But here’s the other thing I have learned now about Southern lapwings: they are ferociously protective of their young. They will literally dive-bomb any person or animal that threatens their nests, and they will also feign injury and limp in the opposite direction to misdirect anyone who tries to approach or harm their homes.

Unconditional Love isn’t always tender and soft-spoken, my loves. Sometimes it is loud and raucous and fiercely protective.

Our special guest this week is my friend Medinah Ali, with whom I’ve been traveling on a beautiful adventure in Costa Rica over the last week. Medinah’s letter was a rousing call to action, instructing her to shine her light even if it causes other people some sunburn, and pushing her to carry on even though her life has recently taken some unexpected, even unwanted, turns.

Be bright this year, my loves. Be raucous and conspicuous.

And if anyone tries to harm even one of you, I will dive-bomb the hell out of them!

Fiercely, lovingly, gratingly yours,
YOUR LIZZY

Dear Love, what would you have me know about unexpected transitions?

TRUST THEM.

Trust them, my love. Trust them with your life. Trust them unquestioningly. Lean into them, collapse into them, give into them, go with them, run with them — treasure awaits you on the other end of an unexpected transition, and I mean always.

Remember what you heard someone say, an old-timer, in the rooms of 12-step once: “Whenever I don’t get what I want, I know for SURE that is a gift.”

And remember what Saint Teresa said — that more tears are cried over answered prayers than unanswered ones. You know what this means. The times you begged the cosmos to give you what you wanted, and then you got what you wanted, and it almost killed you. And then you think about the things you didn’t get, that only decades later you could appreciate as having been a stroke of tremendous luck. Oh the bullets you have dodged by not getting what you wanted!

Remember when you were in Italy, doing the journey that would become EAT PRAY LOVE — the journey that did not yet have a name. Life had given you an unexpected transition. You had lost your marriage, and you had lost the man you left your marriage for — and you had created in the vacuum of not getting what you wanted this trip, this strange adventure. And you knew that you were on your way to India after Italy, and then to Indonesia after that, but that night you were crying alone in your bed in Rome over the lover you had left behind — a man who simply could not, would not, love you. And you said aloud to God, “I would trade all of this” — by which you meant the entire incredible journey you had created as a Plan B back-up for not having gotten the real prize you wanted, which was that dude — you said, “I would trade all of this just to have the keys to his apartment again.”

AND YOU MEANT IT.

The keys to that 300-square-foot walk-up apartment! Wherein abided a young man who recoiled in disgust from your touch, and could not make eye contact with you any longer. You would have traded what ultimately became EAT PRAY LOVE, and all that that thing meant in the world for so many people, and all that it opened up for your life — you would have traded all of that for the keys to that guy’s apartment. And you meant it.

Remember what else you heard a wise elder say once: “Rejection is God’s protection.”

And of course remember Garth Brooks singing, “Sometimes God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”

Listen. Listen to us. Listen fiercely, for we need you to become formidable now in your faith, in your gorgeous, growing, unabashed, radical, spectacular faith.

TRUST US.

This is what we know. And this is what we want you to know about unexpected transitions.

Trust that something extraordinary can always be birthed from the ashes of perceived loss.

Even when the greatest losses strike you — and yes, we see you remembering Rayya now, and her terrible absence — trust us. Trust whatever is happening. Trust that slammed doors and broken hearts and shattered expectations are birthing grounds and invitations for astonishing waves of transformation, and opportunities for ballistically fast evolutionary growth.

I know we are throwing quotes at you like crazy right now, but it’s super important that you really get this. And we will quote anyone to get it through to you. Remember, too, what Byron Katie taught you: Love What Is.

Shed your doubts, shed your fears, and trust. There is a process to everything, there are multiple strands of reasons for everything, there are new doorways opening to new universes at every moment — if you trust, trust, trust.

You would not be here right now, in this glorious moment, in this glorious place, with these glorious people, if you had gotten what you wanted.

And that is always true, and will always be true.

Without exception.

So — going into the new year, my dear, want a little less, and trust a little more.

It takes extraordinary courage and imagination to get this, but you’re getting it. Lean into it. Fall into it. There is no Plan B, ever. There is only the one divine path, and you can never fall off it.

And now one last quote, from the Terminator: Come with me if you want to live.

I love you!

Prompt

Transitions: we all go through them. Sometimes we sail, sometimes we scream, sometimes we’re the architect, sometimes we’re the unwilling client. But as the cliché goes: the only constant in life is change. So! This week, friends, let’s pose this question: Dear Love, what would you have me know about unexpected transitions?

Hello, Australia and New Zealand!

In a few weeks I will be returning to that beautiful part of the world for the first time in years, with a series of talks (and a creativity workshop in Sydney). More here, and I hope to see some of you Lovelets there!