My new favourite practice

With thanks to Elizabeth Gilbert

A desk with a view: One of my favourite writing spots

Anyone who’s been hanging out on Substack for a while is likely to have encountered

Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert

, where she inspires people to write to themselves from their wisest, kindest voice.

I followed for a while as a lurker, intuitively knowing that this would be a great practice for me, while somehow hoping to absorb it via osmosis, without actually taking out my notebook and pen. Perhaps my brain was just getting deeply familiar with how it’s done, expanding my love vocabulary, and revelling in the novelty and audacity of a woman talking to and about herself in such unequivocally glowing terms – in public.

The prompt to take my curiosity to the next level came after an online workshop from Kripalu, where I cried for an hour listening to Liz speak the deepest longings of my heart aloud. I can’t recall when I’d ever felt so seen.

She spoke the truth of how we are all seeking deep love, acceptance, and belonging. How we’ve been sold the myth that we will find it in romantic relationships, and how this sets us up for a lifetime of disappointment, as our very human and flawed mates can only fail to live up to the enormity of our longing.

It struck me deeply in that moment – while we may find many things in romantic love or friendship, from companionship and connection, to laughter, fun, and challenge, we will likely never find that which we most deeply desire – a love that is pure, constant, all-knowing, and unconditional. A love that is always rooted on our side and will never leave us until the moment we depart this earth (and beyond).

This kind of love is hard to find in human form. This kind of love needs to be sourced from elsewhere. For this, we need to look to the realm of Self and Spirit.

It explains a lot about why our romantic relationships so often fail. And why, even when they succeed, they can be laced with struggle, discontent, and disappointment.

It got me curious. Can we learn to meet ourselves so deeply that these longings don’t need to be delivered to another’s door? So deeply that the disappointments of real-life flesh-and-blood relationships lose their magnitude? Because we are resourced from within? Because we are already enough?

These questions and realisations coincided with a period of struggle. A period where I hit a wall in my energy, my mood, and my health. A period I recognised from the past as a point that could mark the beginning of a downward vortex. The stars aligned to give me the push I needed to try out this practice of writing to myself from the voice of love.

For anyone unfamiliar with the practice, you can hear Liz explain it in more detail here. But in simple terms, the practice is to ask the question ‘Dear Love, what would you have me know today?’ and to write the response from the voice of unconditional love. It should begin with a term of endearment (such as ‘My dear one’ ‘Little one’ ‘sweetheart’ or any pet name that fits), and then essentially your overly analytical thinking mind steps aside and allows the words to come through that you’ve always longed to hear someone say.

I began this as a daily practice about a month ago. This is what I have discovered.

Firstly, Love has a lot to say.

I started the practice with no idea what would come through – would the voice of love even show up at all? Would it feel awkward and fake? Would it morph into the finger-wagging inner critic and her long list of shoulds?

It didn’t.

The voice of love, as it turned out was, well, loving. She was soft and tender, wise and compassionate. She was funny and relatable, and she got me. She met me in a moment of struggle and saw me in a way that no one else does. She knew me inside out, the best and worst of me, and saw the good in me regardless.

She sounded a lot like the therapist voice that comes through when I sit in the armchair opposite someone who’s in pain and struggling and wondering if they are failing at life, or if it is just them who can’t figure it out.

I started to picture placing my struggling parts into the other chair and channelling the magic that can occur in the therapy room into my notebook, offering this compassionate witnessing to myself.

The voice of love started writing and she didn’t want to stop. No matter the day, no matter the situation, no matter the dilemma, she had endless patience and warmth towards what I was experiencing.

And as I wrote each day, the world became softer.

The struggles did not dissolve, the pain in my life did not disappear, but I felt more able to meet it, to handle it, to take one tentative step after another. To trust that it would pass, that I didn’t have to solve it. That I was being held by something larger. That I was not alone.

I carried this practice with me into my days as a feeling of expansiveness through my body, a feeling of lightness in my step, a sense of being able to breathe more freely, a bubble that cocooned me as I wandered through the world.

And, as you can probably tell, I’ve become a little evangelical about it. Many of my therapy clients are going away with this as a homework task. It’s not always easy, sometimes we need some guidance to help find that place, but it’s a worthwhile quest.

This practice is not unique to Liz Gilbert. It’s a practice known as two-way prayer in 12-step programmes, and in the language of Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems, it is the practice of talking to your struggling parts from the voice of Self.

From my perspective as a trauma therapist, it is generating a safe and secure attachment experience that helps shift our nervous system towards a calm ventral vagal state. We are practicing self-soothing and re-regulating through moments of intensity. We are learning to re-parent ourselves.

I’m sure it has other incarnations too. There are elements of inner child work, self-compassion, and Mettā (loving-kindness), and it’s a way of connecting to the universal life source (or the divine, or God) if you conceptualise it in that way.

It doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s a powerful practice. It’s a way to access the medicine I believe we need, to survive the pain and aloneness we experience on this human journey. It’s an act of self-care, meditation, and prayer, all rolled into one.

I’m putting this practice in my pocket to carry with me and share with others. Perhaps you will consider joining me?

If this practice speaks to you, I thoroughly recommend subscribing to

Elizabeth Gilbert

’s Substack community for support and inspiration. And I’d love to hear about your experiences if you’ve tried it yourself. Or do you have a similar practice that carries you through hard times? Feel free to share in the comments, I always love hearing your thoughts.

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