LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Gemma Correll!

Dear Lovelets,

Welcome to Letters From Love, which we proudly call The Kindest Corner of the Internet™️.

For those of you who are new, just a quick note to explain who we are, what we are doing here, and how (if you wish!) you can be part of it.

Twenty years ago when I was at the lowest moment of my life, lost in a sandstorm of shame and depression over my failed marriage and chaotic brain, I heard a voice in a sleepless night tell me to get out of bed, get a notebook and pen, and write myself a letter saying everything to myself that I had always wanted to hear someone else say to me.

With nothing left to lose, I did it — and those kind, tender words (I’m right here with you. I’m not going anywhere. I don’t need you to change or improve in order to love you. This love can neither be earned nor lost. You are perfect to me just the way you are) became my very first letter from love.

In the decades since, I have written myself a letter from love almost every day, and always that same calm, affectionate, warm, unconditionally loving voice arises. And no matter what scary or dangerous or shameful or challenging thing is happening in my life, the exquisite tenderness is still there, ready to hold my hand through it.

Is this the voice of God? An angel? My spirit guides? My ancestors? Friendly aliens? My imagination? A hallucination? Who knows — and does it matter? All I know is that this voice loves me, and carries me through every challenge with gentleness and reassurance. So I don’t question it. I just listen, write it down, and read it to myself. As the years go by, I am becoming that voice.

A few years ago, I asked my beloved old friend Margaret (we met in college in 1988, she got me my first writing job, I introduced her to her husband, and she’s an editor!) if we could join forces and create this Substack community, which is entirely devoted to teaching people how to write themselves letters from love. Pepita, my rescue mutt, is our mascot, here to provide her particular brand of relaxed kindness.

We didn’t know if this practice could be taught, or if anyone would care — but now there are over 200,000 of you here with us every Sunday, learning how to write and speak to yourselves with deep, real compassion. And every week we invite a special guest to try to write themselves a letter from love, which we also share here.

Most people are scared to try it. Yet most people seem to find that if they ask in a genuine way for love’s voice, it arises. Even if nobody else has ever once spoken unconditionally loving words to them. Love can be found. Love can be heard.

Everything I create on this Substack is available for free, and always will be. But if you want to leave comments — which is where people share their own letters — or if you want to see and read the videos and letters of our special guests, you must be a paying subscriber. We keep the fee as low as it can possibly be (less than $1 a week), but we have found that this small paywall protects our guests from trolls, and also completely protects the lovely, brave people among you who are sharing your own letters in this sacred space.

If you would like to become a paying subscriber, you will surely find friends in the comments section, and that is how our community is growing, supporting one another, and even enjoying meet-ups across the world.

And if you want to share this practice with someone you love, you can gift them a subscription.

Remember: you can show up here any way you want! And nothing is ever expected of you.

So that is what we do, and that is who we are!

Our special guest this week is the cartoonist and author Gemma Correll, who is all of our favorite things — funny, talented, brave, and, of course, loving.

We are very glad you’re here. As the Spirit of Unconditional Love (what we call SOUL around here) always says to me: Let’s keep going.

Love,
Your Lizzy

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Dear Love, what would you have me know about my flaws?

Oh, we know alllll about your flaws. Should we just focus on one of them?

How absentminded you are, little one! How clumsy and absentminded! Twice in the last year you have lost your wallet. Your whole entire wallet. Twice! Once you left it in a bathroom at a coffee shop in Costa Rica, never to be seen again. Once, to the best of your knowledge, you just straight up threw it in the trash at a gas station in Connecticut. Why? Probably it was in the same hand as the receipt you had just been given. Away into the garbage went the receipt, and away into the garbage went the wallet, too — never to be retrieved. Or at least that’s what you think you did. Who knows? Who will ever know?

And on three other occasions in the last year, you lost some very important credit cards. Not even associated with the wallet disappearances. Where did the credit cards end up? Who knows, my love, who knows?

You know that there are people who can keep track of things, but you are not one of those people. How many keys did you lose this year? We know, we know — why even bother counting?

How many things have you broken just this year? Remember your teenage friend Ruby laughing her head off when she watched you set a glass of water down right in the air — just right in the plain, empty air — so far from a table or any surface whatsoever that you looked insane, or as if you believed that the air itself would hold the glass, as if you did not know how gravity works.

But you really don’t know how gravity works, actually. How many times have you fallen down this year? Not because of aging, but just because you don’t see where you are stepping. You have always been this way. You were falling down when you were 16 years old and an athlete. How is it that other people seem to know where to put their feet? Why does the ground change so much? Why is there suddenly a step, a curb, a hole — who can keep track of this chaotic world’s surfaces? Not you.

How many times recently have you gotten the date wrong, the place wrong, the time wrong, the year wrong?

Your friends laugh at you. You laugh at you — more as a defense than anything. You appear to laugh it off but truly, you wish you were different. You wish you were graceful. But you aren’t, angel. Remember when you worked at the diner in Philly and your boss nicknamed you “Little Miss Drop-a-Shake”? How did the others never drop one milkshake? The glasses were so slippery!

