LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guests Nadine Ferris France and Vimbai Jazi!

Come join your human family

Hi Lovelets!

Over here at Letters From Love Enterprises (which consists of me, Margaret, and Pepita) we spend a lot of time strategizing about who we want to invite as special guests. We put a lot of thought into it, and we try to bring you the greatest hearts in the world. Margaret, especially, is a genius at finding people online who are emanating love in beautiful and creative ways.

But sometimes, love finds US.

Last spring I was in London teaching a creativity workshop. During one of my breaks, I was stopped on the way to the bathroom by an Irishwoman with kind eyes, who managed to let me know in about 45 seconds that she was a doctor operating out of Zimbabwe, and that she had founded an organization called Beyond Stigma that works to dismantle the “self-stigma” that is such a tragic and deadly emotional side effect of HIV. (The word “deadly” is not an exaggeration: when people stigmatize themselves for having HIV, they tend to isolate themselves, to avoid interaction with their friends and loved ones, to skip medical appointments, to not take their life-saving medications, and to stop taking care of their emotional and physical health.)

Dr. Nadine Ferris France (that was the kind-eyed Irishwoman in the hallway!) placed in my hands a book called THERE IS A TREASURE IN ME — a collection of poetry written by young people with HIV in Zimbabwe. She said that I would recognize the spirit of these poems as being, essentially, letters from Love. And indeed, I did recognize that spirit! There is a voice of compassion that winds through every one of those poems. And it is exactly the same loving and accepting voice that we all download here, whenever we write ourselves these letters and share them with each other.

So of course I asked if Nadine would do a letter! And she did better than that — she provided us with TWO letters from Love: one from her, and one from the project officer of Beyond Stigma — Vimbainashe “Vimbai” Jazi — who advocates for young people and teaches from a position of her own lived experience with both HIV and self-stigma.

Together, these two women — these two dear friends and colleagues — have brought us a beautiful topic to consider this week: how does self-stigma show up in our own lives? What does it do to us? What does it take away from us? And what does Unconditional Love have to say about it?

Nadine and Vimbai, thank you for the work you do in this world. Thank you for your kind eyes and loving hearts. And most of all, thank you for these beautiful letters from Love.

Onward,
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know about self-stigma?

My dear,

Nobody has ever wounded you more than you have wounded you. Let’s start with that, little peanut — let’s jump right in with that. Remember that comment your father made once about a troubled friend? He said, “We are all our own worst enemies, but with some people it’s a little more obvious.”

What is obvious to us, child of love — what is glaringly, blindingly obvious — is that you are not only your worst enemy, you are your only enemy.

Nobody else expects the same level of perfection out of you that you expect. Nobody out there is demanding that you be some kind of ascended spiritual master — and we know that it angers you when we say this because we know you WANT to be an ascended spiritual master. But we have terrible news for you. The way to ascension is by falling, by failing, by accepting losses and limitations, by hurting. And then by loving the one within you who hurts. Sorry, I know you want it to be different, but we don’t make the rules — we just love you through the process. And that process is very human. Which, again, we know you don’t really like.

The dreadful thing about self-stigma, my angel, is that it causes you to take yourself away from the warmth and communion that is human belonging. You send yourself to your own bedroom and shut the door and demand of yourself that you not come back downstairs again until you are ready to be perfect again. And God forbid you should let anyone see you when you are not perfect.

We aren’t talking about physically perfect — thank God you didn’t get that need, to be pretty all the time — we are talking about spiritually and emotionally perfect. That is what you demand of yourself. That you be calm and regulated at all times. Unbothered and unflappable. Generous and abidingly sweet to everyone. Patient and loving. Infinitely understanding.

And whenever you fall short of this by feeling even the tiniest bit of anger or frustration or fear, or whenever you reach a point of overwhelm where you can’t anymore — where you just CAN’T? Well, then you set upon yourself like hunting hounds chasing a deer through the woods. You take yourself down, and then you rip out your own throat for not being good enough. You know and we know that this language is not hyperbolic: that is what you do. You tear yourself to shreds.

And then you send yourself away, you isolate yourself, until you can “get it together” enough to be perfect again.

That is how self-stigma expresses itself within you, and it is a terrible violence.

You know the story I’m going to ask you to remember now. That afternoon out on Fire Island when Rayya was in the midst of chemo, and she was so sick and you were so sleep-deprived, and she started shaking and vomiting and, for the first time since you had become her caregiver, you panicked. You panicked and you started crying, and you didn’t know what to do. Ariel and Gigi came running into the bedroom not only to help Rayya, but to help YOU, because you were also sick and shaking and terrified. That was the worst of it! You did the worst thing in the world anyone can do — you became somebody who needed to be taken care of. When you were supposed to be the perfect caregiver! Oh how you burned with shame.

Once the women had settled Rayya, you asked that they leave you alone so you could, in your own words, “pull myself together.” And then they left you alone, and you wept and attacked yourself and said to yourself what a failure you were.

Everyone else, including Rayya by that point, was outside by the pool having hot dogs and laughing, and you were locked in a room attacking yourself for being a failure. Like you have done so many times before.

My love, do you feel how hot your body gets, just remembering this? Do you see the way you banished yourself from the sunlight, from the people who were laughing, from the companionship? That was not self-care, honey. That was self-stigma.

And do you remember how Ariel came and knocked on the door and gently checked on you? All you wanted was for her to go away, so you could be alone in your shame. And she sat on your bed and took your trembling hands and said, “We want you to come outside and join us.”

And you said, still weeping, “Not until I’ve composed myself. I don’t want to ruin everybody’s day by being such a mess.”

Ariel said, “There is not one person outside at that table who has not felt the way you’re feeling right now. We have all been there, and we understand. We don’t need you to compose yourself. We just love you, and we want you to sit at the table with us. Come join your human family.”

Come join your human family.

Sweetheart. I know that in many respects this is the hardest thing in the world for you. So much of the time, you don’t even want to be human or part of that family — everyone is so chaotic and messy and disregulated and scary and unpredictable. You want to be ABOVE the human family, or apart from them — loving them, maybe, but from a distance. Nor do you want anyone to see your fearful messes.

But honey. We have terrible news for you. You are, in fact, human, and it’s not an administrative mistake that you are. We know you love your solitude — but that is not the same thing as stigmatizing and isolating yourself when you’re in shame.

When you’re in shame, my love, we want you to learn how to do the opposite action. We want you to learn how to tell somebody what you are feeling. We want you to learn how to ask for help. We want you to learn how to come out. We want you to learn how to knock on a door and take the risk of being seen as you are. We know. It’s awfully scary.

But what if? What if that’s the doorway to heaven?

We love you.

Prompt

The bane of internalized stigma is familiar, isn’t it? Regardless of what external factors might have led us to shame our own selves, it’s a scourge of our culture — and, I suspect, a problem shared by many of us in this space who are continually learning to practice self-compassion. So today, let’s ask this question: Dear Love, what would you have me know about self-stigma and shame?