LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Toni Collette!

On being seen

AHOY MATIES!

I see you out there, sailing your strange and wondrous ships around the world. Thank you for joining us once more in the safe harbor of LETTERS FROM LOVE!

We are growing by the day as a community. Growing in number, but also in strength and kindness. I see you there in the comments section, loving each other up, giving each other encouragement, offering support and sympathy, and always welcoming the brave newcomers and letting them know that they belong here.

My friend Nayah (who shared her letter last week with her beautiful son Mekhi) called me the other day to say how amazed she was at how warm and loving the comments section of this Substack is. She said, “You told me that the people here were the kindest people on the whole Internet — but I had no idea HOW kind.”

THAT’S BECAUSE LOVE IS THE BOSS OF THIS NEWSLETTER!

(Love, and also Margaret.)

Our special guest this week is the extraordinary actor and producer Toni Collette! A long-time seeker of love and grace, she has been watching this project from the beginning, and finding resonance within this beautiful palace of love. I think you will be surprised to see, as I was, how frightening it was for her to share this video, and to allow herself to be SEEN. Pay attention to that, my dears. It doesn’t matter how beautiful and successful and brilliant people are; it is always frightening to allow yourself to be seen.

And that, my beautiful neighbors-of-the-heart, is the subject of today’s newsletter.

Enjoy, and all blessings —

Love, LG

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

Oh, my anxious vibrating little electrical wire. Let us jump straight into the matter, shall we? And it is a very important matter because you, my love, like many humans, carry two deep and contradictory concerns in your soul — one, that you will not be seen, and two, that you WILL be.

My love, when I put it to you that way, don’t you recognize that this is just the ego at play — which is to say: fear? I think you will comprehend me, and I beg you not to take offense, when I say that these twin fears represent a peculiar sort of self-centeredness: “Oh my heavens, what if they see me? Oh my heavens, what if they don’t?”

Oh my heavens — what if you set all that down, set down all that nervousness, and stop thinking about yourself in that way quite so much, and just walk with undefended curiosity into my world? Because my world is so much better than that.

What if you believed me when I suggest to you that you replace those twin fears of not being seen or being seen with, instead, a twin mission: to allow yourself to be seen, and to see others?

Isn’t that better? Isn’t that richer and more satisfying? Wouldn’t that make for a more interesting experience?

This week you had dinner with an old friend who was reminiscing about how frightened he was for you when he read the first draft of EAT PRAY LOVE. He said his hands shook for you as he turned those pages in manuscript form, trembling in fear about how much of yourself you were revealing, and what that might do to your life, to be so vulnerable.

But my love, what if you HADN’T? What if you had taken the safer route and not published that book, and continued working at GQ magazine, writing profiles about interesting men? Not a bad life, sure. But only imagine what would have been lost, had you pulled back and not allowed yourself to be seen. And I’m not talking about worldly success here, either. I’m talking about a heart connection with millions of souls that still lives on to this day — a heart connection that led, in the goodness of time, to this shared practice of Letters from Love, which ALSO came from the most vulnerable part of your spirit, and which you were ALSO afraid at first to share.

Keep sharing, my love.

There is nothing that I give you that I do not want you to share with the world.

Take that in.

There is nothing that I give you that I do not want you to share with the world. That includes love and faith, but also trouble, difficulty, fear, and shame. It doesn’t do anybody any good if you keep those things to yourself, my little burrito. Let them see everything, my child — because when they look at you, all they’re doing is looking in a mirror.

Now, onto the business of seeing others! If you stay locked in self-consciousness and fear, you can’t really see your fellow humans, because all you will ever be thinking about is yourself — namely, the topic of image management. Come out of the darkness and limitation of your insecurities and need to control, and take a look around at who is here. Aren’t they EXTRAORDINARY? Stay fascinated, my love. This is why it’s so important to me that you not only read all these gorgeous, intimate letters each week, but that you respond to them. Keep letting people know that they are seen. Because when you look at them, all you are looking at is a mirror.

Let this practice become a hall of mirrors, where love just bounces and reflects down untold thousands of corridors, staring in amazement at its own miraculous light, saying, “I remember you! I remember you!”

Remember me always, my child, and you will have no trouble remembering your true self, and you will also have no trouble remembering and recognizing what you amusingly insist upon calling “others.”

It’s all just me, darling. It’s all just me.

Come out and play.

Love,

LOVE

Prompt

Perhaps this week you would like to ask this question of Unconditional Love: “Dear Love, what would you have me know today about being seen?” Or, if you want to stick with the fail-proof original recipe, you can always ask this more general question: “Dear Love, what would you have me know today?”

I hope to meet some more of you while I’m on the road!

Next month I have speaking engagements all over Europe — the UK and Amsterdam events are almost sold out, but there are still tickets available in Berlin, Cologne, Stockholm, and Copenhagen.

And last week I announced that I will be heading back to Australia and New Zealand in February 2025 — I know that’s a long way away, but so is that part of the world if you live where I live, so we must plan ahead! (The last time I was there was in March 2020, when I fled home at the onset of a global pandemic. So fingers crossed, this time around will be significantly less dramatic.)

All information and tickets are here — Europe, Australia, New Zealand events.