A Letter to My Daughter
Hello everyone!
I’m feeling joy as I come back to writing again. I’ve had my head down launching and leading the inaugural cohort of Power Awakening – which, by the way, has been a resounding success! I am very excited to share more about it with you all soon. The journey has cracked me open again and again with awe, gratitude and love.
As I step more deeply into living into my soul’s dream, I feel incredibly turned on, engaged and alive. At the same time, I’ve slowly exhausted myself. My familiar ego patterns of overgiving and trying to “do it all” have craftily found their way into this new phase, humbling me once again. I’ve come to appreciate the costs of these patterns (culminating in a gnarly head cold this past week) as an invitation for me to slow down, deepen into new levels of self care, and create luxurious space for ease, pleasure and play. I’ve started giving myself even more permission to hold outcomes loosely, do less, say no, let others lead, and let myself be held. Encouragingly, choosing to release control in those ways has not only nourished me energetically, but has also created even more magical results.
Given the present circumstances of my life, these lessons seem pretty perfectly timed. As some of you already know, Ashley and I have some big news: We are expecting a baby girl in November!
I could not be more thrilled and awestruck by this incredible gift. With the singular exception of guiding my own wild and precious life, the opportunity to support a new soul’s arrival feels like the most sacred and miraculous responsibility I have ever been given. And there seems to be no better time than the present to allow myself to slow down and do less to do more.
To ground myself and prepare for this monumental shift, I decided to write a letter to my daughter. When I tune in to what wisdom I’d want to share with her right now, a single theme emerges:
Perspective is everything. It may be the single most empowering choice you get to make to create the relationship you want to have with all of life.
You are welcome to read the full letter below. Enjoy – and send blessings our way for the safe and empowering arrival of our baby girl!
With love,
Brooks
Dear one,
I could not be more excited to meet you soon, face-to-face. Your slow but steady rise into a central object of my everyday awareness has been quite the ride these past many months. As you’ve grown bigger in your mother’s womb, I’ve felt an increasing sense of anticipation, wonder, excitement, and glee.
It’s as if I am approaching a sizable cliff drop on my skis: I’ve made the commitment to this path and there’s no going back. In a matter of moments, when the time comes to jump over the edge, the world is going to blur around me and things will change very quickly. There are nervous butterflies in my belly and I am SO excited, confident and resolute in my choice. I anticipate immense joy and satisfaction ahead, and lovingly accept the possibility of getting knocked off my feet. My task is to breathe, pace myself just right, stay focused, be responsive, love and trust.
Your measured and dramatic entrance into my world has already taught me so much. I fully expect to be your student more often than your teacher in the many magical years I hope we get to share together.
In this moment though, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to share with you a single piece of wisdom that has changed my life. May you grapple and wrestle with it on your own journey, in your own way, like the free spirit you are born to be. And may that process open your heart, free your mind, awaken your body, and unleash the full gifts of your soul into this world.
The wisdom I would like to share with you is this:
Perspective is everything. You get to choose to create your own relationship with life.
If there is one thing you learn from me, my love, let it be this: How you choose to see and relate to the world and your life will make an incredibly profound impact on your experience of reality.
For example, you can go out into nature with the perspective that, while beautiful, all the life and earth around you are unconscious objects or primitive beings, devoid of the sentient intelligence and relational capability that make you human. That, my dear, will create one type of experience.
Alternatively, you can wander onto the land with the understanding that, in the words of a favorite guide of mine, “it’s not a wasteland – it’s a metropolis!” You can open yourself to the perspective that you are surrounded, at all times, by a vast population of beings who are aware and alive, who feel and think like you do, and who are open and available to be in conscious relationship with you. Perhaps, if you’re lucky, they might even share some wisdom that could alter the very course of your life. This second perspective – take my word for it – will create an entirely different experience.
As far as I can tell, this same wisdom of the power of our perspective and the choice to be in conscious relationship with life applies just about everywhere. It applies in our relationship with food. With energy (in both a secular and spiritual sense). With our material possessions. With sacraments and sacred plant medicines. With ideas. Of course, with other people. And perhaps most especially, with yourself – your emotions, needs, and desires. Your body, your essence, and your true nature.
It also applies to our relationship with life as a whole, by which I mean our relationship with life force energy, or in other words, with the divine. The perspective you choose to take and the relationship you choose to create with Mother Earth, the spirits, the ancestors, the cardinal directions, the divinity in yourself and every other living being, and the unfolding Great Mystery of the cosmos will fundamentally influence the course of your life.
Every single possible choice is on the table. You get to play the game however you want! This includes the belief that you don’t actually have a choice and “things just are the way they are.” In my opinion, that particular perspective is an unconscious choice to avoid facing the fear of your own power to choose and create.
One of the most valuable things I learned from my teachers at the Conscious Leadership Group is the power of choosing the perspective that life happens “for us” instead of “to us.” Baby girl, though my heart breaks with the thought, I have no doubt you will encounter moments where it feels like the deck couldn’t possibly be stacked more against you. It’s such a natural and normal element of the human experience to feel like it’s you against the world. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with that perspective. My hope is to empower you with the knowing that you get to choose – and it does not have to feel that way.
When you are feeling down, first see if you can accept yourself for being scared. Choose a perspective of self-compassion, and open your heart to yourself for having a human experience. Then, from a place of wonder and curiosity, ask: How might the opposite of my stories be true? What if all these circumstances and people that are driving me up the wall are actually my allies, here for my greatest learning and awakening? What if all of this is happening for me?
I can’t prove to you that the world is your ally. But I’ll tell you this: choosing to apply self-love, get curious and try on that perspective has revolutionized my life for the better. I’ve seen it do the same for countless others. I find it to be a pathway back into my own personal sense of empowerment, agency, and creativity. And I notice when I’m in that perspective, I learn faster, suffer less, and enjoy more. Way, way more.
So here’s to you finding your own way into conscious, allied, vibrant and alive relationship with all of life, my dear one.
I honor the divine essence within you. I honor your power to choose and your capacity to create exactly the life that you want.
I hope in some small way, I might support you well on that journey.
Whatever happens, I expect being in relationship with you and learning from you to be one of the greatest joys of my life. My heart aches with anticipation.
In the beautiful words of Paul Simon:
I’m gonna watch you shine
Gonna watch you grow
Gonna paint a sign
So you’ll always know
As long as one and one is two
There could never be a father loved his daughter more than I love you.
See you soon…!