Love letters from the universe.

Let go of everything not of service.

Here’s the audio version of this post if you’d prefer, or need, to listen to me read it aloud.

I'm convinced the universe is writing me love notes.

Today it was a bumper sticker on the back of car window backdropped by blue sky with wispy white clouds. The words, I LOVE CC were written in bold typeset.

Image description: A picture of a blue sky with white clouds, and a white car with a bumper sticker that reads I HEART CC.

I love you too, dear, even if your love of late has felt like the loud reprimanding of a toddler whose just about to put their hands somewhere they shouldn’t be. Brazen in tone but laced with fear and love in equal measure. The hard yanking of my hands away from my life has followed suit the last few weeks. Like the universe has held my face in her hands and said, “Don’t go that way. Go this way,” then kicked me up the butt as I stumbled in a totally new direction.

And in some wild way I feel like I asked for all of it.

A few weeks ago, I was in Bali with my best friend. Eight days of relaxation and soul nourishing rest and recovery. Days filled with love and calm and alignment, which are rare in my day-to-day. I have a full life. A busy life. Part by the design of being a freelancing artist, part by being a chaotic, neurodiverse, big feeling goblin who thrives in surprise, delight and in-the-moment-whimsy. Rest doesn’t come easy to me, even though I’ve been working hard on rectifying this these last few years. So, to be on a holiday with no plans and with the person who makes me feel the safest and most myself in the whole wide world it was, as it turns out, a recipe for magic. You see because while I was in Bali every prayer I muttered, every meditation I enjoyed, every tapping session, every intention set, the content of my journaling and moment of relaxation had the same longing embedded in it…

I want to let go of everything not of service.

Now, friends what I naively thought I would like to let go of was my tendency to people please, or the cortisol bloat in my face from a very stressful 2023, or my reluctance to say no when I’m already busy. What I was not prepared for was total upheaval of my present relationship, my past marriage, my home, work and health.

It’s been like the universe has swept in with the force of a Queer Eye surprise and post mortem of my normal. Like, suddenly the energy of five beautiful queers were pilfering through my life pulling out bits and pieces, holding them up and saying, "Really? This? You're happy with this? We won’t allow it. Start moisturising.”

The decks have been cleared in core rattling ways. Ways that I would have bet against ever unravelling the way I have. The Claire eight weeks ago would’ve boldly bet money on the people I had in my life never, ever behaving the way they have, or saying the things they have. But this Claire knows different now. This Claire that sits here typing right now is wide-eyed in disbelief and amusement and rage and profound healing. It’s as though the universe has orchestrated all of it to remind me that so very little is certain. And that people will surprise you in both brilliant and brutal ways, and that is a certainty.

The other certainty I’ve learnt is that complacency will kick your arse every time.

Complacency is the worst trait to have, are you crazy? Adele sang to me this week one night as I drive home, a song I’ve listened to a lot but never actually heard this lyric. There’s a difference between hearing and listening, you know?

The grit in all of this that will metastasise into a pearl one day is something around complacency that's enmeshed with the minimisation of my needs for the sake of others, which is then wrapped up in the pondering i’ve been doing about discomfort and disappointment. Some kind of pearly complacent, uncomfortable, disappointing sandwich.

I minimise myself because I don’t want others to be uncomfortable or disappointed, so, I’ll endure my own discomfort and disappointment over there’s. And when I really ponder that, really read that sentence back and compost it in my body it sends warning alarms that are vicious and loud.  

What the fuck are you doing?

I’ve learnt in the last few weeks that my go-to safety strategy is to fawn. My ex dropped a bomb and then responded to its detonation in a way so rattling and discombobulating that I lost my footing. I fawned. This fawning state lasted for about two weeks until their actions once again rattled me so deeply that the undeniable truth of it shook me out of it.

What the fuck have you been doing?

I was keeping myself safe, and I do not begrudge my nervous system that reaction. What a brilliant response well learnt and practiced over forty years. In relationships, and in relation to the bigger institutional failings that teach us over and over again to behave, stay small, stay in our lane and to never ever rock the boat. But, this is bullshit it’s my fucking boat. And I can do whatever the fuck I please in my boat.

I read this on Jen Hatmakers Instagram this morning…

“Our life’s work is to reject the message that these capitalistic, patricidal systems have conspired to craft. They have a vested interest in keeping us at war with ourselves. If we hate how we look, they own us. If we hate what we want, they dominate us. If we hate what we crave, they control us.

Let the whole rotten ship sink. It was never going to get you to shore, darlings.”  

Let’s start rowing, and rocking, our own fucking boats, baby. Merrily, merrily.

We don't say or do the things we know are right because it feels uncomfortable and we don't know how to sit in that feeling.

We don't like to say the true things because we don't like to disappoint others.

Now what I’m pondering and choosing is discomfort and disappointment. I’m choosing myself. I’m choosing my peace. What I’ve learnt is peace comes from the Jenga blocked alignment of getting quiet, listening to your own intuition, trusting it, and then acting from that place. And if that makes me and others uncomfortable, so be it. If that disappoints others, then so be it. Because I’d rather that then sit in the discomfort of not trusting myself, and disappointing myself again.

The universe is sending me love notes.

In the form of bumper stickers, the noticing of blue skies, the out-of-the-blue text messages I’ve been sent letting me know I’m on someone’s mind, through lyrics, the ease of flow in solving the things that felt like such enormous problems a few weeks ago like, where I’m going to live, and who with, and how I’m going to replace the work I lost, or the heath scares not being scary at all but reminders to care for this brilliant human body of mine.

She is loving me hard.

She is standing on the bridge in the pouring rain at the end of the movie declaring her love so unabashedly for me and reminding me that the greatest love story of my life is the one I have with myself…and in turn with her.

She’s telling me that I deserve and honour this love by saying and doing what feels good and real and right and true. Even if that means disappointing everyone else. Even if that means it will be fucking uncomfortable.

Because you know what's more uncomfortable? Complacency.

Let’s not be complacent, darlings, let’s write love letters back to ourselves and to her.

So much freaking love.

Love Claire.

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Pearler is written and created on the unceded lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people here in Meanjin, and I pay my deep respect to First Nation Elders past and present. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.

I don’t believe I can wholeheartedly support sovereignty of this land I live, love and work on without acknowledging the liberation of Palestine and honoring the impacts of colonisation of Indigenous people everywhere else.