Releasing Love to Create – Reflections on Finding Our Authentic Voices

I learned since childhood to measure my words very carefully and curate my behaviors to fit into places that would consider me outside the norm. And for most of my life, it has helped me navigate my career, social circles, and even dynamics within my family. But it’s also left me feeling unfulfilled with a sense of unrealized potential still trapped within, and so two years ago, I decided to start writing to express a more unleashed version of myself.

I started with this desire to share some deeper realizations through a series of essays but was struggling the whole time to “find my authentic voice”. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, I started writing poetry in what felt like divine inspiration. I have no personal history with poetry against which to judge my experience, no academic standards I feel compelled to conform to, and no expectations of market success, so when poems emerged, they felt like receiving gifts of potent truths meant to be shared freely.

With prose, however, I do have a professional history of writing, mostly in the form of speeches and presentations, specifically about empowerment, leadership, and systemic change. So, when I tried writing essays from the place of being a leadership coach, it felt performative and tethered to the polished persona I had built over decades. I also tried writing vulnerable memoir-like letters about my personal journey, focusing on introspective reckoning and healing trauma, but while sincere, these writings felt tangential, circling around what I was called to express and who I was meant to reach.

My extensive spiritual studies and practices have profoundly inspired and informed other parts of my work, but I have only partially disclosed the extent of my exploration even to those in my inner circle. So, when I took the leap to try writing from a place of being a spiritual explorer, it appeared disjointed from the rest of my life as a mimicry of authors and teachers whom I admired. While I understand I bring my own flavor to these concepts, it also felt somewhat too esoteric to be useful to the people in my circles of influence, who tend to be highly active, socially conscious, service-oriented leaders.

As I look back on these two years, a part of me could consider all these attempts at writing essays wasted efforts, but I choose to see it differently. The desire to write was part of a bigger process of unraveling social conditioning, limiting beliefs, and false perceptions once deemed to define me. The desire to write was, and continues to be, a dance of vulnerable intimacy with the unknown that exists between what was and what wants to be. The desire to write is an ongoing experiment of learning how to authentically be in service to greater unity, as reflected in my poem Releasing Love to Create.

Releasing Love to Create

Purpose, ensnared by unworthiness
Morphs love into endless hunger
Fed by transient felt significance in this world

Passion, entangled by shame
Sedates love into lethargy
Prolonged by numbing the pain of separation

Effort provoked by unworthiness or shame
Eventually withers, collapses or destroys
Failure blamed at self or circumstance

Purpose, released from unworthiness
Frees love to serve openly
Guided by a deeper trust in this life

Passion, released from shame
Liberates love to create joyfully
Infused by intimacy with the divine

Movement guided by trust and intimacy
Ripples healing at depths unfathomable
Imprints celebrated across realms unseen

-Tejal Tarro

Through this wild process of liberating love, I have realized that I was asking myself the wrong question all along. The question in writing is not how to find my authentic voice, but rather how do I use all the magic I can possibly conjure at this intersection of social, self and spiritual, to inspire us to find our authentic voices together, to catalyze a collective liberating power that is free of conditioning, deeply soul affirming and leads from a place of greater love.

I sense that we are being called to a more evolved way of leading in this world.  The conditioned ways we have been operating entraps us in pendulums of fear-driven reactivity causing extreme polarity.   Even when as leaders, our intentions are seemingly benevolent and may help in some way, the longer-term results of subtly operating from fear cause unintentional harm to ourselves and potentially others.  The more we can operate from a place that is integrated and attuned to what I call divine love, the more intentional impact we can make to liberate us all.

While it may seem odd and maybe even disconcerting to talk about leadership, love, and the divine together, I believe this is exactly where we need to focus to lead sustainably from a higher consciousness.  I have been blessed over the years to work with amazing heart-centered leaders, such as you, who understand the importance and the nuanced challenge of operating from this place consistently; leaders who are taking risks to create more opportunity and access, change toxic cultures, deepen belonging, and protect the planet.  I have such reverence for you, and a longing for you to thrive personally as you make a positive impact in this world.

This writing is the start of my commitment to share, with sincere compassion and humility, insights through artistic expression that may ignite your own questioning of beliefs or spark your own authentic voice to emerge more powerfully.  I am inviting you to come with me, as my beloved friend, on this journey of unraveling conditioning, dancing with the unknown, and experimenting with creativity to see what new possibilities of leading from divine love we can manifest together in our world.