LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Amber Tamblyn!

You showed up brilliant

Dear Lovelets,

Somebody once asked my beloved friend Ann Patchett why she never wanted to have children, and she said, “Childhood is a humiliating experience that I would never wish upon someone I loved.”

!!!!!!

(And here is a not-unrelated side note: A reporter once asked Ann if she was perhaps using her small dog Rosie as a “substitute baby,” to fulfill her unmet maternal longings and Ann, with that steely gaze of hers, replied, “I am perfectly capable of telling the difference between a dog and a human baby. I do not want a human baby. I want a dog.” Word to the wise: Don’t fuck with Ann Patchett.)

Anyway, what was YOUR childhood like? (Lol.)

Some of you out there may indeed have had idyllic childhoods — like something out of a storybook, filled with softness and love, tenderness and joy, peace and safety.

Some of you may have had an entirely different kind of storybook childhood — like the kinds of stories where witches steal children, throw them into cauldrons, and try to eat children.

But whatever our young experiences were here in Earth School, I believe that somewhere within us all, those children still dwell. (Where could they go, after all, in a universe where nothing ever really disappears — where energy just changes form?)

I once read an interview with Margaret’s boyfriend, Bruce Springsteen, in which he said that every single version of himself, at every age he had ever been, still existed within his body. He said something like, “None of them ever leave the van. They’re all still in there.”

This week, our guest is the author and actor and activist

Amber Tamblyn

. She chose to write a letter from Love to a photograph of her younger, freer, more innocent self, and it came out as a beautiful poem of connection and grace. May I suggest that you all go find an old picture of yourself, and write a letter to that earlier version of you? They are still in there, after all, still inside the capsule of our incarnated beings — the vans, as it were.

What does Love want them to know?

I can’t wait to find out.

Love,
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what do you want to tell Lizzy, at age four?

Scooch over here, little one. Slide on over here, Lizzy. Come sit with us, pooh bear. Curl into our laps, the way you always do with everyone — not having gotten the message yet about stranger danger.

Let us talk to you. We are not strangers, anyway. We are Love. We are your familiars, your true family, your most intimates, the secret that you sort of remember when you are falling asleep and you feel yourself floating out of your body at night.

We know you can hear us. We are deeply connected with you. You only recently arrived here to Earth School — showing up wet and screaming and afraid, embodied (how strange!) helpless, blurry and confused — arriving here from the place of no place where we are, where you came from, where you will someday return. You have only recently arrived here from your true home, which is our name.

Time is still a vague concept for you, little one, so maybe you’ll grasp it if we tell you that you are always here, that you — this version of you — will be forever four years old. And also that you are ancient, that you are timeless, that you have been many things before, that where you come from is older than the earth upon which you have only a few years ago learned how to totteringly walk — the earth that seems filled with hard surfaces and difficult challenges, where you have so much trouble keeping up with the bigger people in that house with you who all have such long legs and urgent strides, who all know how to do things you don’t know how to do.

Lean in. Here is what we want to tell you.

The hardest part of your life is the young part.

The hardest part is coming.

The time when you will have to be the bravest is coming very soon.

The scariest part is now, these young years ahead of you.

And for that reason, although you look small and cute, and although some people might say that you don’t understand much of what is going on, and you might even feel like you don’t understand what is going on, it is during this, what we will call your childhood, when you will need to be most heroic — for this is the part of the journey when you will have the least power or control. This is the part when you will have the least agency, the fewest options, the quietest voice, the scantest idea of what the world is all about, the least remembrance of who you are, the most dependence on others, and there will be so much to learn that it will feel overwhelming and dangerous. And this is the part when it will be easiest for people to harm you.

Four-year-old Lizzy, who lives forever on my refrigerator and in my heart

But you are brilliant. You are brilliant. You showed up brilliant — and you are already learning everything you will ever need.

Some people make fun of you because you sleep a lot, you seem lazy and disengaged. You have already demonstrated that you are oversensitive and a daydreamer, and because you can get lost in the simplest play, like poking at the snow with a stick for hours, and you are not competitive, and you don’t know how to stand up for yourself, they think maybe you aren’t so smart.

