Consuelo Intro
As we grow beyond our innocence, as we encounter the world’s affects on people around us, at any age, we tend to react with self doubt. At some point, the act of loving and being loved doesn’t seem powerful enough to protect us from pain and we turn inwardly and doubt gets rooted.
If only we had something to remind us how loved we are by others. If only we had something that would remind us of our innate idiosyncrasies, those strengths and frailties that someone found adorable and loved us for it. If only we had something in writing. If only we had those love notes.
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HOLA CHICAS!
I am Consuelo Crosby – born with both sides of my brain fighting for attention.. structural engineer & creative, mother & mentor, center of any spontaneous fiesta if I’ve had my morning latte… I give it all to being a 1st generation Peruvian badass chica!
So grateful you’re here today, wanting to shed that armor, relax into your truth, your value… pick up your salsa step, tune out what’s getting to you and be lifted from goddesses in generations past that taught us to live life large and out loud… cuz we’re not blending in…
LIFE LNXX… knowledge you didn’t even know you had TO BE THE BADASS CHICA YOU WERE BORN TO BE!
{Episode 6}
Newsletter from San Miguel de Allende
Hola Chicas!
Checking in with you half way through your week, believing that you are blazing through whatever is in front of you and sending out some overdue love and cheers for just being you. These weekly episodes are making time go faster so I wanted to slow it down a bit, have you sit in the calm that you can carve from your full life and just breathe. Take a moment to pause and remind yourself that you are a kind and intelligent person who probably does so much for others and now would be a good time to just do for yourself.
If you missed listening in on last week’s podcast, I put out a reminder to sign up for our newsletter on our website, at lifelnxx.com, that’s L-N-Double X, because it is going to be a very special one. Our Newsletter is being sent from San Miguel de Allende in Mexico! A gorgeous, colorful town with at over 6000 feet elevation on a desert plane. The buildings are all different colors and nestled against a mountainside so the views over the town are just epic. The newsletter will be filled with pictures of the culture and food there and I will do my best to translate the love into words.
You see, Latins definitely are great at loving others first, They have so much sincerity and joy. There is just something to the love of life that comes from every person. They are quick to smile and have so much gratitude to a higher power for being given another day in this world, even with all its struggles. Of course, the cuisine may be a great catalyst for this joy and I can’t wait to dive into the regional dishes and bevvies there. I am not prone to the Mezcal. Hey! But when in Rome! Or Mexico! Salud y viva!
So sign up on our website and get my digital postcard!
Love is the term for almost everything we experience in our lives
This isn’t a vacation though… the adventure to San Miguel is to witness my daughter marrying the man she trusts to cradle her heart for a lifetime together. Just like so many other couples, they have endured the stress of the pandemic and all the unexpected sadness it brought with it. And now, with much faith and commitment, they are finally, and cautiously, sharing this beautiful moment in the sun, surrounded by the dedicated friends that are determined to get there and support them, even in this unknown moment. It’s all about love.
Love is such a powerful word whether it’s in expression, in action, in sentiment and excitement. It’s depth is insane because we devotedly love our partners and dearly love our parents and children without whom life is poignant and hard. But we also looooove a lively fiesta and we LOVE an icy bevvie on a warm beach on turquoise water. Yeah, love is a very broad term for almost everything we experience in our lives.
Thankfully, in today’s world, we are also emphasizing love of self. We can only love others authentically by loving ourselves first, with all our quirkiness and beauty to gift out to the world out loud. Remember all those joyous moments of thrill and happiness, when things are going your way and we are just living life. We love everything about us, from our look and style to our strength and ambitions.
It tends to get tricky when the rest of the world chimes in with negativity or challenge. We can hold our own for a long time, but having a chronic day in and day out stressor can begin to whittle away at you and begins to make you turn inwardly. Once you are looking in at yourself, then all the little things come into focus and add to this gnawing that is happening from the outside world. It’s a natural tendency but not a good habit and remember, you start doing something over and over again for 30 days, that becomes a habit.
That’s a habit we definitely need to avoid; picking ourselves apart for every little thing. Instead, let’s go to self-love. Self-love can get ramped back up just by reciting expressions of gratitude for even the most simplest beauty in our life. You know, this, I’m not telling you anything new, Just want to put it out there as today’s emphasis.
