What Would Unconditional Love Tell You During These Intense Times? Try This Exercise if You Find Yourself Struggling

For more than 25 years, author Elizabeth Gilbert has written daily letters to herself from love, and she says it’s been the most transformative spiritual practice of her life.

Now, she’s on a mission to help all of us learn to speak and write to ourselves from a place of love by sharing some of these letters—and asking her friends and others to write their own letters from love—which you can read here

The prompt: Dear Love, what would you have me know today?

Last week, author and poet (and Sunday Paper contributor) Rowan Mangan’s letter from love stopped us in our tracks and inspired us to write our own. And this week, with so much happening in our world that threatens to take us away from a place of unconditional love, we thought we’d nudge all of you to write your own letter or poem, from Love to you, too.

Need some inspiration? Read Ro’s letter from love which, as Gilbert put it, “poured out of her as a sweet and sacred and gorgeous poem that is equal parts a howl of anguish at the terrifying state of the world, and a tender and affectionate balm for the anxious human heart.” And if you’d like to listen to Ro recite her poem herself, watch the video clip of her reading it below.

ROWAN MANGAN’S LETTER FROM LOVE

"Intersect"

Dear Roey
Roey Joey
Little punkin
Funny friend,

I got the note that you wrote me
I’m glad you hit send
It says here you’ve been trying 
to human again.

Oh, my friend.
Funny friend.

I know that it chafes you
This flesh and these bones
It feels like you’re always 
Wearing someone else’s clothes
Someone you don’t really know

And then, other people?
I know, right, don’t get you started

You love them, you need them
You don’t know how to read them
Can’t process the speed of them
Always trying to succeed at them

To be at rest in the sea of them
Not to be of them,
just be with them

And you write to me here
“Look around and tell me
Where the hell is the love
In this mass lunacy
this mockery of community 
Bloodless and yet bloodthirsty.

This feels nothing like love
More like pornography

Babe, I see. I do see. 

And yeah, you folks are all-consuming 
Kamizake-to-your-doom-ing
Inhaling the fumes, decorating your tombs 
Enjoying a few drinks before the final kaboom

There’s nothing here I refute
But sweet pea, you’re so cute!
All earnest and trying so hard to be brave
So serious in your world weariness
So grim and afraid

You feel like the whole world’s
About to tip over
But my hot take is these stakes
Literally could not be lower

Now, don’t @ me, my darling
You’re suffering’s real
I’m just saying, from here
It’s not that big a deal

We’re one, man, we’re all one
And that’s gorgeous, it’s fun
But outside of the game there’s no done or undone
There’s no skin against skin
There’s no “know what I mean?”
There’s no hitting the limits
Or stretching the seams

The point of a stint in this joint we call life
Isn’t to bask 
in success or delight
You’ve had infinite basking
You’ll have infinite flight
Lighten up, my beloved, you’re made of pure light!

Don’t rest on the heights
When you can hang from the ledges
You do this time
Cuz you’re divine
And you want to learn about edges

I mean, why have skin at all if you’re not going to cut it
and graze it and scratch it and kiss it and touch it?

A part of you knows
That what it means to connect
Is to live where too hard
And too soft intersect

I don’t know if you know it
I know that you sense it
The wince in the instinct
To rub up against it

Cuz why have a heart if you won’t let it break?
It’s not a mistake
It’s the risk that you take
It’s the choice that you make
It’s your chance to awaken

So let your skin feel the sting
Walk on through the monsoon
And don’t fret, my pet
You’ll be home with me soon 

Love, Love

Rowan Mangan is a writer, podcaster, Substacker, mother and life enthusiast. To read more of Ro’s work, read her Substack newsletter Wild Inventures, follow her on Instagram, or subscribe to her podcast Bewildered, which she co-hosts with her partner, Martha Beck.

This poem originally appeared in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Substack, “Letters From Love.”