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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, I'm sending you this weekly update from the town of Monchique, Portugal, where I'm attending a music retreat for facilitators and ceremonial leaders. The retreat focuses on healing the parts of ourselves that keep us from expressing ourselves fully and authentically. We've just completed the first two days, and it's already been deeply transformative. The work we're doing is based on IFS (Internal Family Systems), a therapeutic framework for understanding, embracing, and...
Have you ever caught yourself doing this? You say you want intimacy, yet the moment someone gets close enough to truly see you—to witness your fears, your wounds, your unpolished edges—you find ways to push them away. You become critical. You get “busy.” You convince yourself they’re not quite right. Or maybe you simply shut down, your body going cold even as your heart aches for connection. If you recognize this pattern, I need you to hear something: you’re not broken. You’re not incapable...
Dear Reader, Earlier this week, my brother sent me an old photograph. A family portrait during a cruise in the Caribbean when I was about nine. We're all smiling at the camera. I'm the little guy in the back, just my head visible, hiding behind everyone else. Back then, that feeling of loneliness and being invisible, even when surrounded by family, felt like a punishment. A curse. Something broken that desperately needed to be fixed. So I tried to fill that void with achievements, endless...