Deep inside us we rely on all the beauty in our lives, and we know we have gratitude because we keep moving forward but sometimes, when things get tough, we need to bring the gratitude to the surface. We forget that because there is this whole big world, that wilderness, that gets to have a say about us and there is only one of us to hold tight and brave the storm.
Authentic Connection – We Are Not Alone
Or is there only one of us? When we bring the gratitude to the surface, did it remind you of anybody? Was it someone from your inner sanctum or just passerby on the street? I have immediate joy when walking in my community and a stranger will still look me in the eye and say “Hey. Hi!”. I feel connected to humanity in an instant. It’s the catalyst to have me return the greeting and remember the power of connection, something we have been severely lacking in this world, even before the pandemic. Authentic connection.
But in our lifetime, hopefully, in moments of authentic connection, we have had someone write us a love note or a love letter, a stream of conscious from the heart that is dedicated to no one else but us, the individual, and in that moment we are loved. Those words spill over us like a tropical waterfall of warmth and embrace. They speak only of us, of all the pieces that are treasured by the admirer and it helps us remember how beautiful we really are. These letters, these expressions from the heart, these you keep forever because you will need them, and you will need them more than once.
I hear you thinking… Which ones do you have stashed away? The one from the first person beyond your family that had the courage to write it down? Or one from your mother that you hold dear because she may not be here with you now? Or the girlfriend who just gets you and will never let you forget how badass you really are? It could have been scrawled on a bar napkin or crafted over days with just the right paper and sentiment and all the ones strewn across a floor somewhere because they weren’t good enough to send you.
You may not remember what was happening at the time the notes were written, but thankfully you have them to remind you of your tribe, the persons out in the world and heavens who saw you in true form. The people who wanted you to stay visible and living life out loud, who hoped their words would light you up, feel empowered and loved to face all the challenges and joys that you would wander through and if you were whole, then it would be like gas to a flame. Brilliance, that’s what you bring to the world, brilliance.
True Self Attracts Exactly What We Want
This is why we present our true selves outwardly, to attract the people who love us for who we really are. We will be loved exactly for all the little parts of us that we tuck away in an attempt to have everyone like us. That is so unnecessary!
That’s like scraping the bottom of the ocean floor with a huge net when all you really want is that special fish, like a bluefin tuna. You haul all this sea life onto your boat, more than your hold can handle, and you begin rummaging through all of it in search of the one. For each one that doesn’t match what we want, we have to take the time and energy to throw it back because we can’t keep it all with us. It will sink us.
What you need to realize is that one fish, the one that you really want, that Bluefin Tuna, it’s a line catch. One single pole with a line thrown out to attract it to the one thing it’s interested in. Yes, it’s a lot of work and it takes patience and faith, but it’s still better than hauling all that weight onboard and needing to spend so much time tossing it back!
In this digital age, people may not be writing love notes anymore, not out of disbelief in their power but rather out of convenience. It’s easier to send a text. Relationships are ended over a text. Also ridiculous but maybe a sign of how non-committal a person was to begin with. And it’s so easy to erase a text as though it never happened, which could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the content. I don’t even erase my texts because I want to always remember the jokes, the moments and the pics. These days that’s more of a paper trail than actual paper!
But there are plenty of people that still believe in writing love notes. They believe in the power of love and letting someone else know they are loved. It’s the base of our humanity and our best response to the struggles and evils in this world. Think of world leaders who have pushed back against hatred with patience and love. Ghandi… Martin Luther King, Jr…. Nelson Mandela. Not only is love the base of our humanity, it is the expression of humanity itself.
Even Kindergartners Write Love Notes
Thankfully, my daughters had the most amazing Kindergarten teacher. From day one, she taught us, the parents, to write a love not to our children everyday and put it in their snack bag. She had the foresight to catch us parents early and train us, not just our children, in case we were negligent already in expressing ourselves with gratitude and joy. Judy is brilliant, far beyond the Kindergarten teachings, in realizing that, by 35 or 40, most people had forgotten or taken for granted how to express appreciation and encouragement to others. She was literally putting us back on training wheels for love, figuring that the easiest way to remind us was to direct it to our little idyllic 5 year olds.
We are born with love, innocence and freedom to express openly and spontaneously. Again, we come hard wired with our strengths and frailties. We remember our silly selves, our free selves and we tend to assign that as our childish self that has matured and no longer exists. And yet, how often do you reflect back on that fearless girl who believed she could be anything she wanted to be without limitations. We admire her, want to relive that part of life again when things were ”easy” and carefree.
