LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Lisa Congdon!

Our special-specials

Dear Lovelets,

First of all, please enjoy the hot water bottle in the background of my entire video today! Apparently, she really wanted to be part of the proceedings this week! As you know, I don’t do second takes on my videos, so I didn’t even notice that my hot water bottle was in the shot until after I made the video. (You’re lucky it was not my sports bra. But that’s only because I hardly ever exercise lately.) But now that you have seen my hot water bottle, let’s talk about it!

I wrote in EAT PRAY LOVE about how, when I was going through my divorce and depression, I would often go to bed with a hot water bottle on my chest — as if my heart had suffered a sports injury, and needed to be healed.

My heart DID have a sports injury, in fact, and needed to be healed.

Most of our hearts have been gravely injured at some point in life — maybe consistently throughout life — and we need healing. We need warmth. We need tenderness. Sometimes you can find that warmth and tenderness from other people, but sometimes you have to find a way to source it yourself. And to this day, I still take a deep comfort in sleeping with a hot water bottle, in order to feel the presence of warmth. It is a gift that I give to myself, because I want Lizzy to always be okay. I want her to always know that a warm presence is here and available — no matter who is or is not in the room.

One of the most miraculous gifts we have been given as humans is the ability to self-comfort. We can make ourselves a cup of tea. We can take a bath. We can put on soft socks. We can wrap ourselves in a blanket. We can sleep with a hot water bottle. We can put a warm hand on our hearts. And, crucial beyond anything, we can speak to ourselves with loving words. We can be our own friends.

Our topic this week, in fact, is friendship! And our guest is Lisa Congdon — an artist, writer, and teacher who is one of the most generous creative souls I have ever met, who shares widely and wildly of her gifts (her dazzling gifts, as you’ll see below). And who I consider a dear friend.

“Tell your people you love them,” she instructs.

Well, that’s easy.

You are my people and I love you.

And who are your people, dear hearts? And how do you love them?

Let’s find out!

Onward!

Love,
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, who are my people and how should I love them?

Little lamplight,

As so often happens, our response starts with a laugh. You are so dear! “How should I love them?” you ask?

Oh, sweetheart. Your real people, the ones who effortlessly populate your heart, are the ones about whom you don’t have to ask “How should I love them?” Because you just DO. You know how to love them the same way Pepita knows how to zip right up next to your left hip and thigh when you are sitting in your green chair reading or meditating. Did you teach her that this is the spot where she should sit? Was that an instruction that she was given? Like, “Here is where you are going to need to sit, little doggy, and this is the person whom you should love and trust?” Or, on the first day you brought her home, did she just know, “This is my person, and this is my spot beside her. Here is warmth, here is safety, here is familiarity.”

Even she, a little street dog with an unknown history left in a box outside a kill shelter, knew: This is who I love and this is how I love.

But let us back up a little bit.

First of all, foremost of all, essential above all things is this truth: WE, the Spirit of Unconditional Love, are your people, and also you are your own person. What this translates to, in real-world terms is: We’ve got you, and you’ve got you.

Put your hand on your own heart right now and feel where it lands, feel what is underneath your palm — the warmth, the beating, the presence. This heart, that knows how to love itself. This hand, that knows where to find itself. And this internal voice saying, “We’ve got you.”

There is something essential you must know here, dear heart. When you are anchored safely in that awareness that you are here, that you are taking stewardship over your own heart, and that whatever created you and brought you into this world loves you and is with you — then all your other relationships will be far, far more free. For you will be what you have always longed to be, which is self-assured. Not in an outside-in sort of performance of confidence, but in an inside-out generating of love that will be the only true safety you could ever know.

So, as Rayya used to say: Yes, it’s an inside job.

Without that anchoring in stewardship to your own heart, you won’t be able to love your people very well, because your love will be based in need, and, as your dear friend Byron Katie says, “Nobody is safe from me when I need them that much.”

So start at your home address, dear heart. Start at your own dear heart. Love it loyally and tenderly, constantly and forgivingly, bravely and humorously — and then we can see about loving the other people.

But back to your question!

The world is divided into “humanity,” which is everyone, and “your people,” which are your special-specials. You can practice love for humanity in general with your metta loving-kindness meditations that you do almost every day, radiating compassion out to all humans, to all living beings. This will help you to keep an open heart (or as much of it as you can!) with those who exhaust, bewilder, frustrate, and even sometimes disgust you.

But your people, honey, your special-specials? They are scattered like gemstones throughout the world, and you will know them because of the lightness, joy and warmth that arises within you when you are in their presence. And you should love them however you want, however delights you — with presence and presents, with inside jokes and love, with questions about their day and the thought-world in which they live, with coffee and snacks, with hugs and long walks and road trips, with open hands and a safely open mind.

We have given you the gift for friendship, little one. You have sometimes abandoned that gift in pursuit of romantic obsession or sexual longing — but for you, that’s need, which is not at all the same thing as love.

Love your friends, honeyhead. Love your friends and love yourself, and eventually you will reach the destiny that Richard From Texas predicted was yours, to someday love the world.

One last thing — let people go. Let people go. Let people go. This is of the utmost importance. You must learn to let people go, because many of them will go — actually, eventually all of them will go.

Earth School is constantly repopulating itself with new students, and all the souls here are on their own journey, with their own urgent agendas of karma, which will mean that they will sometimes have to go in their own directions. What this means, in the simplest terms, is that all people — yes, even the ones you call “your people,” your special-specials — will come and go. You are watching this happen right now, as some people in your life who are very dear to you are leaving certain positions they held in your life in order to go off into different orbits — because they must. Because they must, my love.

Please keep the doorway to your heart open such that people are allowed to come, and people are allowed to go. As you said recently to a mother who is mourning her estranged adult daughter, “But what if your daughter is free? What if she is free to be part of your life, or not to be part of your life, depending upon what is best for her? What if you love her so well that all you could ever imagine wanting was for her complete and absolute freedom? And what if wanting her freedom set you free, as well?”

That’s right, dear.

Love FREELY, sweetheart. Allow everyone complete and absolute freedom of movement. They need it, and so do you.

That is all.

We love you!

Prompt

When we consider “our people” we mean, of course, an all-inclusive definition. We mean all of us here in this incredible community — we see you nurturing those friendships in the comments! — as well as our real-life special-specials, and even our non-people people (woof!). We know instinctively who these souls are, but this week let’s get it down on paper. Let’s access that gloriously quiet mental and physical space and write these words: Dear Love, who are my people and how do I love them?

I have just two weekend workshops on creativity, courage, liberation, and healing — all the good stuff! — coming up before ALL THE WAY TO THE RIVER is published in September. I thought I’d conveniently lay out all the details of my upcoming events here in one place (convenient indeed, right?) There will be lots more to come. Let’s go!

* Vancouver weekend: May 24-25
* Omega Institute (Rhinebeck, NY) weekend: May 30-June 1

Book events:

* 9/19 Torrington, CT
* 9/21 North Bethesda, MD
* 9/25 Austin, TX
* 10/14 Denver, CO
* 10/24 San Francisco, CA

And! On Monday evening my beloved

Suleika Jaouad

and I will celebrate the release of her new book the following day with a live, virtual conversation about how everyday creative practices can transform and transport us — all the details here!