Love and Change
On finding, embodying, and creating with love, while navigating change
Hello, dear wonderous one! Happy ‘Palentine’s Day’ — a day to celebrate friendship and a multitude of forms of love. 🫶 I doubt you’re surprised by today’s letter theme but, before we dive into love and change, I want to start by sharing my deep appreciation for YOU. Thank you for following along and supporting me on my Substack adventure. It’s now been 4 months (+ 3 days) since I launched these Friday letters and your encouragement, week after week, truly sustain me in this project! 🥰
Putting love and care into what we do, how we interact with the world is so essential but it’s also really HARD to keep up, day after day, as moods dip, heartbreaking news comes out, life’s challenges pop in.
👉 Never underestimate what a kind word or gesture can do for others. It can make all the difference on those harder days where showing up, or just basic functioning feel nearly impossible or pointless. It also makes good days that much sweeter and more meaningful!
In this week’s letter, you’ll find:
🤔 How expanding my understanding of love changed… everything
💞 Celebrating 3 friends’ exciting creative projects (music/poetry/painting)
✨ A lovingly curated roundup of inspiring resources
☺️ 2 self-love infused invitations to try out this weekend
As always, if you’re feeling extra low on time or brain space, feel free to head to the section you’re most drawn to right now. 😊
1. Love + Change
Keeping an open heart and an open mind is a lot easier in theory than practice!
This idea of keeping an open heart and mind has been a longtime mantra of sorts for me. Something I’ve prided myself on being ‘pretty good’ at practicing. Being a curious empath who grew up in an international environment makes that easier for me than many.
And yet… IT’S SO HARD!!! Especially right now.
Nothing like hearing about/seeing children in makeshift ‘shelters’ surrounded by devastation, or starving, or abused, or being torn from their families, to feel anger boiling up ready to swallow me whole. Add to that adults living in fear and unimaginable conditions, communities fighting against massive data centers and development projects that threaten the environment around them, and plenty more. Oh and learning my right to vote in the US elections from abroad is likely going to be revoked, and our reproductive rights in the EU are under threat later this month (Re: the My Voice My Choice initiative). WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. FUCK. !??
*Takes a deep grounding breath*
Here’s the thing… change is often painful. Already when it’s us trying to change at a personal level. So massive systemic change? WOOOF! Of course that’s going to come with brutal ‘growing pains’. If you’ve ever had your assumptions [about life, the world, someone] challenged and realized you were wrong, or worked on steering your life in a new direction, you likely know just how excruciating it can be.
Hate, fear, and sticking to the status quo of what you know is a lot easier. In the short run. But as Bad Bunny reminded so many of us last Sunday:
The only thing more powerful than hate is love
Where change is uncomfortable, often brutally painful, even when necessary, love (the true, unconditional kind) is deeply healing and can help make change easier to live through. It also helps us show grace towards those in the midst of their own growing pains and fracturing world views.
That’s why I keep reminding myself to return to love. Now and always.
Not an oblivious love that accepts everything at face value from a loved one. Not a self-obliterating love. A love rooted in oneness with the Divine, the Universe, Nature, all living beings past, present, future.
A love that shares and creates.
A love that nurtures and helps.
A love that strives to understand.
A love that unites rather than divides.
A love that can fill even the darkest recesses of our flawed humanity to fill it with light.
A love that leaves room for transformation (and supports it).
It’s not always easy. It’s not perfect or systematic. But it’s a practice.
Start with a strong dose of self-love
It is the source we act and connect to others from. One of my favorite pieces of advice from a life coach I knew was to treat yourself the way you’d treat your best friend.
Nowadays, I tell myself to speak to and treat myself more like I do my cat, as I shower him with affection daily, constantly telling him how wonderful, kind, beautiful, and deeply loved he is.
Then embody and radiate that love out into the world
Where do you create, take action, speak, think, react, interact with others/the world from?
It will look VERY differently whether you’re coming from a place of hate, fear, anger, greed or a place of love, curiosity, kindness, empathy.
That’s why, when I created my own business (helping conscious brands with their social media), I wrote LEADING WITH LOVE as my first core value.
Seeking out, celebrating and supporting the loving helpers of the world
Love and help can be shown in so many ways, big and small. From family and friends, to complete strangers. I’ve got a mental folder filled with memories of kindness strangers have shown me that I find myself returning to time and again. Some were during my darkest hours where waves of depression threatened to block out all the light and pull me under.
I have tried, and will keep trying, to pay that forward and be a source of light and comfort for others whenever, however I can. To be a helper.
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
- Fred Rogers
Perhaps that’s why I was so deeply touched when I came across the emotional reel Ben West shared following the responses he received from launching reasonstostay.co.uk in memory of his brother who took his own life in his teens. The concept is simple, people can submit a letter that will be randomly shown to someone going on that website looking for a reason to stay alive.
In a time where many of us feel so deeply alone and divided, it felt like a beautiful reminder there’s still so much love to be found, and shared. So find that love for yourself. And share it. Then find and share some more!
2. Creative friends of mine creating wonderful things you should check out 😉
Just as I deeply appreciate encouragement and shares of my own artistic adventures, I also love getting to cheerlead those of the creative wizards I’ve had the pleasure of befriending. Here are 3 I’d like to highlight this week:
Lilit (Lilo) Danielyan (therapeutic photographer & videographer extraordinaire) and her partner, Jonny Abbey (brilliant lofi musician) have just launched a human-made lofi music label: Cat Cafe Records. If you or someone you know makes (non ai generated) lofi music, you can submit your creations to them. If, like me, you simply enjoy some comforting lofi music, then check out their playlists and Instagram!
