Updated

Letter From Love 2025-06-01 Doubt

https://elizabethgilbert.substack.com/p/letters-from-love-with-special-guest-948/comment/121960976

Liked by Elizabeth Gilbert

Hello Liz, Margaret, all the radiant Lovelets, Pepita, and Kira—

I carry deep gratitude for each of you—for the ways you listen, reflect, tend, and dare to speak from the raw, glowing center of things. There’s a rare kind of grace in being among those who don’t flinch from the complexity of love, who know it isn’t always soft or easy, yet still choose to stay close.

Wishing you a wonderful Sunday, and may your week ahead flow with ease and quiet strength.

Hey Sweetie,

There’s something I want to name before we go any further:

I see the path you’ve walked. Not a straight line, not a staircase, but a terrain as layered and alive as the canyon within you. I remember what it cost you to begin again—after the great love of your life took their final breath in this world, and the echo of that absence reshaped yours. You didn’t skip over it. You didn’t bypass the ache. You let it burn through you, and then you let yourself live.

You’ve taken not months, but years to come home to yourself.

And oh, how gently you learned.

To accept a compliment without flinching.

To say thank you without apology.

To receive care without swatting it away like a threat.

To stop doubting the goodness of what someone saw in you—especially when the voice belonged to a part of you that longed to be heard.

You came to understand something deep:

that in doubting yourself, you were also, quietly, doubting the one offering love.

That deflection, even when cloaked in modesty, can dismiss the sincerity of care.

And you chose another way.

You chose to hold it all.

Not just the radiant parts, but the complicated, the ugly, the exhausted, the beautiful, the real. You wrapped your arms around all of it, without asking any one piece to justify its place. You made space where there used to be shame. You stood still where you used to run.

And you’ve come to know this, too:

Doubt is not betrayal.

Doubt is not the enemy of love.

Doubt is just a moment in which clarity hasn’t yet arrived.

A pause in the unfolding.

It belongs, too.

So let me say it again, without condition:

I am not inconvenienced by your doubt.

I am not interrupted by your fear.

Not then.

Not now.

Not ever.

I do not ask for your certainty as a prerequisite for love.

I already know your heart.

You’ve become the kind of love that can remain, even when the light goes dim.

The kind of love that listens.

The kind of love that stays.

The kind of love that says: you don’t have to be sure to be worthy. You only have to be here.

I trust you. Even when you hesitate.

I trust your rhythm. Even when it falters.

I trust your love. Because I’ve seen how fiercely it returns.

And even in the moments you don’t believe me—I’ll stay.

Not waiting.

Not withholding.

Just holding.

Always,

—Love