Letters from Love

I have been on a podcast hiatus for a few months, listening mostly to audiobooks instead while walking Rubes and driving to work. I go through these phases often, so nothing feels unusual about missing 20 episodes of my “must listen” pods at a time. It’s just how I ebb and flow.

Last week, I felt like picking back up where I left-off with my eternal favorite, “We Can Do Hard Things.” Through what I can only attribute to the universe doing me a solid, the first episode I listened to was with one of my other favorites, Liz Gilbert. She was talking about her recent Substack project, Letters from Love. I highly recommend checking out the substack, and her two WCDTH podcast episodes (there’s a good teaser here), so that what I’m about to share makes some sort of sense.

The TL;DR of Letters from Love is this. Liz writes:

In this space, I will teach you how to write yourself letters from unconditional love — how to open your imagination to that universal friendliness, and how to download its messages.

Basically, she teaches you how to uncover the wisdom, strength, and love that you need in any moment, in any season of life. No outside forces necessary, because it’s all already inside you.

If it sounds a lot like regular ol’ journaling, you’re not entirely wrong. But you’re also not entirely right.

There’s something profoundly different about not writing TO someone or something, but FROM someone or something. These letters from love are, well, letters from LOVE. In the most omniscient, all-caps, higher power, internal knowing sense. Which means that for me, they are from the 3rd Amy (the wise one) to all of the other Amys who are mingling inside my mind and heart at any given point in time.

After writing my first two Letters from Love, I was tempted to share them with you here. They were both born from meditative moments, deep connection, and unfiltered vulnerability, and they revealed some courageous truths that I think I had been purposefully avoiding, or at best, subconsciously ignoring. They are beautiful and poetic and comforting. They are messy and raw and unfocused, too. They are, as Liz espoused they would be, unconditional.

And that’s why I won’t be sharing them, after all.

Something happened in my first letter, where LOVE told me that some revelations aren’t meant to be shared. That sometimes they’re just for me to hold as precious, to keep as my own ball of light. to turn over and over in my hands without needing to polish them for anyone else’s consumption or education. That was a hard thing to hear from LOVE, because my instinct has always been to share everything I learn, as soon as I learn it, so that others can benefit from it, too. I get joy from that. But LOVE wanted me to know that I don’t always have to give something to others in order to find joy. Sometimes my joy can come from giving it, and keeping it, all to myself.

I might publish a letter or two here in the future. Or if I get ambitious enough, I might even submit one to Liz’s substack for the community to embrace. But for now, I’m enjoying holding this secret little relationship with LOVE in the protected pages of my notebook. We’re literally writing a new story together. And I have no expectations for where it’s going to go from here.