Hello Lovelets!
I’ve been on the road again for the past two weeks, and I’ve been giving out YOU ARE LOVED stickers to everyone I meet.
This is one of my favorite things to do.
Last year, Margaret and I asked Michelle Musili (the artist who drew designs for this very Substack) if she would create a sticker for me that says YOU ARE LOVED. I asked her to make it nice and big and bold, so that people could not miss the message. And this is what she came up with:
I now have these stickers printed by the thousands, and I give them away every day, all over the world, to quite literally anyone I encounter. Gas station attendants, bookstore employees, the staff at the dentist’s office, baristas (so many baristas!), kind people I meet on the street, airport staff, taxi drivers, children, the elderly, random strangers sitting across from me in various waiting rooms . . . they all get YOU ARE LOVED stickers from me!
And thus I can now happily report that these stickers are all over the world, from New York to Fiji to Costa Rica, to a bunch of cities in Europe — and just this week, I pretty much wallpapered the entire state of Georgia with them. (I’m looking at you, everyone in that karaoke bar in Atlanta on Tuesday night!)
The funny thing is, I still sometimes feel shy when I hand them out. Especially because I have an iron-clad rule, which pushes me past my comfort zone all the time. The rule is: the more I feel like I shouldn’t give a sticker to someone (because they seem mean, miserable, or emotionally shut down) the more I must give them a sticker. I’m always afraid the person will get mad at me. But nobody has yet gotten mad at me because I handed them one of these things. In fact, the people who seem the most angry and shut down are often the ones with the most powerful emotional reactions to the stickers.
What I have learned this year is that most people, when they read the message YOU ARE LOVED, instantly smile and touch the sticker to their hearts. Some laugh with delight. Others get teary-eyed. A vast majority of strangers say, “You have no idea how much I needed to hear this today.” Many immediately tell me, “I’m going to go home and put this on my mirror, so I can see it every day!” Some people peel off the sticker right away and slap it on their chest — “so other people can see it!” And some folks ask for extras — to bring home to their children, their partners, or to someone in their life who is having a rough time.
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But on my last day in Atlanta, something happened to me that has never happened before. I was at a coffee shop when I noticed a man in the line carrying his little boy on his hip. The boy looked to be about three years old and seemed a bit restless, so I asked the dad if I could give him a sticker just to distract him. The child took the sticker from me with fascination, stared at it for a long time in wonder, and then very slowly, with a beautiful toothy smile, handed it right back to me — as if he were giving me the best present in the world.
I tried to give the sticker back to him, but no — he was insistent: he really, really wanted ME to have it, and he wouldn’t stop smiling.
I almost started crying. Because now I know what it feels like to be given a sticker by a stranger that says YOU ARE LOVED. What a beautiful experience! It felt like an encounter with an angel.
Speaking of encounters with angels, our special guest this week is Tyler Thrasher — an incredible self-taught artist, chemist, botanist, and author — who brings joy and love to strangers every day on social media. A few months ago, Margaret and I fell down a rabbit hole of watching his videos, marveling at his energy, brilliance, and utter generosity in sharing information about his multitude of passions: science, color, art. Of course we had to ask him to write a letter!
And the letter he received from love was one of my favorite varietals — a letter of unconditional APPROVAL. (Oh how I love it when Love says to us, in various ways, “I am proud of you!” How often we need to hear this!) In this letter, Tyler is told how courageous and honorable he has been, by asking for help in the difficult and ongoing project of tending to his mental health and healing his ancestral trauma, so that he can be a better human, a better husband, a better father. By seeking help, Tyler has become more available to life itself — and for that, I am deeply grateful. We all are.
Tyler’s letter inspired me to ask Love what it has to tell us this week about asking for help. And now I want to hear what Love has to say to you. I can’t wait to read your letters!
Love,
Your Lizzy
PS I’ve always intended to make these YOU ARE LOVED stickers available for sale to all the Lovelets. Maybe this week’s encounter with the toddler angel at the coffee shop is my message from the universe that I have to start expanding this sticker-giving-away business, so that you can all have the experience of sharing them with the world. Perhaps this is a project for 2025! Stay tuned!
Dear Love, what would you have me know today about asking for help?
Little glimpse of light, I feel an urgency again to remind you that you aren’t in trouble, that you are never in trouble, and that nothing we tell you here is meant to reprimand you. You have done nothing wrong — not during those times when you asked for help, nor during the times you didn’t. This world, this life, is an experiment. You have been experimenting for years, trying to understand how the game works, and what the limits of your powers are, and who you can count upon — and all that is how it should be. We encourage experimentation — it’s all part of the intense curiosity that drives a human mind.
