When I wrote what you’ll read below
It was the middle of last week
And the depth of what was happening
Was not yet clear
And as I went to post it somewhere else last Friday
I judged myself
Thinking it wasn’t appropriate to the time
And yet for quite a while I’ve been learning
To trust where Life is steering me
And last week Life
Filled me up with inspiration, meaning and energy as I wrote these words
I swam in the knowledge
That one of the things we can control in this life
Is what we value
Acting like the sort of people we want to be
—No matter what is happening
Not because it’s expected of us by society
Or how we “should” act
But because these ways of being are meaningful to us
We freely choose them
It’s as simple as that
And a lot of the time
Our pain starkly illuminates
What’s most meaningful in Life
As you’ll see as you read on
Sending much love and good energy to you ❤️🥰✨
~~~~
In my pain I discovered how I want to act in a relationship and what I want to embody
Being willing to dig deep into this wild and fertile territory tested the limits of how strongly I can hold myself
And writing about it allows me to continue to {know myself ever more intimately}
As not just one bygone relationship served as inspiration
They all came together to offer the gifts buried inside the ruptures
....And right now my mind is wondering whether your mind will judge me for writing about too many lovers—or too few 😊
No matter...
~~
I met a man when I was 23, right after losing my father
As I look back now, he was young and people-pleasing, rigidly rule-following, and he fiercely avoided deep feelings—which I realize was exactly like me at the time
What emerged from this union
Was the utter necessity of deep
{Surrender and Acceptance}
To move through painful experiences
Using the pain to come more and more {Alive}, conscious and connected
To be real and {Authentic}
Saying the truth—no matter how painful it might be—with the utmost {Compassion}, in an ongoing way
Connecting deeper and deeper on all levels instead of oftentimes tipsy co-mingling and surface talk
In experiencing this relationship, I also learned that there’s a Masculine energetic part of me that desires freedom and a Feminine energetic part of me that desires love and connection, and my deep desire is
{To honor both the Masculine and Feminine in me} ☯️
—To love intensely, without getting swallowed up and losing mySelf
~~
In aftermath of the next, and most challenging relationship with a man I’ve been in
I straight up realized how desperately I needed {Boundaries} above all else
To {Communicate cleanly}
And to stand up for myself with {Assertiveness}
Instead of giving up and
Giving in to
Financial and bodily demands
With no true sense of meaning or {Deep Connection}
Feeling into what my true desire is
Speaking it and holding it,
Not caving because it was easier
and because I was afraid to lose his love
The power and possibility were there and were overwhelming
And we just didn’t know what it took to
go deep and real
And what I realize profoundly
Is that {Friendship} was not the basis of the relationship,
and so a partnership imbued with {Empowerment} had little chance of being born
~~
And then there was a man who worked with his hands
And used his whole body to interact with the world
I surprised myself at how I
Met and matched his {Passion}, fire—and arrogance
In the wake of that merging,
I learned that men weren’t the enemy
And that I wanted (to be) someone who could {finely tune into the moment with their whole being}
And fiercely {own their Desire}
And that I wanted to act with {Kindness} in a relationship above all else
instead of knee-jerk explosive reactions
~~
And then
I was with a man who
felt like a true match in so many ways
And yet
I hid from him
Quite frankly
I was
Awestruck by the depth of feeling and power that we generated together
And I was not yet able to stand in that energy
To reveal myself fully to him
And to {Open in boundless Love, feeling and truth}
I wasn’t able to be fully present with how he could penetrate me body, mind and spirit
I couldn’t yet stand in who I am, unflinchingly
So I shrank and hid
Falling into old patterns of coasting, unconsciousness and resultant boredom
Unwilling to look at old wounds that were
Surfacing
Unbidden
Begging to be held and moved through
In hiding the depths of my truth
I wasn’t yet able to unleash the magnitude of my being and Love
And so I thereby kindled the desires to
Grasp the hand of {Courage}
in order to be
in-the-moment {Present},
To be {Vulnerable} and {Authentic}
And to reap the ultimate gift of
{Connection}
~~
And then there was
A man who’s
Deep presence and feeling
Amplified my own
Getting higher and higher on the energy we created together
Getting stronger in being able to hold
And move through
What was so poignantly getting stirred up
In the stew that we created together
From our passion and pain
A man who had huge desire
And hadn’t yet grown into the kind of person who could hold it all
And I judged him harshly as not taking care of himself
And then I came to the deep place where I saw that he—just like each of those other men in certain ways—was my mirror
And in my evaluation that this particular man couldn’t take care of himself
Had me admit that I couldn’t take care of myself either
And so I began learning ever deeper how to take care of myself on *all* levels—emotional, physical, sexual, financial and Spiritual
And the value of {taking care of myself} that emerged from that beautiful relationship comes together with all the other valued gems I’ve gathered on the trail
To inform and guide how I want to act in a relationship
Letting them call out to me like bright, bold, beautiful beacons on the journey
And as they keep me on the path that’s true for me
I feel utter gratitude to have met each of these men, who co-created these {desired ways of being and acting} with me 🙏🏻✨❤️
Photo credit: Tristan Woods