Letter from love
This is what love looks like... Photo by Sandra Butel
I am Sandra Butel and this is my beautywalk.
beautywalk is all about my intention to seek out beauty wherever I may go. Beauty in the clear blue sky; beauty in the harmony of voices raised in song; beauty in finding connection with other humans.
Letter from love
This latest blog pulls upon the wisdom and practices of some pretty fantastic people, like Fiji McAlpine, yoga instructor, workshop leader and coach, Christine Bilinski, Registered Psychotherapist and somatic healer and Elizabeth Gilbert, journalist, speaker and memoir writer whose “Letters from Love” substack brings inspiration into my inbox on a regular basis. As Gilbert herself puts it in a welcoming post,
”LETTERS FROM LOVE is both a learning space and a spiritual practice. Here, people come together to discover their inherent value and exquisite preciousness, and to learn how to write and speak to themselves from a place of love and friendliness.”Elizabeth Gilbert
Healing words
I too have adopted this practice and after my PQ reps and the daily Calm meditation with Jeff Warren, I cozy up in our king sized bed with my laptop piled upon the thickness of the chenille covered comforter to consider what love might have to say to me today.
I have been thinking alot about healing these days, having been offered up the space and safety by my friend and trauma therapist Christine for a free session in exchange for coaching with me. When I read the latest missive from Gilbert’s Letters from Love I am moved to shift away from the routine question: Dear Love — What would you have me know today?, towards a more healing focused investigation.
This almost daily practice brings me back each time to the realization of how loving myself first and best is the ultimate goal of my daily existence and I am curious to see where the focus on healing will take me.
Apart then together .. Photo by Sandra Butel
Love letter
Here is my latest letter from love, shared from my healing heart to yours:
Dear Love, what would you have me know about healing?
I know you know this one but it bears repeating that healing takes time. Healing goes up and down and in and out and there are so many layers from every bit of harm that was caused to us by both ourselves and others. I see you there, almost at the finish line, struggling to stay focused and wanting to give up and stop running, to just rest for a while, but honestly this is where you want to be, this is your moment, this is the choice you’ve made of where to put your energy and while I see that it is hard, that is part of the point.
Healing is about going deep into the dregs of what hurts you and being with it and making friends with it and opening the boxes that hold so much power over you and seeing that inside there is just stuff and that stuff has no power on its own - it only builds meaning when you add it in. So you keep breathing and meditating and doing yoga and spending time outside and you keep reminding yourself to be in this moment as much as you can and not let the thieves of the past and the future steal away your joy and your choices.
Love letter continued …
How deftly Coach Fiji put it, in recounting the deeper meaning behind the story of Jesus on the cross. There he was all tied up, nailed to the cross with his feet and hands fixed in place, one thief on either side of him from where he could feast his eyes upon the world below. To his left he could hear the thief of the past and if he turned his head and strained his eyeballs as far as he could to the side he could get a glimpse of him there too. The thief of the past tried to distract him from the truth of the present moment and convince him of the merits of dwelling in the past. His high pitched voice repeating,
“Why? Why? Why, Why did this happen to me? Why did they do that? Why couldn’t I fix it? Why me?”
To the right was the thief of the future who was doing his best to draw Jesus’s attention away from being with and accepting what is as he placed his energy and focus on what might be coming next. His voice projected off loudly into the distance as he repeated the same requests of the universe, waiting for someone who would answer his queries.
“What is going to happen now? How the hell is it all going to work out? Why can’t someone tell me it is all going to be okay? Why can’t someone make it all better for me? When is the future going to arrive and get me out of this place where I am stuck with my pain, with my reality, with the starkness of my present situation?
My dearest love, Sandra, how well this metaphor draws out the reality of your current situation.
Here you are in the middle of it all, pain coursing through your hands and feet and heart, your mind reeling from what has come to visit you. I see you falter as you step into the hole of heavy victimhood. This place where you see the world and people as being responsible for how you are feeling. Every step becomes more difficult as you want it all to be easier than it is. I see the tightness in your chest and jaw, I see the tears that fill and refill the wells in your eyes. I so wish I could take this pain away from you but we both know that this is not at all how the story goes.
All you can really do is feel into the experience; into the here and now of what is truly happening and tell yourself, “This is what is.” The only path you have ahead of you is one of acceptance … and this is acceptance even if what has been done to you is unfair and unlikely and unbelievable. It is all simply what is. What you are trying to do here is find a way to be with what is and not to try to push it away or pull it towards you, but to just be with what actually is going on, warts and wrinkles and all.