But let us repeat: you are brilliant. You showed up brilliant. And while you are poking at the snow with a stick, you are studying everyone, and contemplating them — as you should. You are figuring things out.

You have already learned that some people are dangerous, very dangerous. And there is not one thing you can do about it for now, except to sharpen your wits. Keep doing that. You already have tactics — charm, jokes, tears, secrets, dissociation, misdirection, hiding. INCREDIBLE. Incredible, how quickly you picked that up. How quickly you learned and adapted for survival! Use every one of those tactics. You will know what to do, even when it feels like you don’t.

You are brilliant. You showed up brilliant.

You have already learned that the animals are good, that quiet is good, that water and sunlight are good, that food is wonderful, that imagination is good, and anywhere you go, you can build a little den for yourself out of pillows and darkness, that feels like your true home — the “no place” you came from — and you can dream your dreams there, which is how you tune back in with us.

It seems unfair that the hardest part of your life should be the early years when you are smallest, but that is how it is for most souls who take the journey here to this planet. Don’t be fooled by sentimental stories you may sometimes hear, telling you that childhood is a time of innocence. It isn’t. It won’t be. It rarely is, for anyone. It’s a battle.

But it is a time of ferocious experience, powerful learning. Look around. Your house is full of books, and long before you can read, the bigger people are reading stories to you — these fairy tales that tell the truth. Stories of clever girls in danger in the world, in the woods, and the wits they must have to survive. You have already heard of dragons, monsters, witches, demons. You have already heard of fairies, elves, magic stones, talking animals.

You’ve heard of magic.

What we want to tell you is this, little four-year-old — magic is real. Those stories are real. Those stories with their colorful pages have all the information you will require to grow into exactly who you need to be.

A big milestone is coming to you soon, child, which will make the world less frightening, and bring you power. The first word you will ever read is coming very soon — you will be able to read it in just a few months. That will be the word RED. That word will rise up one day off the page while your mother is reading you a story about a little Swedish boy named Olaf who is in danger from a troll. Your mother will say, “Olaf was a red-cheeked boy,” and that word — RED — will grow up off the page in 3D, just as she says it, and you will point to it and you will know suddenly what it says.

And that will be the first skill you acquire on your way to becoming who you need to be in this lifetime. You will learn to read quickly. Reading will bring you both escape and freedom, infinite powers and possibilities. And then soon, very soon, you will learn to write. And then, WATCH OUT, as you become who we need you to be.

Bad things will happen, honey. Bad things will happen and those things will not surprise you. You already know how difficult the world will be. You will read and write your way through them.

And this is what we promise: the world will get easier for you to manage and navigate as you get older, as you learn more about how to operate a body, a mind, a spirit.

And then someday when your body, your faithful trusty body, is in its 50s — as familiar and comfortable as an old cart horse — the woman whom you have become will call you back to live with her in a house filled with light, with books, with plants, with safety, with a small dog of your own, with privacy, with warmth, with birdsong and yummy food— she, that woman, will call you to her, to come live with her.

You will run into her strong, competent, warm arms.

And you will always be young, and she will get older, and together you will marvel at the truth that after all this time, after all these dangers and revelations and experiences and transformations, finally, the two of you, forever bound to each other and to us, and to everything, through words and deeds and adventures — will finally be able do what you came here to do. You will love this life. You will love this world. You will love this incarnation.

But for now, little one, rest as much as you can. Hide wherever you can. Dream us into being.

We love you.

Prompt

Would you like to join me and Amber this week in honoring our childhood selves? I invite you to pull out a photo you may have of your younger self that especially speaks to you and to spend some time with it. Is there a specific age you’d like to reflect on? If so, please (as always) customize the week’s prompt to make it your own: Dear Love, what do you want to tell younger me? And if that doesn’t appeal, there’s always our good old classic: Dear Love, what would you have me know today? It tends to get the job done.