The Beginnings of My Spiritual Instagram Account

Loves,

I get asked a lot about the beginnings of my Instagram account @lealovewriter.

I actually started my account . . . for me. I needed to be uplifted.

I added my close friends, and posted photos I took around my neighborhood out in the countryside – walks with my dogs, swims in the lake, my garden in bloom, chopping wood or building a fire. Simple moments that grounded me.

Life felt challenging. I was on and off writing a memoir that was bringing up a ton of trauma. Trauma too fresh to face. It was not cathartic. It was hurting my heart. My soul. There were times where I’d put it away for a year. Around that same period, my marriage of almost two decades, that I’d built my life around, was starting to unravel and I didn’t know if I could knit us back together again. I felt untethered, alone and lonely, and I didn’t know how to anchor myself.

In those painful stretches, I was grasping at every spiritual book, by every spiritual teacher that I could get my hands on – Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer, Michael Beckwith, Matt Haig, Mark Nepo, Michael Singer, Anita Moorjani, Tosha Silver, B.K.S. Iyengar, Sonia Choquette, Cheryl Richardson, Don Miguel Ruiz, Paulo Coelho.

My soul needed direction. My soul needed love.

While reading these spiritual texts, lines would pop out at me and grab my attention. It was like the perfect book, with the perfect line, came to me at the perfect time. They felt so good!

I began taking the images from my walks – the morning sun (oh how I love sunlight!) a path through the forest, or open fields stretching to the mountains – and overlay them with text from the latest quote that blew my mind. It became my morning ritual. A simple act of beauty and kindness for myself.

One day I decided to open my account to the public. What if sharing these quotes helped someone out there that was hurting just like me? What if I could create connection with an online community? What if I could spread a little light?

I don’t know how the algorithms work, but suddenly, people from all over the world started following me. They were from Australia, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, India, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Iceland, Philippines, France, Denmark, South Africa . . . the list of countries was long! My heart was full with this spark of love.

Every morning I would diligently create a post from something beautiful I’d read or seen, and every morning new souls would appear – kind, open, and vulnerable. Messages arrived from strangers who weren’t strangers for long. Some of those connections, born in shared honesty and hope, have lasted for years!

This all began as something small. A way to heal myself. But what I discovered was the simple truth, that when we share our light, even just a flicker, it finds its way toward others.

A trillion thank yous to YOU!