LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Safiya Sinclair!

Take care of the baby

Dear Lovelets,

I was recently explaining to someone about how I have come to understand the relationship programs of 12-step recovery.

Al-Anon, ACA, SLAA, CODA — all of these are different programs of recovery where people can go to heal from lifetimes of relationship chaos, just the same way that alcoholics can go to AA in order to find healing from their substance addiction.

Because it is not only substances that we can become possessed by, is it? People, too, can become our drugs. People have certainly always been my drug of choice! And I have hurt myself (and others) in so many creative and destructive ways over the years — not only in romantic intimacy, but also in friendships and family relationships. Love addiction, sex addiction, codependency, enabling, romantic obsession, fantasy addiction, anxious/avoidant attachment, control, manipulation, people-pleasing, and the deathly despair of feeling like I have been “abandoned” again and again — oh, my friends, there are so many ways to become entranced by, obsessed with, or ruined by what I might simply call The Other.

But in the simplest terms, for me, at least, all these problems boil down to one problem: I have a deep hunger to be loved.

And what I have learned in all those different rooms of relationship recovery (for I do indeed belong to all those different rooms of recovery!) can be boiled down to one lesson: Take care of the baby.

Who is the baby?

I am the baby.

I am the baby — innocent, vulnerable, full of needs and wants, sweet-natured, intuitively loving, beautiful, frightened, hungry, bewildered, adorable — who needs and deserves my own round-the-clock care.

If I show up for that baby and take kind and tender care of her, my life works beautifully. My health improves, my joy levels rise, my creativity soars, my friendships bloom, and the world feels like a wonderful place to be.

If I DON’T take care of the baby, my life immediately starts to spiral out of control — and very soon, I promise you, I will go out there in the world and start hunting for somebody who CAN take care of the baby. Or else I will throw myself into the project of taking care of someone else, in the mad hope that it will somehow save me.

Every time I outsource the care of my baby (myself, my spirit, my essence) to another human being, it fails. But only always. Ditto to every time I make another person into my latest project, as a way of desperately trying to generate love. When I get lost in another person, the baby doesn’t get the care she needs; I become angry and resentful and terrified; drama ensues; and then comes the running and the screaming and the crying (and the divorces, and the lawsuits, and the bitterness, and the horror, and the memoirs — ha!).

The stakes could not be higher.

So this is what I tell my sponsees, when I start working the steps with them in my 12-step relationship programs. Above all: TAKE CARE OF THE BABY.

That — the exquisite tenderness of learning how to love yourself — is where the healing will be found.

Our special guest this week, the luminous Jamaican poet and memoirist Safiya Sinclair, has written one of the most lyrical and beautiful letters from Love we have ever received. And in her letter, her Spirit of Unconditional Love (SOUL) reminds her of the child within her — the beautiful inner child who longs for Safiya’s attention, and needs her care.

If it feels right to you this week, Lovelets, let’s ask Unconditional Love what it would have us know about our inner children.

Take care of yourselves, dear hearts. Take care of the baby. Do that, and everything else will be okay.

Love,
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know today about my inner child?

First of all, that we love her dearly, and always have. And secondly, we would have you know that she hasn’t gone anywhere. You are, in fact, the same person you were at age four, at age seven, at age 12. (And for that matter — you are the same person you were at ages 25, 35, and 45, as well. And you will be the same person at 92.)

You are her. She is you.

You were born with an imprinted nature — born with an identity already intact. Born with pre-established personality characteristics, with talents and obstacles, with preferences and fears. You came here exactly as you are. And as every mother you would ever know says about their child: “They just showed up like that.”

Let’s go even further with it — you have BEEN this person (this nature, this spirit) so many times. The bodies change; the setting changes; the external realities shift; the soul remains exactly the same. You have walked through many worlds, many lifetimes, and so many stories you have passed through to get here. But always, darling spirit, it has been you.

There is a zen koan that you are familiar with: “What was your original face, before your parents were born?” That is meant to connect you to your truest nature, to pull you into your deepest nature, and to remind you of the miracle of your ultimate existence. To remind you of what you are when everything else has been stripped away.

Your original face has been the same the entire time.

That, dear one, is your inner child: innocent, trusting, hopeful, intelligent, thoughtful, curious.

Most precious being, if you knew how many lifetimes and how many worlds it has taken for us to arrive right here, at this point of awareness, at this experience of consciousness-awakening, at this moment of recognition of self/God/other. If you knew how long it has taken for you to learn how to hear our voice, if you knew how long it has taken for you to start to believe that your inner child, your original face, is worthy of your respect, your reverence, your care . . . well. All you would ever do is love what you are, if you knew that, and marvel upon it, and tend to it with the most exquisite care.

There are a few lessons you came to learn on this particular experience in Earth School, child. No, let me refine that. There is one lesson that you came to learn on this go-round:

It is how to take care of yourself.

We are not talking about learning how to provide for yourself in the material realm — although that is part of it. We are talking about learning how to tend to yourself — how to attend to your spirit, and how to become your own beloved. So many times you have been lonely, across tundras and forests and oceans and mountains of emptiness. So many times you have howled out in the darkness to be loved. Searched for love. Begged for love. Traded all that you apparently had for an unconvincing simulacrum of love. Cheapened yourself down for a bargain basement version of intimacy, and called that love. And yet it has never been enough because you were looking for it in the wrong places and from the wrong places.

You are that child, and you are also that child’s mother. You are that child, and you are also its friend and benefactor. You are that child, and you are also its patron, its minister, its ambassador, its beautiful twin. You are right here — finally accepting care of yourself, for yourself. You are holding yourself in your own hands, little one. Everything you need is contained within you, the way the blueprint for an oak tree is entirely encapsulated, imprinted, within the DNA of an acorn.

If I tell you that nothing else has ever been needed, will you believe me?

I know you will. I know you do.

You are, she is, we are, everything. Intact.

Believe me. Believe yourself.

Love her. Comfort her. Rise up for her. Delight in her. Advocate for her. Speak for her. Protect her from anything that distracts her from the great knowing.

Enjoy her. Marvel at her.

Little One, we have found her — your child — and she has found you. We have found each other at last.

Let us now love.

Prompt

You may be familiar with IFS, or internal family systems: a modality of therapy that imagines each person as a system of (often wounded) inner parts led by a core self. It’s often called “parts work,” this way of healing, and it has people identify and tend to their different and younger selves. For people carrying childhood trauma, it can be transformative.

This week, even if you don’t identify as someone with trauma, we thought it would be a useful exercise to try to tap into the little person or people inside. So if you feel curious, join me in posing this question: Dear Love, what would you have me know about my inner child?

Onward Book Club

Last summer I had the honor of hosting our special guest, Safiya Sinclair, at the Onward Book Club, a virtual space created to spotlight and celebrate the work of Black female authors. (You can watch our conversation here!)

Our next session is in just two days — I’ll be talking with Letters From Love alum and diver Tara Roberts about her remarkable memoir WRITTEN IN THE WATERS: Tuesday, March 4th at 7pm live on my Instagram! Join us!