This email was ready to go. I simply forgot to press send. I call it the bridge of incidents.
Bad things are not bad things. Delays are not problems. They are part of the bridge that carries you to where you were always going. And in the days it sat there, unsent, one of you wrote to me, and said, almost word for word, the very thing I was about to tell you.
Let me read it to you first:
"I hardly need convincing. In my family, I am the first generation who doesn't grow my own food, quite possibly only the second generation taking antibiotics instead of garlic. I am a great believer in living with nature, only it's hard to find in this modern world. Now that I've reached the age of awakening as a woman, there is this sudden need and desire to cleanse, to get rid of all the modern chemicals, to get rid of the shell that doesn't fit me anymore. And it's been so fortunate to find you — you truly spoke my language!"
She spoke mine.
Her words stayed with me. So here is my answer to her and to you.
Can You Talk to Dead People?
Wait, wait, wait wait! Don’t go. You know me. I’m not going to scare you.
So, I was sitting in a park, building Earth to You. Laptop open, fully in my mission, while everyone around me was lying in the sun, doing nothing, having fun. And I was determined to do both. Because I’m always telling you to live in sync with the seasons, in tune with nature — so I thought, if I’m going to work, I’ll work outside. My intuition said: go out, work from the park, let your body see the sun.
So I worked. I finished what I came to do.
And then I felt tired. Of course, the old part of me said: “Hey Ezgi, you can do more, squeeze a little more out of yourself,” and I am a passionate human being. This is a lifelong mission. I am ready to squeeze more work out of myself always.
And then I thought. Ezgi, what do you do with your phone at the end of the day, when the battery dies? You plug the thing in. That's how the thing works. It's not a gift. The battery is dead; it won't work. So I stood up to plug my own battery. I was walking in the park barefoot. A thought arrived.
I want to look at pictures. I’m a very visual person. If something is going to charge my battery, it's either music or colours, designs, shapes, or figures. I said I want a big book, large pages, beautiful images, with just a little bit of text beside each one telling me what I am looking at.
I walked into the little bookshop beside the park and ran my eyes along the shelves. Interior design, hmm, no, not objects. Fashion, hiimmm, not clothes, still objects. They are not alive. And then one book just… looked back at me. She was staring at me. A book of Marilyn Monroe, made by a photographer who had been close to her. I picked it up and paid my fifty pounds, carried it back to my spot in the park, and opened it.
And here’s the thing: I know nothing about Marilyn Monroe. Nothing. I’ve never watched a single one of her films. Most of you have probably seen one or two. I haven’t seen any. I had no idea who she was.
But I’m always drawn to people’s inner worlds. Their minds, their feelings, who they really are underneath. So I read. And the more I read, the more stunned I became.
Here was a woman the whole world adored. And underneath, someone enormously sensitive, an empath, deeply loving, who never spoke about her pain to anyone. “I don't want to be a burden,” she kept saying. Surrounded by people who adored her, yet she said nothing when she was struggling. She was into religions, spirituality, hungry for knowledge, always learning.
She said she had three friends. One of them was the photographer who made this very book; he walked beside her through her life. The other two were a husband and wife with their children. She loved babysitting those kids. And she said: They are my friends because they don’t want anything from me. Sitting there in the sun, I felt as if I’d been called to buy this book to carry a message to you.
Listen.
The outside is a reflection of the inside. If you build beauty by force, on the surface, from the outside in, and you are adored, valued for that surface, then you will be surrounded by people who came for the surface. People who want something from you. Not you. You will be lonely as hell.
Not wanting to burden anyone really means: I don’t feel worthy of being listened to. Forcing beauty means I won't be loved as I am. None of her partners ever understood her individuality, the book says. They kept trying to change her into something else.
Now turn it the other way.
When beauty is not forced, when it simply rises through you because your body is in its own balance, because your skin is finally doing what it was always designed to do, and when you are no longer anxious about being chosen for how you look, the outside changes.
You become surrounded by people who are whole. People who stay for who you are. Not for your face. Not for your status. Not for the fancy surface. This is the whole of my hope for you.
I want to help your largest organ, "your skin" function the way it’s meant to. We are not forcing your skin into looking a certain way. Just regulated. Balanced. Allowed. And from that balance, beauty rises on its own. Inside out. You won’t have to manufacture any of it.
And here is the gift of achieving beauty like that. Inside out: even when that natural no-makeup beauty comes, it will not define you. Because you’ll already know you were never your face to begin with. And knowing that, you’ll find yourself surrounded by the people who were really there for you all along.
Whom, you can say, “I am sad, I am tired, I am angry, I feel hopeless”, and you will be listened to. Heck, they might even ask, "How are you? You don't look ok. Tell me." What a gift would that be? I am excited for you. The body makes beauty when it is in balance.
Don’t paint the leaf. Don’t smudge the retinol, the acid. Don't book a surgical procedure for the leaf: “microneedling, derma-planing, Botox.” Tend to the soil.
We all want to be loved unconditionally. And if you choose balance for your skin to create natural beauty for you, that's a bonus, not a requirement for the love you deserve. Plug yourself in.
And you really can talk to dead people. Watch the documentary "Calling Earth by Dan Drasin. I tried, when you lose someone you loved more than yourself, you do everything to hear from them again. Thank you, Mom, for saying a few words for me. You know what she said after I asked, "Mom, what would you do if you came back here on Earth again?
She said in Turkish: Yerim, icerim, gezerim," which is an expression that says I would eat, I would drink, I would travel." I would enjoy my life.
May you be loved without condition. Never for your face. Just for who you are.
with all my love,
Ezgi
Ezgi