Becoming Loved

My heart doesn't need a notebook anymore

Looking back in my notebook after the Women of Earth Lab in Brazil, I laughed. I spent 5 days with 34 women, clutching my precious notebook everywhere. I took my notebook to every meal, had my pen ready during every process, carried it with me to the bathroom and bedroom, and tucked it into my pants when I looked at the stars. I also forgot it everywhere, lost it twice, spilled dinner on it, and left it behind in every room only to go back for it frantically five minutes later. I was committed to writing my discoveries and remembering my burning questions because I wanted to hold on to the new space I discovered for myself. If I could chart how I got there, I could navigate back to this place on my own. 

It’s sound logic, but what I ended up with were vague notes, such as to “become a root and grow to the water near you” or to “choose without reason and feel the consequences of my choices,” which are great snippets of advice, but far from a roadmap. So what do I do now? How do I stay this person I discovered and learned to love? 

The Women of Earth Lab was an un-becoming process. It was an undoing of my survival strategies and a first landing in the Reality of what-is without any stories attached. I’ve known these words for a while and thought I understood them. But finally, for the first time, it was no longer a distant concept or a thought: it was a Practice.

I have been committed to being good my entire life. I thought this was where love came from, so it was a clear and simple path. If I knew how to be good, I could be loved, so as a small child, I developed the incredible skill of figuring out what people wanted from me and how they wanted me to be. All my attention and energy went into scanning, decoding, and responding to the pressures of other people’s needs. I learned that I could control the space if I were the one who needed to change. And if something went wrong, I could make sense of it by making it my fault. If I was wrong, I only had to change myself, and then everything would be fine and nothing bad would ever happen again.

My father wanted me to be smart and clever, so I was. I hid when I didn’t know, studied to overcompensate for not understanding things, and completed 5 standardized preparatory booklets to fix my bad test scores. It worked. I got amazing grades and was ranked in the top 5 in high school, but ask me about anything from that time, and I have no memory of it. I existed in Survival Mode for so long, being so focused on what was needed, that I do not remember much. 

As for my mom, she wanted me to be sweet. To be loving to others, to be generous, and forgiving. I did that too. I never started fights in my house, and if my brothers and I argued, it was behind closed doors and I retreated almost instantly. I hid my Anger, learned to focus my attention on ‘good things,’ ignored the unsettling ones, and prayed a lot so I would not be evil. And it worked. I was loved and so I was convinced this is how it goes. 

The Fantasy of being good, being able to make everyone love me, and making myself wrong to control things was how I related to the world. This weak foundation often led to me collapsing, freezing, and trying. I had been trying to let people love me and keep focusing on the ‘good things,’ but as soon as something shook from a bit of anger, a conflict, or a lack of excitement, I would jump into survival mode. I would start wondering what I had done wrong and what I needed to fix. And when I would finally reach deeper layers of intimacy with someone, they would reach out to relate to the real me, and I would not know what to offer. What did I want? Why does it seem blank when I look inside? Why is this so hard? 

I have been existing somewhere textureless, knowing there’s another way I could be but being unable to get things growing. I have been stuck. Then came the Women of Earth Lab in Brazil.

The Women of Earth Lab was the most loving space I have ever been in. It was a love that demanded my full authenticity and where I shed the story that I have to be good to be loved. On the second day of the lab, I found myself surrounded by five others. The process needed only two, but people kept joining in just to be extra support. My worst nightmare. The more people who watched me, the more people’s time I was taking, the more debt I owed them, and worst of all, the more love shown me for no reason at all. I told myself, “No, this is great. They’re just here to be with me. Now I have all this support to go further.” But deep down, I was scared of this love and these women. I knew they would not accept my story that I had to be good to be loved. This space would demand that I let this story go, and I did not know if I could. 

The process began and I took the first step. My fear rushed over me and the words came pouring out. “If something is wrong, it is my fault.” The women listened, asked me questions, and held a space with their complete, unrelenting attention for forty-five minutes. I unfolded more and more until I reached a place of total groundlessness. “I cannot make people love me. I cannot change myself to be lovable.” And finally, “I want to love. I want to be loved.” In this place of reality, I felt like I was floating. Nothing else seemed to exist and everything in me was quiet.

The stories of who I had to be, or what I needed to try, were over.

I sat in this moment and felt immense joy burst throughout my body. I opened my eyes, I looked at the five women who were with me, and for the first time, I felt how much they loved me, for no reason at all. My sadness flowed, an endless river of connection and presence. It continued for the rest of the day, ebbing and flowing with time and more women loving me, holding me, and showing me how love can be. I touched into a reservoir within me that is here with me even now. 

Sitting in that space with these women was my first experience of letting love in without the fear of needing to do something in return. In their gaze, I felt a ray of Archetypal Love, which called me to step through my fears and meet them in the real world. The love had been there for me all along; I just didn’t know how to look. 

Reflecting on those five days at the Women of Earth Lab, I paged through my notebook, trying to remember what happened and who I had become. But the notebook was not helpful in the way I thought it would be. It’s an artifact of failure. It was written by the version of myself still trying so hard to become someone worthy of love because if I made just the right notes, and held onto just the right tricks, I could fix myself. But the notebook was just another thing to hide behind that was supposed to be a better version of me, and the perfect notes would have only led me farther astray.

The circle of women holding space for me opened my heart in a way that cannot be written down. But my heart did open—I can sense it— and it finally knows what to do.