When you look in the mirror you see your true essence, what a nest your hair is after a night’s sleep, how the laugh lines around your eyes are deepening, the darkening of the so called beauty marks on your cheeks and the blurriness of your eyes that don’t see as clearly without the help of your 3 way lenses. Age comes for all of us and it is not always kind; bringing aches and pains and limits in movement, bringing sags and dips and at times such a bottomless pit of fatigue, bringing foggy memories of where you left your keys.
There is no way out of this.
Danger Thin Ice ... Photo by Sandra Butel
Love letter continued …
This is what it is to be human; you were conceived in hope and in a moment of connection between 2. You were born, you opened your eyes, you cried, you pooped, you peed, you slept, you ate and cell by cell, year by year, you grew. Lifting yourself up on your belly, crawling, walking while holding the hands of your caregivers, running full tilt and somewhere in there you added in the apparatus of bikes, skates, rollerblades, and even teeter totters until you conquered this upward movement thing that set your ancestors apart.
You walk, sometimes with your head held high, making choices of where to spend your time and energy, sometimes with your heart wide open. You laugh, you cry, you yell, you tell your stories over and over again.
Perhaps there are times when you stop talking completely, taking some space for your inner life, or moving out of harm's way. You experiment with roles like girlfriend, lover, sister, boss, colleague, friend, Mother, doing your best to be there for others. You wake up one morning and your legs are so stiff and your back aches when you stop to pick up your wool slippers that you kicked off your feet before climbing into bed. You grunt, you sigh, you hope it isn’t forever until the day you no longer are able to stretch it out completely, knowing now that you are indeed getting older.
What a shock this is when it comes to you. When you realize that the person in the mirror is you and that in 5 years, 10, 15, 20 you will be even older than you are now. You try to imagine what it will be like when you are as much older now as you were younger then. You wonder who you will be then and what you will be doing and what limitations will be your daily bread.
There you are hanging in the middle of the past and the future and it is painful and you are choosing to stick with it all the same. In the words of beautiful Fiji, “Opportunities are there all the time for us to transform. To take the opportunity to get rid of things and mindsets.” The opportunity right now as you hang there, crucified by the choices that others made for you and how much that impacted how you saw yourself, is to endure.
You can choose to grab onto the deepest parts of this experience and to see this moving project not as a list of tasks to be struck off a list but more as an opportunity for rebirth, where the project is you and your partner and your growth and self-realization. You can feel into the moment, sigh a deep sigh of resignation and put your arms around this someone you love more than you ever thought possible, say the words of “Let’s be in this hard moment together,” and squeeze until you find yourself back in the present moment again.
All the best, my dear Sandra, with the deepest of abiding love from me to you,
Yours truly, LOVE
Picking up the pieces … Photo by Sandra Butel
It is what it is
I am lying very still under the comforting weight of the blankets and eye shades that Christine has so carefully placed upon my body. I can hear her voice to my left side, where according to astrologists, my past does lie, “I am here, Sandra. I am not going anywhere. If there is anything you wish to share right now I am here for it. If this is a time to be silent I am fully here for that as well.” After I utter my words about a devastating loss long past, a moment of unlimited space opens up in which I once again think, “But this is what happened to you Sandra, and it doesn’t really matter if it makes sense or not, it is what it is and will always be so.” As Christine and I sit face to face after table time she says, “We always ask Why? but the question we really need to be asking is How?. How did this happen?”
A deeply held embrace, arms and hearts connecting and a flood of heat to my heart area as I take in the generosity of what is being offered here. A space for whatever my body has to tell of the story that has been resting there. This is where healing happens, slow and steady and with a whole lot of care.
Dear Reader,
What might love have to tell you about your own healing?
What benefit might come to yourself and others if you were able to take time each day to talk with love?
What is being offered to you right now that could help you in your own healing journey?
What words of your own need to be said out loud in the presence of a caring listener?
I am Sandra Butel and this is my beautywalk. What’s yours?
Spring forth my lovelies … Photo by Sandra Butel
Resources for Further Study and Personal Growth
There are so many amazing practitioners out there who are offering up their skills and knowledge to whomever is willing to accept the offer and do the work. I encourage you to reach out to whichever methodology feels most welcoming to you. Contact information is sprinkled throughout this blog.
If what you hear from me resonates with you on this particular moment of your own personal journey reach out to schedule a free beautywalk coaching session with me. I am currently taking on new clients and am open to whatever type of barter or payment works for you as part of my dedication to the advancement of the moneyless share economy.
My Positive Intelligence based program From Worry to Worthy offers you an opportunity to move yourself from being ruled by the thief of the past and the thief of the future to being fully grounded and guided by your wisest present moment self. Check out the full program details and book your first free session with me to get started.
If you are interested in signing up for TrustedHouseSitters you can get a 25% discount (as well as pass on 2 free months of membership to me in the process).
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