Do you think she was so carefree out of being childish? Or that life was easy because she didn’t know how to do anything but love and be loved? If anything, she should have be frightened beyond soothing for not knowing a thing about the world or how she fit into it. Our innocent self should have been afraid to leave her room, her house, to make friends, to learn any knew ideas… all the things that were unknown to her should have left her crying about how difficult life was. But, instead, she was unabashed, courageous and happy out in the unknown, fueled by loving and allowing to be loved.
Until that moment she suddenly felt unloved, for whatever reason, and began to doubt herself.
Most of us remember the moment more, the day we began to question ourselves in comparison to the people around us. Whether it was the mean kid at school that made fun of your toys, your hair, your shoes or the high schoolers that gleefully shredded on you if it meant they would be left alone.
As we grow beyond our innocence, as we encounter the world’s affects on people around us, at any age, we tend to react with self doubt. At some point, the act of loving and being loved doesn’t seem powerful enough to protect us from pain and we turn inwardly and doubt gets rooted.
If only we had something to remind us how loved we are by others. If only we had something that would remind us of our innate idiosyncrasies, those strengths and frailties that someone found adorable and loved us for it. If only we had something in writing. If only we had those love notes.
The Power of Love Notes
Love notes go far beyond re-instilling our confidence and removing the doubt, layer by layer. They definitely stop the plummeting and give us a foothold to steady ourselves on. We can reread, over and over again, what it is about us that is cherished and take the time to sit in that love, to bring that part of us closer to our surface, into the daylight again. It might be just enough to put a smile on our face, throw worries out the window and run freely into the unknown again.
But love notes are not just of the intimate kind or from someone we would expect to love us, like our parents and partners. Even more powerful, are the love notes that shock us, that make us realize the affect we have on others is that treasured moment they felt compelled to tell us, in writing. These cannot be underestimated and are most assuredly the keepers for life. In these love notes, you hold both the profound emotion and gratitude of someone But also, they are handing you their relief, their stripping of doubt and the ability for them to rise again, all because of you.
That is how much power you hold within you when you live in truth to who you are. Your authenticity is sustainable. You flourish in the characteristics that are innate, the ones so natural that life feels unnatural when these are suppressed or forgotten. At this point, you are living carefree, skipping through life for your own joy rather than to attract others. And in this life of true self, you are unaware of the power you wield to affect others and so give freely, love freely and set yourself ready to be loved in return.
At your darkest moments or most lonely moments, discovering one of these love notes will shock you again, just like the first time. But this time, it will be more like a cardiac shock, something that jolts you back to life, makes you cry in gratitude that someone, at sometime, thanked you for just being you. Because being you, filled them up with truth, dispelled their self-doubt and they wanted you to always remember that power you have. In that dark moment, you have the power to reignite yourself.
I came back to life last year after the devastating loss of my father the year prior. The shock of his passing broke open my heart and suddenly the years old grief of my mother’s death compounded the shock. These two, Jo and Consuelo, who had written love notes to each from literally opposite ends of the earth; he in Saskatchewan, Alaska, she in Arequipa, Peru. Look it up. Google map it. Get a globe. That is literally as far as you can get before you are on the Poles of this planet.
For six months, they were sending their love on the special paper, Air Mail paper, the lightest possible tissue because of the extreme cost to send mail by plane. What a concept, right? And it wasn’t just a plane. It was a sea plane for my dad, every day. For six months, they sent their dedication so the other would hold the letters tightly until they reunited and married.
Sacrificing Career for Care
Anyone experiencing grief may relate to the robotic personae that takes over. The base intelligence that insists you eat and sleep when even these most instinctual actions seem foreign and difficult.
In the depths of sadness from grief of being orphaned and the ugliness that ensued, we had to dismantle the family home. The home Consuelo and Jo had built in the hopes of living out their life, surrounded by family and good times. The home friends flocked to for music and dancing, parties and celebrations. The home that would receive their first grandchild and be their solace for leaving this planet .
I cared for my parents lovingly in their home for 8 years, sacrificing my career in order to make up for the absence of 3 brothers, who were no where to be found. I got my Masters by pulling all-nighters so that each day I could devote myself to all the adventures my parents were trying to cram in as they saw the end of their lives approaching. And yet, there was no way I was going to leave them alone to fend for themselves after all they had created for me and my children.
