Dear Ones -

Some of you may remember these lines from EAT PRAY LOVE.

These are the words I said to myself (wrote to myself, actually) when I was lonely and scared in the middle of the night in Rome, far away from all who loved me.

This was a practice I had started about a year earlier, when I was in the worst of my depression — to write compassionate and loving letters to myself in a notebook, saying to myself everything I had always wished somebody else would say to me.

Until I learned how to speak to myself this way, I had no chance of peace.

Other people can love you. Other people can comfort you. But other people often come and go. And if you can't soothe and reassure yourself in your darkest, loneliest hour, nobody can.

There were nights when I sat up for hours, writing words like this to myself again and again, through a scrim of tears and waves of panic. And often another (angrier) part of me would scrawl at the bottom of the page: "This is bullshit. I don't believe in you." Then I would patiently begin writing again at the top of the next page, "But I believe in YOU. And I will not leave your side. I will love you and take care of you forever..." On it would go, until I could finally fall asleep.

Then again the next night...and so on.

That's how I walked through my darkest valley.

I will tell you this — there are STILL hard nights sometimes when I take out the old notebook and ask, "Are you still there?"

"I am still here," I will start writing, "I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here with you. I love you and I will take care of you..."

My promise to myself is this: I will walk beside myself for as long as I live, holding my own hand, taking care of the soul with which I have been entrusted.

I will do that always, whether anybody else is in the room with me or not.

You must learn how to tell yourself that you are loved. You must tell yourself this again and again until slowly you learn to believe it. Start writing yourself love letters. It feels weird at first, but keep going. Practice. Practice more. Practice EVEN more. You'll need it someday — or you may need it right now.

Life can be hard, but without your own certain love for your own tenderest self, it is simply impossible.

Be good to you.

ONWARD,
LG

The Creator gathered all of Creation and said:
“I want to hide something from the humans until they are ready for it. It is the realisation that they create their own reality.”
The eagle said, “Give it to me. I will take it to the moon.”
The Creator said, “No. One day they will go there and find it.”
The salmon said, “I will bury it on the bottom of the ocean.”
The Creator said, “No. They will go there, too.”
The buffalo said, “I will bury it on the Great Plains.”
The Creator said, “They will cut into the skin of the earth and find it even there.”
Grandmother Mole, who lives in the breast of Mother Earth, and who has no physical eyes but sees with spiritual eyes, said “Put it inside of them.”
And the Creator said, “It is done.”
- Creation Story from the Hopi Nation, Arizona, North America

I'd like to be many persons in my one person. I'd like to feel infinite but aware that I am finite, though in the end I may indeed be infinite. Because once I'm met by you aren't you a little bit of me and I a little bit of you? We're all particles in motion exchanging bits and energy perhaps.

--Oct 22 2014

GOODNESS: http://markmanson.net/life-purpose

THE MOST STRANGELY REASSURING ADVICE I EVER RECEIVED.

Long ago, when I was in my desperate and confused 20's, a brilliant, independent, wonderful woman in her 70's gave me this incredible piece of life wisdom.

She said:

"We women spend our 20's and 30's so worried about what everyone is thinking about us. Then we get into our 40's and 50's, and we finally start to be free, because we decide we don't give a damn what anyone thinks of us. But you will not be completely free until your 60's and 70's, when you will finally realize this liberating truth — NOBODY WAS EVER THINKING ABOUT YOU, ANYHOW."

They aren't. They weren't. They never were.

People are just thinking about themselves — all caught up in their own dramas, their own fears, their own regrets and tasks and insecurities and distractions.

"You aren't on anybody's mind," my friend told me. "They don't have room in their minds to be worried about what you're wearing, what you're doing, how you're living..."

While it may seem lonely and horrible at first to imagine that you aren't on anybody's mind, there is also — as my wise older friend told me — a great liberation to be found in this idea.

I wrote down her message in my lucky notebook, and I've kept it nearby forever (along with my plucky, self-confident little fox totem.)

You are free, because everyone is too busy worrying about themselves to worry about you.

Go be who you want to be, then.

Do what you want to do.

Dress how you want to dress.

Love who you want to love.

It's exceeding likely that nobody will even notice.

And that's AWESOME.

ONWARD,
Liz Gilbert