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Gabriel Gonsalves is a Heart Leadership & Mastery Coach, spiritual teacher, and artist dedicated to helping people awaken their hearts, live authentically, and lead with purpose and joy.
Dear Reader, This week, I received a very meaningful gift from Mary Flynn in our Heart Mastery community in Ireland: two books by the Irish poet-philosopher John O’Donohue. As I held them, a familiar warmth stirred within me, like remembering a long-forgotten friend. For those unfamiliar, O’Donohue’s work explores friendship, beauty, and belonging. He writes beautifully of the anam cara—the “soul friend.” This is the person before whom your mask drops, and you are met exactly as you are. In...
This week, I found myself scrolling through old photos—a digital archaeology of friendships past. There I was at university, arms draped around people whose names I’ve forgotten. Wedding photos with couples I haven’t spoken to in years. Group shots from film sets in LA, beach gatherings in South Africa, dinner parties in Caracas—a trail of connections that once felt essential, now dissolved into polite social media likes. The ache surprised me. Not grief, but a quieter wondering about why...
Dear Reader, The Camino has a way of telling the truth without words. Step after step, it has shown me the difference between the pain life brings and the suffering I was adding on top—most of it woven from my own regret. I learned this the hard way after my sister died. The pain asked for presence. The suffering asked for release. On the trail, with long hours to listen, I began to put down what wasn’t mine to carry. By the time I reached Finisterre, the true end of the Camino, I felt light...