Another brilliant artist in my little ecosystem with exciting news is Lianne Nerissa Allegra Ho (website / Instagram). Nerissa and I met back in our early uni days in Canada (so… 20-ish years ago!?) and it’s been really cool seeing her shift her focus from psychology to architecture and fashion to painting and have her first solo show in Hong Kong “Landscapes through the Diasporic Eye” which explores ‘the mass proliferation of diaspora in face of globalization’s dynamic forces [and] asks specifically how landscape paintings can be re-envisioned through an East-West, Chinese-Canadian diasporic lens.’ HOW COOL IS THAT?! If you’re in or near HK (or know someone who is), definitely stay tuned for what Nerissa will be up to next.
I’m a big fan of poetry and have been savoring slowing working my way through Lara Coley’s debut collection ex traction. It’s so viscerally poignant and sensual. The way she weaves words into magic through the complex lens of love and relationships. Here’s a tiny taste:
3. Lovingly curated roundup of inspiring resources
📖 TO READ 📖
To learn about why Friday the 13th is considered a sacred day in the Sacred Feminine tradition, check out this article by Sarah Jenks. Did you know 13 is a sacred number rather than an unlucky one, given that there are 13 moon cycles in a year and people who bleed, bleed 13 times in a year?
My client and friend Morganne just released an insight-filled article & video on ‘Navigating Romance in Post-Colonialism: Finding Love When the World Is Unsteady’.
For a poetry collection inspired by the goddess of love herself featuring plenty of art too (photography, illustrations, paintings), I recommend checking out Aphrodite made me do it by Trista Mateer. I bought it on impulse because of the stunning cover but it’s such a cool work of art. It’s what I’d want my poetry collection to look like should I ever publish one.
🎧 TO LISTEN 🎧
🥰🥰🥰 Emma & Audrey from The Joy Studio HQ also just published the interview we did together for their podcast. Listen to it here.
For a fascinating discussion about relationships including how our expectations of marriage have evolved, I loved this podcast interview between Jameela Jamil and psychotherapist Esther Perel (who also has a Substack and a podcast of her own btw).
🎬 TO WATCH 🎬
I’ve mentioned Advaya’s free webinars before but, in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, I wanted to should out their most recent one: “A Conversation on Love in a Time of Fracture” (check it out here) featuring Satish Kumar, Dr. Andreas Weber, and Dr. Margaret Wheatley. Some of the topics they cover: how love is ‘a relational force that shapes how we live with each other and the Earth’, as well as a political and practical act. Tenderness and vulnerability as forms of socio ecological intelligence. Why connection is ‘a radical and necessary practice in the age of AI and fragmentation’.
For a shorter watch, I really liked this reel from neuroscientist Rachel Barr with 3 tips to ‘stay sane in an insane world’ (→ seek out good news to balance out the bad, take small actions to help counterbalance ‘learned helplessness’, create/enjoy art).
If you’re one of the rare people who haven’t watched Bad Bunny’s Superbowl half-time show, I definitely recommend watching it! You can enjoy it on multiple levels, from the catchy tunes, to the showmanship, to (my favorite part) the multiple layers of symbolism embedded in it. Like the Puerto Rican flag (which used to be illegal to display or even own!). Also loved reading Danté Stewart’s analysis about it.
4. Two love-filled invitations for this weekend
The 1st is more introspective, the 2nd more playful. Feel free to try them both, or pick the one you think would nurture your soul most right now.
😌 Practice a loving-kindness meditation
Also known as a Metta meditation, this is a simple yet powerful “Buddhist practice for cultivating compassion for ourselves and others through directing loving, friendly phrases and goodwill” (via Lion’s Roar). It often starts with sending ourselves loving kindness, then to loved ones, then to all beings, with intentions such as:
"May I be safe, may I be happy, may I be healthy, may I live with ease."
"May you be safe, may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you live with ease."
"May all beings be safe, may they be happy, may they be healthy, may they live with ease."
I particularly like Sharon Salzberg’s loving kindness guided meditations like this one on YouTube or the audio one at the end of this Lion’s Roar article.
If you’re willing to take on an extra challenge, you can also practice sending loving kindness to someone who has caused you harm/pain/sorrow (directly or not, intentionally or not). Or to someone you may not know personally but find it particularly hard to feel positively towards. I’ll be honest with you, I’ve done it a couple times and it was HARD. Dare I say brutal. Yet also one of the most powerful meditative experiences I’ve ever had. Tears were shed, and an opening within me widened, in a very healing way.
📝 20 things you love (or used to love) to do
This practice comes from week 2 of The Artist’s Way:
Make a list of 20 things you love to do. Or 20 things you used to love to do as a kid. Don’t overthink it, just write whatever ideas pop into your head.
Then write the last time you did them next to each one.
Reflect on what you uncover from that, then pick 1 or 2 of those things to do this weekend (or next week/later this month).
When I did this, I was stunned by how long it had been since I’d last painted, gone on a mini roadtrip, or simply people watched in a café. It can be a great way to find ideas to show yourself some well deserved self-love.
💖
Wishing you a lovely, wonder-filled weekend!
See you next Friday,
~ Claire
ps: I’m still making daily Februllage collages over on Instagram, @clairematzart, if you want to see the latest ones.