Taste the Leaves, Slide the Drawer

Nothing else needs to be done.

Hello Beautifuls,

Welcome to everyone who is new here this week. ❤️ There are so many of you! And I am delighted and honored you are here.

Welcome back to everyone who’s been here before. I am grateful for you presence and humbled by your generosity and love.

Thank you, thank you.

Did you know that if you ❤️ this post (or share or restack it) it helps others discover Hello Beautifuls? So many of you are doing this and it is leading to more and more wonderful people being here. Thank you.

My Loves!

I am feeling a bit out of sorts this morning. I started to write you about it, and then a poem emerged, as they sometimes do. I don’t know if it’s finished yet, but it is whole enough to share with you — and I think that is all we can ask.

That we believe we are whole enough to be shared.

Waking

Get up, she said

even though it is dark,

as the moon's breath douses you

and guides you out of sleep.

Get up, she said

and make the tea,

sliding the drawer on quiet wheels

not to wake anyone,

even though no one else is there to hear.

Get up, she said

and taste the leaves,

their oils mixing with the water

as the warmth slides over your tongue

and touches

some pieces of you, but not all

Get up, she said

and sit with yourself,

because, after all,

nothing else needs to be done

to bring the light.

---

I’d also like to share my Letter from Love this week. If you’re not a Lovelet, I highly recommend it. Join in the love over here @

Elizabeth Gilbert

. The space is just full of light and support and hearts pouring open to each other.

The question this week was, “Dear Love, what would you have me know about my resistance to you?”

Here is what Love had to say:

Dear Sweet Gazelle,

We know you love Love. And we know your vast ability to love all the animals, even the ones who look scary–those huge fishes who live in the dark at the bottom of lakes and oceans!

We know how much you love the people around you and all the humans, even though they give you great pains, some of them more than others, yourself included. We know you love the oceans and rivers and trees. All the living things. ALL of them. We know we know we know.

And since you've asked us about your resistance to Love, we will tell you honestly, sugar bee, your resistance to Love is your resistance to anything and everything. To having more money or not enough, to feeling left out of things or too caught up in them, to wanting something to come closer or wanting to push it away.

Your resistance to Love is your resistance to trusting yourself.

As your friend Kate said, knowing a thing and believing it are two very different things. You know love is infinite. You know you are enough and so much more. You know it can be as simple as just loving everyone and letting the rest go.

But do you believe it?

Sometimes. When you swim in cold waters. When you touch a redwood trunk. When a dog kisses you.

What we want for you, our biggest delight, our sweet little pill bug, is for you to recognize that Love will heal you. It will free you. It expands with every tiny peephole to it you open in your heart.

You expand the more you love.

What we want for you, strong lioness, is to know Love so intimately it is in every breath, every movement, every word.

We want you to BELIEVE you are Love. Because you are. No instructions or resistance necessary.

How do you do that? We hear you asking. Mantras are good. Swimming is good. Those "“You are loved,” stickers Lizzie gives out are good. A tattoo is good. Reaching out to people you love and telling them is good.

Reaching in to yourself and telling yourself you love you is good.

The way to believe anything, brilliant fox, is to practice, which is just belief in its raw form.

We love you,

Love

---

I shared this image of a collage I made several years ago, in 2020 (one of my first collages) on Substack’s version of social media, Notes.

“Letting Go,” 2020, Jocelyn Lovelle. Mixed media encuastic on wood.

I said in my post, “I made this collage, one of my first, several years ago. I didn’t know what I was doing, I’m not a trained artist, but something about it feels like home and I needed to look at today it as I write a braided essay about collage and my childhood.”

Seventeen (17!) people commented and encouraged me to own my artist self. I was moved and honored (many of these people don’t know me) and it made me think of something.

What if we owned all the parts of ourselves that are incomplete, untrained, unpolished? The parts that long and yearn and adore. The parts that are curious and full of wonder.

What if, like Love implored, we recognize we are incomplete, and believe how in our incompleteness, we are perfect?

xoxoxox

j