The Aftershock

Dear wild-hearted wanderer,

When I pressed “send” on my last letter, I knew it was a risk. Not because I wanted to be provocative for its own sake, but because I knew Charlie Kirk is a controversial figure. I’ve always been drawn to people who polarise, because I refuse to see only the caricature. If you've been a part of my world for awhile you'll remember my Elon Musk and Prince Harry obsession.

I see their design, their life force, their differentiation — and I try to honour that. But I also see their shadow side and perhaps I failed to express it with more clarity in my last letter. You could say this is both the blessing and shortcoming in my own design. I see the possibility of their design rather than their shortfalls. And I hone in on it.

But sending that letter was not easy. I felt that risk in my body, very viscerally, especially in my open Solar Plexus. Conflict, confrontation, the fear of being misunderstood is something that doesn't come easily for me. In fact, I've avoided it for most of my life. Face to face confrontations commonly send me to freeze so I often nod and smile and move on.

I know what it costs to silence myself, and I chose not to do it this time. And I thank each one of you who reached out and expressed your truth. I'd like to think we trust each other enough to embrace growth through discomfort.

Trust, to me, means something unconditional. The kind of trust that says: I may disagree with you, I may challenge your views, but I will not hate you. I will stand by love. I will listen. I will hear you out. If my letter made some feel that trust isn’t possible, perhaps it was only ever a projection waiting to crack. As painful as it is to acknowledge it I'm also open to self-reflection and seeing where I may have been misleading you to think otherwise.

Speaking my truth means speaking from conviction and also from vulnerability. It means offering my truth even when I know it will be confronting — and trusting that it might invite you to confront something in yourself, just as your response invites me to confront something in mine. Every activation teaches me more about my own nervous system capacity and where I perhaps hide behind a mask still. It's a lifelong process to unravel from the trauma of being told my body is not worthy.

But that’s what meeting difference means to me: not collapsing into each other’s truths, but holding open conversation without dehumanising each other. Meeting each other with curiosity not hostility. Noticing the activation in the body and inviting it to be part of the interaction.

I see the hurt Charlie’s rhetoric caused for some. I also wonder how much of that is mediated through sound bites and headlines. How many of the people who celebrated his death have taken the time to listen to him in full debates, in long-form conversations, where he invited disagreement into the room?

I hope we can all strive to look beyond headlines and sound bites — even when what we find challenges us. That’s what openness asks of us. To me, that is also where openness and compassion must be extended: not only toward those we already agree with, but toward those who confront us.

Embodiment and differentiation in action to me means not shying away from disagreements. If my last letter activated you, I invite you to sit with it as I've sat with mine. I know for me activation holds wisdom. A new threshold, a comfortable edge that is ready to be expanded.

There will always be those who leave. I don’t hold that against them, though the part of me that feels hurt and unseen right now does wonder what brought them here in the first place. Who did they perceive me to be? Did I deceive them in some way? Could I have been more truthful and direct?

But maybe that’s the point: conviction polarises and projections crack. What remains is truth, and the kind of trust that can withstand it.

Sending you a deep and nourishing breath.

Love always,

Silvia