Reading a love letter to Elizabeth Gilbert and other inspiration
Four ways I deepened clarity, connection, community and creativity this week
Welcome to the first “Living in 3D” second weekly newsletter, a curated list of recommendations that starting next week will only be for paid subscribers. This is a sample of what you will get every Thursday. If you don’t want to miss out, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Each week I will share what I’ve been
Reading (books, poetry, essays, Substacks, thoughtful social media shares)
Watching (TV, movies, videos, live cultural performances)
Listening to (music, podcasts, conversations with smart and funny friends)
Learning from (courses, programs, teachers with deep wisdom and compassion)
Each of these recommendations underpin the four “C’s” that guide my life:
Clarity (illuminating the way in difficult moments of our lives)
Connection (the beautiful moment when one soul recognizes another)
Community (the comfort of knowing you are not alone)
Creativity (the invitation to express our full humanity)
Here are how the four C’s made themselves present for me this past week:
Clarity
The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo. This volume of short essays for each day of the year, accompanied by a suggested meditation, by the poet Mark Nepo has become a sacred text for me since it was gifted to me by my dear friend Louisa nine months ago. It is uncanny how I turn to that date’s reflection and it seems precisely tailored to the clarity I am seeking in my life at that moment. This excerpt below makes me think that this Substack is my invitation for readers to reach into my nest of baby birds:-)
In the October 3 entry, titled, “So Unused to Emotion,” Mark Nepo writes:
My own struggle to open my heart has been a long one…I use solitude now like a lamp to illuminate corners I’ve never seen. And though I am scared at times that, after all this way, I will come up empty, I still believe that going inside and bringing whatever I find out makes all the difference. When we bring up what we keep inside, it is sacred and scary, and the rest of us don’t know if we want to touch or not, like reaching from a ladder into a nest of baby birds. It’s too soft and sacrilegious. It seems a place where human hands do not belong. But I invite you anyway. Go on—let others reach in honestly—so we can say, “This is who I am when no one’s looking.” For each of us is a fledgling that eventually, if fed, will fly.
Connection
Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love and Substack newsletter, Letters from Love
I have loved Liz Gilbert’s writing since I became one of the 13 million people all over the world who read her candid, eloquent memoir Eat Pray Love. I am re-reading it for the third time but really, it feels like the first time. A year on from my own divorce, when Liz is on the bathroom floor no longer able to ignore the voice that says, “I don’t want to be married anymore,” that same insistent voice was pressing in on me though it took me decades longer than Liz to hear it. But once I let it in, there was no going back. And now, 20 years since Liz began the journey that formed the basis of Eat Pray Love, I am envisioning my own “Eat Pray Love” journey in 2024. More on that in a future newsletter….
Letters from Love is Elizabeth Gilbert’s new Substack and it’s a miraculous thing. She shares with the world the practice that has guided her life since her Eat Pray Love days, which is to write herself every day a letter from unconditional love. Hundreds of letters pour in every week, shared in the comments—a cauldron of bubbling love. She now has over 35,000 followers, just weeks into launching. There is a hunger in our world to be more loving toward ourselves, and this community is doing just that, beautifully, remarkably. Each week Liz shares a letter via video and print and invites a guest to do so as well. It’s a big warm hug, a heart squeezed tight, an exhale.
I began to write these letters to myself the day I attended A Workshop with Elizabeth Gilbert on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad (another amazing place for the 4 “Cs”) a few weeks ago. On that zoom call launch, Liz invited all of us to take six minutes to write our own Letter from Love. When we were invited to share, I raised my virtual hand and read it aloud on camera to Liz and Suleika. The moment of connection between this beloved author and myself was something I will always cherish. Being brave enough to share myself in this vulnerable way is not something I would have done prior to living my 3-D life. It shows me how far I have come in stepping into the powerful woman I have always been, hidden in the shadows at times but there all along.
Below is the letter I wrote and shared with Liz and Suleika and umm…some 1,200 other people on that call.
Dear Love, What would you have me know today?
Sweetest love, little cherub, let me carry your burdens, let me take all the weight, let me be the lightness that fills you and lifts you. You think you are not strong enough, brave enough, wise enough, talented enough, persistent enough. Oh my dear one, you are enough—just as you are. I want you to laugh today. I want you to play today. That is love's prescription for you, little angel. You can be as light as the wind, as feathery as a cloud. You can breathe deep and long and take in all the love I have for you. For me, little lovely, heart-dancer, you will always be enough, just as you are. I wish for you to see yourself as I see you. Perfect, precious, one-of-a-kind. Beloved. Reach for me whenever you need me. Put your hand to your heart and feel me, right there. Always. Hugs and kisses, Unconditional Love
Liz’ response, in part, was: “I hear such exquisite tenderness in that letter, it was like a blanket and a warm bath and a hand on my heart and what I know about how the brain works is that I can hear those words directed at you and they work for me. I got a Xanax from hearing that. I got a contact from hearing you say that. And one of the reasons I want to create this community is that I want there to be a place where people can go and read each other’s letters, to get clues to what it sounds like to talk to yourself from a place of love. Because even hearing someone else’s letter will do the same thing.”
Community
Of all the communities I am blessed to be a part of, there is one that has been a guiding light for me this past year. It is called The Whole Soul Way, a truly life-changing program created by my friend and soul doula, as I like to think of her, Deb Blum. She created the program to help women like me—do-it-all women—learn an actionable way to live their lives that guides them to deep fulfillment and inner peace, without losing their edge or disrupting the life they’ve worked so hard to create.
As much as the comprehensive curriculum, tools, mindset shifts, and live coaching from Deb have changed me since I began the program last September, it is the community of women who took the journey with me that have been its greatest blessing: my soul sisters. Twice a month those of us who have “graduated” from the program (although in truth, it is only an evolution as we continue to learn to live more true to ourselves, layer by layer, day by day) meet online to share what is on our minds and in our hearts. I always come away from these moments of community feeling inspired and renewed, seen and heard and deeply loved. If you’d like to get on Deb’s email list to learn more, click here.
Creativity
I am a writer of fiction not poetry, but I love poets and their work. A beautiful poem always inspires my own creativity and brings me into deeper connection with my own humanity.
This week the poet who has been most on my mind is David Whyte, who has his own beautiful Substack you can read here. I have been collecting his volumes of poetry for the past year and attending online his deep and reflective Three Sundays Series, most recently on the theme of a Deeper Form of Rest: The Art of Shaping a More Beautiful Mind.
Here is part of his poem “Second Sight,” from Essentials.
Sometimes you need the ocean light,
and colors you’ve never seen before,
painted through an evening sky.
Sometimes you need your God
to be a simple invitation,
not a telling word of wisdom.
Sometimes you need only the first shyness
that comes from being shown things
far beyond your understanding,
so that you can fly and become free
by being still and by being still here.
Come by next week for more of what has inspired me!
Fabulous to get a curation of some of the lovely ways we can connect with ourselves and each other. Thank you.
I love the 4Cs! I appreciate your sharing of what inspires you every week.