Sometimes, in the great experiment of your existence, it has been necessary for you to refuse help — to practice extreme self-reliance, in order to see how far you could push yourself forward, using nothing but the engine of your own ferocious self-will. And that is fine, little one. That sort of muscular determination and single-pointed focus has taken you far.
And . . .
(Notice that we say and, not but. Because, again, you are not in trouble. Nothing has gone wrong. You are, in fact, exactly where and who we want you to be at this stage of your adventure — as evidenced by the fact that you are HERE, listening to us, and sharing your heart with this community. But we do need you to listen. And so we say: AND . . .)
AND you have suffered more than you needed to suffer in the past, dear acorn, because of how reluctant you have been to ask for assistance. You have suffered longer than you needed to suffer, and sometimes what was proven through your suffering was nothing more than this: “I certainly can tolerate a lot of difficulty without complaint — look at me!”
Sweetheart, we ARE looking at you. And we see that you can tolerate a lot of difficulty without complaining. We see that and we acknowledge it. It’s good to know, because life does come with difficulty. But perhaps you might consider not trying so hard to prove anymore how much you can take, before you break?
Can you stop before the breakdown — far, far before the breakdown, and ask for a little help? Maybe even ask for a lot of help?
If there is one thing we want you to understand, it is that help is always available. Many people refuse to ask for help, because they don’t believe that help will arrive — so why waste their breath? Either that, or they are so attached to a particular dream about who, specifically, they WANT to help them, that when this one particular individual fails to show up and save the day, they become devastated, angry, and jaded. And then they shut down, and return to their toxic self-reliance, for once again the world has proven: You are on your own.
But help is ALWAYS available, little seeker. Help is available from within, from above, from people who care about you, and from the least likely corners of humanity. Have you noticed how many times help arises in your life, quite suddenly, from people whom you never imagined to be angels — but who, as it turns out, are? When you think of the most astonishing acts of rescue and kindness you have ever experienced, you still feel the marvel of thinking, “Really? THIS was the neighbor who showed up to help? This was the distant family member who really came through for me during that hard time? This rather marginal friend was the one who wrote the most beautiful letter of condolence? This stranger drove me to the hospital that day?”
What stranger, Lizzy? What stranger?
There aren’t any strangers — not in our field of vision.
We will use anyone — absolutely anyone — who is available to be the helper. Just as we have often used YOU to be a helper to people you barely knew, or did not know at all. Do you remember sitting on the curb on Sixth Avenue in 1998 with the man who had just been hit by a car, using your scarf to quell the bleeding from his head wound, and promising him, “I’m not going anywhere, friend. I’m just going to sit right here with you until the ambulance comes. I have nowhere better to be. You’re safe now. I’ve got you. I will take care of you”? And it was the most obvious thing in the world for you to do — and the easiest thing to do. And after the ambulance came, and you called his wife from his cell phone and told her what hospital they were taking him to, and you knew he would be safe and loved . . . you walked away and never saw him again. Do you remember that?
This is us, using you.
And others have offered such grace and help to you. More times than you can count.
And you have seen strangers helping strangers so many times — now your mind floods with examples — do you remember all those times? And it brings tears to your eyes. Yes, child: what strangers?
What strangers?
And yes, sometimes people have hurt you and disappointed you, and let you down, and not taken care of you — or at least not the way you wanted them to. But just as often as someone has failed you (your words, not ours), another person has risen as though from the ashes of disappointment to be of simple, generous service to you. And when nobody was there at all — no human body, we mean — and when it was just you all alone in the dark terror, we came. We came to help you. As we always will.
Child, can you imagine, given all this history, being a bit more trusting? Can you imagine asking sooner, saying aloud to any person or spirit in the vicinity, “Can you help me?”
Can you imagine believing that someone or something will arise (from within, without, or beyond) to help you?
Invisible hands are everywhere, my dear. Nobody is sent to this planet alone, Lizzy — no matter how alone they might feel at times. Nobody is meant to do it alone. You don’t have to break down anymore — trembling with shame — before you are finally willing to ask for assistance.
Just ask, little one.
Open your mouth, summon up your faith, and ask.
And then get quiet, get trustful, and let us do our good work.
We love you, and we are right here.
Prompt
Whether you are someone who is already good at identifying when you need help and (this part is key) using that intel in order to actually ask for help, or you are someone who has a hard time reaching outside yourself to accept help from others, this prompt should yield an interesting and useful response — one that I hope will serve you in what some people call “the real world.” So this week, please join me is asking: Dear Love, what would you have me know about asking for help?
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