Believe me, I was no saint. I was frustrated and angry by the assumption in our family and society, that the burden of caring for family is unjustly expected from the women. The more harsh invisible burden is the attitude that women are worthless for anything other than the jobs men consider menial. With that attitude, comes lack of gratitude and appreciation for the sacrifices made by women in order for family and community to survive; without family or community our human world stop existing.
It was in this mindset that I opened a box, filled with papers from my high school years, 35 years ago. I loved recalling the memories because I don’t waste my brain space with that time of my life. I find it funny when people keep referring to their high school years. I almost forget I even went to high school.
Grief Overpowered By a Love Note
As I flipped through casually, clippings of volleyball wins, pics of those epic high school moments when everyone got along, and then, a paper caught my eye. It was typing paper, something I doubt is even made anymore, translucent, textured, tissue-like paper. I pulled it out, glancing at the clean font type, and read: “Merry Christmas, Connie!!”
Yes, Connie. I never said I won that battle of Connie v. Consuelo.
“Merry Christmas, Connie!! Since my writing is so terrible, I decided to type you this little note. I really just want to thank you for being who you are. You’re a wonderful person – don’t ever forget it. If everyone were as nice as you are this world would be much more fun.”
I began blinking back tears from the instant reminder that love does win in the end. That the end game is not who has more money, especially when it’s stolen money, but who has the courage to live their true selves out loud in kindness to make this world “much more fun.”
It went on: “ When you get into one of your ruts, don’t keep putting yourself down. Remember that you are very special and be happy because of it.”
Jeeeez… I felt I had discovered the lost scrolls of an ancient god passing down universal principles to a humble human.
And then the finale: “I’ll finish off with a verse from a Genesis song called ‘Your Own Special Way’. It goes like this:
“You, you have your own special way
Of turning the world so it’s facing
The way, that I’m going, Don’t ever
Don’t ever stop.”
Genesis, a band from the 70’s, the type that would have guys lying on the floor of a dark room with their giant headphones on listening to each pop and crackle of an album on their turntable and letting every word sink into their minds. I always thought at the time that was just a guy thing, but I get it now.
I was so grateful for my friend for his courage to speak his mind out loud, typing it on paper for the day, this day that I would need it so badly. Here it was, 36 years later, and this note that had been tossed in a box of memories, survived the threat of someone’s Marie Kondo moments, gave me my new beginning, my Genesis. The grief of losing my parents, the threat of my brothers, the harsh burden of clearing 60 years of love and memories from my childhood home… all of this could have pushed me down a rabbit hole, left me feeling weak and unable to handle another day.
Instead, this note became my catalyst, the instant connection to my soul that emboldened me to fight for kindness and love, to push back the threat of evil, and to be happy at the realization that I, you, and so many more people have this gift. The ability to love just by walking out the front door, unaware of how many others will feel emboldened by it and renew the goodness.
Tell Someone You Love Them… In Writing
I hope I sent you searching for your love notes from long ago. Take the time to read one, to remember how many people have loved you in these few years and feel gratitude and appreciation for them. Even if you feel wronged by them, let go of the anger and live in the love of that moment. If you lost the love notes from the past, then eagerly look forward to the next one coming. Live freely in the world, the beacon of your true self, so that your continually growing tribe can find their way to you. Instead of sitting silent in the darkness of your safe cocoon, step out into the world and sing your song.
Remember though, you have the power to change lives by doing just the same, sending a spontaneous note to someone that makes you laugh, that sees you, that makes you feel less alone in the world. Send them a note of gratitude, of love for their uniqueness that brings you joy, something they can keep forever, tuck into their treasures and pull out again on a bad day, because you are going to have bad days. Your power of love will forever be here and affect change for someone, even decades from now.
All you need to do is tell them, in writing.
So, be sure to join in next week when I send you all a love note from San Miguel de Allende; a love note, to my daughter, and all the daughters out there, because we are a sisterhood, we are the Double X’s. I will send you a love note from anywhere in the world so you always remember what badass chicas you are and how eternally grateful I am for you and how you affect this world with kindness and love.
Outro
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I really appreciate the time you take to rate and review the podcast. Get the backstory and what you’ve heard here today, and reach out to us at TheLnxx.com. That’s L N double X, because it’s about time, it’’s about us. Stay in the groove on our social media @LifeLinks and get ready to make your move, ladies.
Viva!
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