Letter 28: You Are Not Alone - Healing in the Garden of Relationships

“A person is a person through other persons.”
— Ubuntu proverb

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Dear Future Human,

Beneath many of our deepest stories lies the same fear: I am alone. It may show up as “I am unlovable,” “I don’t exist,” ”I am not worthy,” and countless other versions. This fear has emerged in the modern world, as we became more disconnected from one another and from the rhythms of the natural world.

You’re not alone! Each one of us carries some variation of this fear. The only difference is how it manifests—different histories, families, cultures, and roles.

We are Nature.

We are part of an ecosystem, much like plants in a garden—we are shaped by everything around us. A rosebush does not decide its shape in isolation; it grows according to the soil, the sun, the weather, the neighboring plants, and the gardener’s care or neglect. This is how you developed too, through constant interactions with everything around you.

We are an ecosystem within an ecosystem.¹

This interconnection is biological. Everything within you, your gut microbiome, your nervous system, your hormones and your immune system, is responding to the world around you

From the moment you were born, you have been shaped in the context of relationships. Your nervous system learned how to be safe through your interactions with parents, siblings, peers, and teachers. Your defenses, your automatic reactions, your sense of self—all were wired through experience with other people. You learned to adapt in different ways. Sometimes you tried to please. Sometimes you pushed yourself to achieve. Sometimes you just protected yourself. That’s how the Fraudulent Self formed, in response to environments that were unable to meet you as you are.

Neuroscience shows that we regulate our emotions together. Our nervous system is constantly picking up signals from the people around us. Emotions are contagious. When we experience calmness or steadiness from another, we tend to relax. When we feel fear or judgment, we tense up and protect ourselves. In 1992, Giacomo Rizzolatti’s groundbreaking discovery of mirror neurons provided the neurological basis for empathy. These neurons fire both when we perform an action and when we observe someone else performing it. They explain why we “catch” emotions from others.²

Our nervous system developed for connection. Psychiatrist John Bowlby, the founder of attachment theory, demonstrated that human beings are biologically wired to seek safety and regulation through close relationships—and that our earliest relational experiences shape how safe or alone the world feels to us.³

Neuroscientist Stephen Porges calls this “neuroception”—the unconscious detection of safety or danger through social cues.⁴ Your nervous system is always scanning other nervous systems.

And because these patterns were developed in the context of relationships, they can only be changed in relationships.⁵

Over the years, I began to see that if I wanted to interrupt in a person’s negative loops and self-sabotaging habits, I couldn’t just work with the person’s psyche. I needed to address their environment and conditions in which their nervous system had learned how to survive.

I realized that if our defensive behaviors developed in the context of “I am all alone,” then healing would require a different experience: a living “garden” of human beings. A container of support, mutual accountability, and loving presence—that would continually remind each person: You are not alone. You matter. You belong.

D.W. Winnicott showed that when the environment cannot reliably hold a child’s emotional reality, a false self forms to manage the world—while the true self retreats to safety. Healing, he argued, does not come from insight alone, but from creating a safe environment where the true self no longer has to hide.⁶

Transformation requires a new environment.

Consider the butterfly. Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar doesn’t gradually improve—it liquefies. Its entire body dissolves into what scientists call “imaginal soup.” There is no caterpillar anymore, no form, just potential. There is total dissolution.⁷

The chrysalis is what makes this possible. Without that container, the liquefied essence would simply spill out and die. The caterpillar cannot become a butterfly in the open air. It needs constraint to transform.

You are no different. Your Fraudulent Self was built in relationship, through years of adapting to how others responded to you. That is why it cannot be undone through insight or willpower alone. It needs to feel safe to loosen and relax in context of relationships, to be held within a container strong enough to catch you when what you believe is your identity begins to disintegrate.⁸

The butterfly is already inside the caterpillar, waiting for the right conditions to emerge. Your authentic self works the same way; it emerges when conditions allow.

That realization led me to create a community committed to supporting and helping each other feel safe enough to grow past our fears—let go of our fraudulent self and connect with our unique Signal that points us home. I called it Leap Forward.

It is an environment where vulnerability is met with acceptance rather than weakness. Where not knowing is not something to be ashamed of or hide but embraced. Where your authentic self is valued simply because it exists.

In this space, we practice being emotional mentors for one another—listening with empathy, curiosity, and care. We stay present and attentive, ask thoughtful questions, and support each other in finding our own way forward. When someone shares a difficult emotion, we meet it with openness and respect, offering permission and space for the feeling to unfold.

Mistakes are not treated as failures but as part of how learning actually occurs. Needs matter and asking for help is invited. Patterns are interrupted with care. Truth-telling and transparency are essential ingredients for building trust and cohesion. Interdependence is not something we just talk about, it is practiced and felt.

In this container, patterns are revealed in real time, in the context of real relationships—where they were first developed, and where they are now can be consciously experienced. As each member shares with transparency and vulnerability, everyone can begin to see the automatic loops that control their thinking, feeling, and reacting, making visible the universality of our conditioning.

The practice is often challenging as resistance emerges, both from the ego and from the natural defensiveness of the nervous system. It is easier to see these patterns in others than in ourselves. Seeing them together, we become more receptive.

With ongoing exposure and practice, we create new experiences: of safety, of being received, of being challenged with care, and of belonging without performing.

We create a space where we heal with and through each other, in an ecosystem that supports our birthright of belonging and connection.

To heal, you will need to create a similar environment for yourself—you cannot do this deep work alone. Isolation is what created the wound in the first place.

In the letters ahead, you are going to learn specific practices: how to pause mid-pattern, how to witness your reactions, how to feel what you have been avoiding, how to map your defenses. These practices are essential building blocks for real and lasting change.

Later, after you have tried these practices for yourself, I’ll show you how community works, the specific structures and methods that make transformation sustainable. But first, you need to understand how your system operates and why change is so hard.

This work requires courage and fortitude. We need to carry each other.

With you,

Ronit

P.S. As you read this letter, you may feel frustrated, thinking, “I don’t have a community like this.” Most people don’t. We’ll address that directly in a future letter. For now, simply recognize that healing was never meant to be solitary.

1. Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc, “Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory,” Simply Psychology, May 6, 2025.

2. Giacomo Rizzolatti and Laila Craighero, “The Mirror-Neuron System,” Annual Review of Neuroscience, 2004.

3. John Bowlby, “Attachment and Loss: Volume 1: Attachment,” Hogarth Press, Ch. 1-3, 1969.

4. Stephen W. Porges, “Neuroception: A Subconscious System for Detecting Threats and Safety,” Zero to Three, May 2004.

5. H. Hwang and D.Han, “The Brain and Relationships Dance Together to Sculpt Who We Are,” Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, September 30, 2025.

6. Donald W. Winnicott, “Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self,” The Collected Works of D.W. Winnicot, Ch. 22, International Universities Press, 1965.

7. Ferris Jabr, “How Does a Caterpillar Turn into a Butterfly?,” Scientific American, August 10, 2012.

8. Saul McLeod, PhD, “Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development,” Simply Psychology, October 16, 2025.

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