Why you’ll never receive love where you are looking for it.

“I love you!”

I used to dream of hearing these words from a specific person.

I thought that him saying it will take care of everything else: my worry about where he stands on our relationship, my sense of self, my fears about the future.

And then, finally, after some time and lots of hints and nudges, this man wrote me a letter which included – in fuchsia letters on white paper – these most coveted words: I. LOVE. YOU…

And I did not feel any different.

And that shocked me.

All the same fears and worries were still there. I found that I had a hard time believing his message, or trusting that I could take it into the future.

We all want to know that we are loved.

From childhood we developed strategies to impact others so that we can assure their positive regard on us.

We bring these love-earning patterns into our adult relationships, by pleasing, manipulating, fixing, controlling – basically to get love from others while we abandon ourselves.

And that self-abandonment is responsible for our inability to feel love.

Because love is not something we can get from others.

These words we seek from outside represent a feeling that we cannot get or earn or force or manipulate out of anyone.

These words stand for an emotional state, but also a physical one – our own.

In fact, it is a state of alignment: of mind, body and spirit.

When we try to earn love, we are constricted, bracing. We hold our breath, expecting rejection, but hoping for love.

Love cannot be experienced in a scared and braced body.

Love can be felt when the body starts relaxing.

When we are no longer in hyper-vigilant protective bracing, all the frozen unprocessed emotion from the past starts melting, our senses start to thaw, we start breathing deeper, we unclench the jaw, we soften the belly.

Our life force resumes flow through our being.

That affects our thoughts. As our physiology and thoughts change, so do our stories.

We may become overwhelmed by all the emotion and this is when many tend to shut down or dissociate again.

That is why we keep looking for love outside, ready to step over ourselves and breach our own boundaries.

Love is available always through relaxation, flow, alignment and choice.

Love is also not person specific.

Love is not anything anyone can give us.

Whenever you feel that emotion you call love – that is you connecting to your own divinity.

And it takes shedding layers and layers of limiting beliefs, conditioned thoughts and our own inner mechanisms of constriction and self-rejection to get there.

Safe to Be Me retreat finished yesterday, but I carry the feeling in me still. I know it will nourish me for a long time.

That feeling was love.

We all got access to it and shared it.

The beauty and humanity of the participants, the sun, the soft humid warmth, the white sand and green salty sea, the comfortable bed and the aesthetically pleasing surroundings, the raw truth spoken and received, the ceremonies, the story-telling, the insights, the compassion, the shared embraces, tears and laughter…

Every ingredient was there for each one of us to unlock the love within. No matter how protected it may have been kept for decades.

Six days of pure magic.

I am still processing all that happened and will write more about it in the weeks to come.

But it has given me so much clarity about how important this work is – accessing love from within so we can share it with others.

And how needed it is – now more than ever.

Warmly,
Galina

​PS: The next Safe to Be Me in person Retreat will be held in the same place in Mexico next October. I will finalize the dates and details in the coming weeks. If you’d like to be sure to receive more information, please express your interest HERE.

PPS: After 1,5 years of pause, I will be offering again my Safe to Be Me 6-month online program in January of 2026.

This will be an updated curriculum to include all the new information on somatics, unshaming and nervous system regulation. Details coming soon. (If you have taken the program a few years ago and would like to benefit from a refresher, you will have a special discount.) Anyone interested in participating or receiving more information, please go HERE.