Remember when you dropped the entire tray of glass containers of maple syrup in the passageway right between the kitchen and the dining room, 10 minutes before the place opened for Sunday brunch? That was such a good one! Ten out of the 12 bottles broke, and a lake of syrup and broken glass spread across the floor, and not only was there hardly any maple syrup for brunch that day but everyone made sticky suction sounds for weeks as they walked through the diner, because every surface was covered with syrup. FOR WEEKS.

Absentmindedness and clumsiness are not treasured virtues in the world, dear. Of course you long to not be this way. And of course you make every effort not to be this way. And yet you are this way. And it’s not cute — not in a rom-com manic pixie dream girl “adorkable” way. It’s a problem! It’s annoying at best, maddening and expensive at worst. It’s horrible to have to replace everything in your wallet after you just replaced everything in your wallet only a few months ago. It’s embarrassing to fall. It’s exhausting to constantly be cleaning up broken glass and lakes of syrup. It’s stressful to be flawed in these ways — and these are just your kinesthetic flaws. We haven’t even gotten into your moral flaws, or intellectual shortcomings, or impatience, or judgmentalism, or vanity . . .

But let’s go back to the broken syrup bottles at the diner that day in 1990 — the lake of molten sugary liquid and shattered glass, the stickiness of everyone’s shoes, the stress it put on your fellow waitresses to keep having to tell customers that we are very sorry, but we are out of syrup. The burning shame of it. The Amelia Bedelia of it, but not cute. Why couldn’t you do better? Why did these things never happen to the others?

Have you ever stopped to wonder why you weren’t fired? I mean, it wasn’t the first time you had made such a huge mess. Nor would it be the last. You were the worst at cleaning out the walk-in and the pie case. You messed up people’s orders constantly. You were not good under pressure. You could not keep track of people’s drinks and desserts. You forgot to bring silverware, salt, ketchup, the bill, to the table.

So why did Diner Mike, your boss, keep you on? You were, he used to say frankly, his worst waitress. Ever. You cost him money and time. You caused him problems.

But Diner Mike kept you employed for three years because he loved you. He kept you on — and still stays in touch with you now, 35 years later, as do his children — because you were a good friend to him, and to his kids, and to his wife, and to the other customers, and to the other waitresses, and all the kitchen staff.

Do you remember how you and Mike would sit together before and after your shifts, at Table 101, talking and laughing and telling stories? And listening? Do you remember how well you listened? Do you remember how he said once, in a rare moment of vulnerable exhaustion, “Today I kind of hate everyone in the world but you, my wife, and Jim Smith.” Jim Smith, his best friend. His wife, the kindest person you knew. And you. At age 20. That’s why you weren’t fired.

Customers would come in, and Mike would say, “You have a choice — you can sit in Linda’s section (*not her real name) and get what you ordered on time, or you can sit in Liz’s section and have a really good time, but you probably won’t get what you ordered, and it will be late to your table. But it will be an interesting experience for you.”

Some people just wanted their food, and they wanted it on time, so they sat in Linda’s section. But sweetheart, a lot of them just wanted to sit with you. They wanted to talk to you. They wanted to be with you.

Why are you so careless and absentminded and clumsy and forgetful? Because your mind is on other things — and 99 out of 100 times, those “other things” are other people.

You couldn’t focus on the milkshake machine because you were talking over your shoulder to Leo, the old man at the counter who didn’t have anyone else to talk to that day. You didn’t look where you were going with the syrup because you were laughing and joking at that moment with the dishwasher, Mohammed. Do the other waitresses remember Mohammed 35 years later? You can forget your credit card 10 times a week, but you will never forget Mohammed, or his story.

Every time you have lost your wallet recently it was when you were with other people — people who you were driving around, doing things for, hosting, enjoying, listening to. You weren’t paying attention to the things because you were paying attention to the experience you were having with others. And every time you have tripped and fallen, it was because you weren’t looking where you were going. Because you were looking at the person you were with. You never trip and fall when you are alone.

Honestly, who gives a shit about your wallet? Credit cards can be replaced, and drivers’ licenses, too. Pools of syrup and glass can be cleaned up eventually, even during Sunday brunch. Do you remember that nobody was angry at you on any of those days — any of the times you lost, stumbled, fell, broke something? Do you remember that people still wanted to have you around? Do you remember that their laughter was affectionate, not derogatory? Do you remember how much attention you were showing to every single one of those people — all of whom you had made a very sincere effort to befriend and to help?

If we need someone to be physically graceful, we can get someone else for that job. But you are needed for something different, our little one. You are a really good friend to more people than you can count — sincerely so. You are here for that.

Don’t worry about how gravity works, it’s none of your business. You know how the human heart works, and because of that, plenty of people want to sit with you, no matter when their food arrives, or if ever. All that will be forgotten, the material things. What they will remember is that you cared. You were present to them, in the moment. That is what you are here for, honey.

Don’t worry about things. Things break. They get lost. Love doesn’t. We want you just the way you are.

Stumble on. You’re perfect.

Is the story you tell yourself about your (alleged) flaws real? Is it fair? Is it one-dimensional? This week, join me in finding out. Grab your pen and paper or your device, get still, write this question, and let’s see what comes up: Dear Love, what would you have me know about my flaws? Can’t wait to read your letters!