Hello angel, whatever corner of the Earth you are in, I love you dearly!
It’s been on my mind to start a newsletter to connect with my people in a time when connection has felt so hard for me to maintain. And I guess that's because I've been learning how to connect authentically to myself for the first time. There's been so much farther to go inward, more intimacy to find with my soul and mind and body. The experience has been as unsexy as it sounds sexy.
I've opened my eyes to the fact that we've been raised in a society designed for us to deny our true nature and access to true pleasures, and along the way I've lost my way to hearing and acknowledging and honoring my truest nature. It has been an exhausting, painful, enlightening, hopeless, and hopeful experience to meet myself again.
The question that’s been on my mind lately is how can I love myself better? As I grow so many things we say about self love and care begin to take on deeper meaning. I’ve realized that I’ve always held the belief that I loved myself before I ever really knew what it meant to love myself. What does it mean, actually? I asked my friend Aleena recently and her postulation was something along the lines that loving yourself means having integrity — it means acting in line with your highest self rather than out of reactivity.
If you have any postulations of your own, let me know.
One of my affirmations that I’ve been ending all my journal entries for the last two months has been “I act in alignment with my truth, purpose, and soul.” Sometimes I feel like a fraud when I write that when I think about all the ways I continue to act out of alignment with my truth, purpose, and soul. But sometimes it conjures to mind all the small ways I am learning to honor my authentic self, and in turn, love myself better.
Here are a few:
Many of you know that I work as a product designer for a start up. I’m quitting in two weeks. I’ve been envisioning for the last several months what the day to day looks like for a life that is ~aligned~, and I need time to pause in a world where work just keeps moving forward whether I am ready for that or not. The question that remains is how the fuck do I create a life that is aligned with my truth, purpose, and soul in a capitalist world absolutely disconnected from nature and spiritual wellbeing? That’s a hard question, and I may spend a very long time trying to answer it and manifest it. But I have some ideas. Stay tuned.
I’ve been living in California for the last year at my parents house, and after spending two months in The Netherlands I realized I never really allowed myself to settle in and build a sense of home. It’s time to do that and create a Sanctuary.
I'M A NEW MOM! I adopted two beautiful baby kittens whose names are Willow & Bambi. I’ve been waiting for this for years, and bringing them home and raising them is a decision that just feels so ~aligned~. There's no better feeling.
My affirmation since the new moon of May 11 has been: “I nurture the garden of my soul in its totality.” I realized something around then: if my soul was a garden, I was watering just one plant over and over again while the rest of my garden dried up and that overwatered plant started wilting to death.
For a long time I've felt like I've been catapulting so deep inside my being all the time that the mere act of existing has been exhausting. And for a lot of this time I haven't really been able to see straight, with all the dark stormy clouds hovering around me and making everything else look dark and stormy. They would gather into turbulent storms that came back again and again, breaking down my house and flooding the gates. And eventually there would be nothing left.
I am realizing, though, that the clouds will always gather but they don't always need to create storms — the skies can crack open and rain a strong but gentle rain to wash away the dirt and clear a path for blue skies. The last several months have felt like a very long and perpetual winter, and while the world around me is in summer, I think spring has finally sprung internally. I'm pulling out weeds and learning to water each plant and tree as it needs. Some flowers are blooming, others need more love, and I am learning how to love them better. I am reminded again and again of perspective, what a beautiful ability it is to be grateful, and the intentionality of being curious and making the effort to engage with the world with an eye for joy and peace and inspiration.
I am grateful for you, and you inspire me.
LOVE ALWAYS,
Lucy