Double tap to set that intention too. Or share this post on your stories to REALLY claim it 😳😍

Grief is like a near-death experience. Your loss takes a part of yourself with it. A part of you dies as well.⁣ ⁣ I, along with a large chunk of the collective, am navigating through the loss and consequent grief from all that began unfolding in 2020. ⁣ ⁣ Loss of extended family members. Loss of a job. Loss of identity. Loss of stability in my life. Loss of parts of myself that, for better or worse, I had gotten used to. Parts of myself that, for better or worse, were MINE. ⁣ ⁣ Healing is grieving. And I’m still healing.⁣ ⁣ That’s the good news.⁣ ⁣ We grieve because we love. We love because it’s our natural state of being. ⁣ ⁣ So when we lose someone or something we love, it leaves us with SO MUCH more love still left to give. So much more left to express. To say. To feel. ⁣ ⁣ At the center of grief is the powerful desire to continue to love. ⁣ ⁣ Grief is love with nowhere else to go. So healing will require us to tend to that need & give our love a direction. A purpose. ⁣ ⁣ These days, as I heal, I’m more conscious and intentional about where I pour all of that love that is currently flowing within me. ⁣ ⁣ I know that loss is not the end of love. And I know I cannot try to be the person that I was before the loss; that there’s a new me being born from all of this. And, in this sacred state, I’m accountable for tending to that birth.⁣ ⁣ I’m actually so looking forward to meeting him. Daily. ⁣ Grief is like a near death experience. And a new birth too. ⁣ ⁣ ❤️‍🩹 I’m holding a workshop on October 2nd/3rd on how we can transmute pain into purpose and grief into healing. You can check out the details in the link in my bio to sign up. ⁣ ⁣ I’m fortunate to have a strong support system of friends and professionals that have been holding space for me through this transformation. But I know that there’s many out there who could use a little support. ⁣ ⁣ Keep going. We can honor our pain AND still move forward. ⁣ ⁣ Snuggles, ⁣ Jova

A simple yet powerful gentle reminder. Now drop your shoulders. Unclench your jaw. Deep breath in. And out. Your next step will require you to listen to your heart. You got this. You always have. 🦬🪶

—Open letter No. 74 to my inner child— Sooner or later you will notice that, however much you try, you cannot bypass your authentic self; You cannot bypass your heart, the core of your emotional body. You’ll grow up seeing others try to think their way out of uncomfortable (painful) situations. And, not knowing any better, you will begin to model their behavior. You will tell yourself useless things like, “Fake it til you make it!"— thinking that you’ll speed up the process. 🌻 In fact, you actually delay the healing by trying to speed up the process. And worse, you’ll be subconsciously programming yourself to believe that your feelings, intuition & inner world are not important — to yourself 💔 Don’t bother, baby love. 🌻 You don’t think your way out — you feel your way out. I get it, sometimes you’ll want to do anything to just "move on" and be productive/useful OUT THERE in the world. But moving on will sometimes look like GOING IN and validating your authentic self. And being useful & productive will sometimes look like being accepting of WHO you are and WHERE you are at various moments in your life. 🌻 Don’t be in such a rush to bypass painful moments that you may keep miracles from happening. It's an act of self-compassion to allow yourself to be. Just as much as it is for me to write these words so that they may reach you across space and time. We’re in this together for the rest of our lives, baby love. Know that I'm here for whenever you need someone to hold the space for you to breathe. Forever yours, Jova P.S. That mesmerizing flower on the ground that you randomly saw at a wedding and made you run in awe just to get a closer look? Keep doing that.

Someone out there needed this gentle reminder today 🌱

Let’s normalize taking care of ourselves; self love is not selfish💥 Let’s get rid of the idea that in order to take care of others, we have to sacrifice our own well-being. I know, I know, it's counter-intuitive to everything we've been taught (ahem, shamed about) - we've been shamed into thinking that caring for ourselves is narcissistic, that it makes us self-centered and unlovable 🙄 And here we are: a generation raised to be empathetic without boundaries, which has only led us into self-abandonment. We’re now plagued with mental and emotional pain (often self inflicted) because we never got taught how to sustainably source love for ourselves. Gentle reminder: Empathy without boundaries can turn into self-abandonment. You deserve your own time and attention too. Let’s normalize not feeling guilty for loving ourselves and meeting our own needs. No, it is not selfish to make sure you’re doing okay first. Whether you choose to show up in service of others or not, the energy you’re showing up with is proportional to how much you’ve been showing up for yourself. 🌻🤝 Jova a.k.a. El Chapo del Amor

EPISODE 1: AN INSIDE JOB You can’t expect to grow if you don’t expect to grieve. There’s old versions of yourself that cannot take you to where you really want to go. Versions that you have to let go of in order to make space for something new; New ways of thinking. New ways of feeling. New ways of showing up. It is hard work: perhaps the toughest job you’ll ever get to do. Requires you to get your hands dirty. But it’s worth it. A garden of wounds can very well turn into a garden of blessings. Remember, you don’t have to beat your younger versions up in order to do better. A tender hold will do ❤️

So… I’ve given full creative direction of my Instagram account to my inner child 🤝 And this is what came out 🤣 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ El Chapo del Amor (The Chapo of Love) will be a mini-series of reels documenting the rise of the Self Love Cartel. SLC is an organization that smuggles kindness, compassion and acceptance (among other extremely valuable substances) between the borders of fear and love. Getting high on your own supply is the only way to expand this movement. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ I grew up in Mexico inundated with Telenovelas (soap operas) every evening—their cheesy drama plots and cringey titles were too good for my parents to miss an episode 😂. So when someone recently mentioned on my story that I looked like a cartel lord that smuggled kindness and then another person commented “Chapo del Amor” on my most recent reel, something deeply clicked within me 😂 Let’s see where this goes. I’m genuinely letting my inner child have fun with this one. I call upon my inner child whenever I want to consciously practice self love: Sometimes we get caught up in outdated patterns and paradigms of who we think we are or who we “should” be—I’ve recently fallen into that trap. It’s a place where creativity wilts and our ego begins to experience anxiety in the little box we’ve inadvertently put ourselves in. Whenever this happens for me, I connect with my inner child - that part of myself that is a boundless force of love and creativity. That part that innately knows how to extract joy out of a moment. And let me tell you, it’s a force to reckon with. Connecting with our inner child is a powerful self-loving practice. It’s a way of healing too, especially if we’ve forgotten what if feels like to see the world through the pure eyes of childhood. ⭐️ I’ll be leading a Self Love Online Workshop later this month and you bet I’ll be talking about the inner child and how to connect with it. More details on that to follow. For now, stay tuned for the first episode of “El Chapo del Amor” (such a cheesy title and my inner child absolutely loves it!)

Can we start embracing the cringey parts of ourselves more? *** I can’t possibly smuggle across the world the tons of love that I’ve been cultivating, so I need an army. If this message resonates with you and you want to join my Cartel, I’m putting together a Self Love Workshop soon to teach you how to get high on your own supply 😏 *** We waste so much energy resisting the parts of ourselves that make us unique. We try so hard to shame those parts away that we end up shaming ourselves and, in the process, disconnect from our soul’s authentic expression. What if instead of cringing at those parts we begin loving them; owning them; accepting them? What’s the worst that could happen? Let’s invest more energy in welcoming them, making space for them and — ultimately — making peace with our whole Self. 🌻 There are parts inside of you that are screaming for your love, not your dismissal. Tbh that voice of dismissal & judgement is not even yours 👀 It’s time to let go of that voice so that you may welcome ALL OF YOU ❤️ Type in the comments of this post “I’m ready to start loving myself unconditionally.” Even if you don’t actually comment it, just type it - and see how that sentence FEELS through your nervous system. Try it. All the love, Don Jova Kingpin, Self-Love Cartel

And constant self abandonment leads to burnout. Careful with how & when you give your energy. You deserve your own time and attention too, baby love 🌱

You don’t have to go through all this suffering to be worthy of love. You don’t have to punish yourself either to be worthy of your own forgiveness. This isn’t to say that love doesn’t require action. This is to say that the action of love is not a transaction. Transactions are conditional. Love isn’t. Love is not the finish line or a prize at the end of a journey. Love is the starting line. 🦬🫀 These are just some notes to self that I’ve been digesting for some months now as I unlearn some generational “lessons” that have turned into liabilities in my life. Maybe someone out there needs to hear this today as well. Stay safe everyone ✌🏽 Jova

I don't know what's been more difficult: calming the mind to total stillness or activating the body to full throttle. But between CALMNESS & SAVAGERY I've discovered RANGE. Range of feeling. Range of being. The freedom to know that I can depend at any moment on my mind to go inward and translate my emotions - the language of the soul. And the freedom to know I can depend on my body to go outward and handle the business that comes with, well, having a body in the world and being a citizen with a tax ID 😂 But more importantly what I've found in the midst of all this range that keeps expanding, is enough healthy space to let my wild heart out to roam 🦬🫀(this sentence need only make sense to me) But that’s the gift that comes with expanding our range: the freedom it gives the heart to reveal its own wisdom to us. I'm curious - what do you think creates more resistance in the human animal: calming the mind to complete stillness or activating the body into full, committed action? 🤔