Where Everything Shines as it Disappears

Want the change.
Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines
as it disappears.
Rilke

I haven't written in a long while for a couple of reasons.

The first is that my relationship with Daddy became emotionally complicated in some troubling ways and I found myself both afraid of writing vulnerably where he could see my process and too raw to share what I was experiencing. As vulnerable as I am capable of being here, I don't show you everything. I haven't shown anyone everything in regards to my experience with Daddy, it's just so deep and raw and confusing.

Our relationship ended last week and I am still sorting and processing my feelings about everything that transpired. I'm pretty certain there will be future posts that address what I have learned about myself as a submissive and emotional masochist, as well as my mission in vulnerability and healthy D/s dynamics. I have been writing, I just haven't been publishing, and now I desire to filter those posts through my current perspective.

The other intimate relationships that I was nurturing all ended as well, for various reasons. I am working through experiences of rejection, misunderstanding, disappointment and other tricky relationship territory. Now I don't have any intimate relationships at all, although opportunities for sexual intimacy with friends have arisen, so that I can at least get those needs met if I desire. Experiencing the end of so many relationships in such a short period of time has been hard on my heart. It's difficult for me to write in the midst of the heartache. I usually write after I've turned the heartache into something meaningful and beautiful. I'm still in the process of making it all beautiful.

The other reason I haven't been writing is that life threw me a curveball and my big plans to move to the Bay Area and create the life of my dreams have been put on hold for another two years. I made this decision for the best interest of my daughter, which is a relatively easy sacrifice to make since I believe raising emotionally healthy children is the most important work I can do with my life.

However, I am struggling with feelings of stuckness. I couldn't write for awhile because I was striving to find the beauty in the change - or lack of change. I have been looking for answers to big questions: How can I create the life of my dreams here in this small county that can't financially sustain the sort of work I desire to transition to? How can I find my peers in mysticism, consciousness and sacred sexuality that I've hungered for so long and haven't found in the years I've lived here? How can I experience and learn what I need to in order to become a Tantrika or other sort of healer-counselor that weaves Mysticism, Tantra and BDSM into my practice? And how do I find the sort of intimate relationship that I desire with someone as committed to consciousness, emotional health and sacred sexuality as I am - and is also a dynamic Dominant (something I now know I deeply desire) - when the local pool of possible connections is so small and keeps getting smaller (especially in regards to kink)?

Of course the truth is that I can make progress towards the work-of-my-heart while remaining in Humboldt. I have decided to return as a full partner and Hostess with The Impropriety Society. Jen W has left us to pursue motherhood, and Paddle and I are working with four long-standing Imps leaders to transition to a different leadership model by the end of the year. Having more people responsible for the organization can allow me to focus my efforts in the places I most desire to - organizational culture, community relationship, cultivating conscious leadership, activism through writing, etc. All of these contribute to my growth as a sex-positive leader and community organizer.

I can also make progress towards developing myself and my work as a personal-coach/healer through self-study, traveling to workshops & conferences, writing, building a strong web presence, and starting a part-time practice.

What really frustrates me is the sense of limitation around finding spiritual community and an intimate relationship that meets my desires and needs. I've been seeking spiritual community for as long as I've been here and had one for about 2 years out of 20. I'm skeptical I'll find one now and the spiritual gatherings I facilitated didn't lead to the kind of connection I am seeking, so I'm not sure that attempting to create my own community again will be successful.

As to intimate relationship, I don't even know that I could find a Dominant locally that could inspire me to the depths of submission that Daddy did. On-going psychological and emotional edge play like his is not common in this little community. All the local Dominants I know are primarily into physical play and occasional, light D/s. Now that bitch has been awakened, it makes me incredibly sad to have to essentially put her to sleep until someone else inspires her into being again. To find someone who can be the Dominant I desire, and is also devoted to conscious evolution and relationship, seems like an impossible dream right now.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive.
Rilke

Despite the changes - or lack of change - in my life, I am still the person I've always been. I will turn my circumstances into something beautiful. I will continue to empower myself to claim the life I truly desire. I will keep my heart open to the Universe and every opportunity it brings me. I will trust that I am on the right path, headed towards more love and creativity than I have ever known before.

Because that is what is true about the last few years of my life here in Humboldt - it does keep getting better. I am evolving in significant ways. I have the most amazing community and friendships. I am wrapped in love in a way that I didn't even know was possible three years ago. And I have faith that it will keep getting better as long as I'm willing to trust the journey and remain vulnerable to where the Divine leads me.

Love and Fear

"Her wounds came from the same source as her power."
Adrienne Rich

I have been passionately interested in love and healthy relationship since I was a teenager. I don't mean romantic love, although I have had typical obsessions with romantic relationship over the years. I mean the Big Love, the Love that is the life's blood of the Universe, the Love believed by all the world's religions. The sort of love represented in the story of the sacrifice of Jesus' life for humanity. When I was a practicing Christian (ages 3-20), I was deeply touched by the story of Jesus and his immense love for us all. I desired to feel that love in my own life and be that love with other people.

I started reading Leo Buscaglia, the first university professor to teach love, when I was 15. I started working on my self development with Scott Peck's The Road Less Travelled when I was 16. Even in the midst of living with my mother's narcissism, addictions and emotional abuse, my stepfather's alcoholism, and my father's neglect I knew there was a happier way to live and I knew it was based in love.

Back then I perceived it as God's Love. As my understanding of God, religion/spirituality and love have grown over years of intellectual study and experiential living, what remains is this knowing deep in my heart that we are capable of living with so much more love than we do. We are so afraid, afraid every day in so many ways. I seem to have been born with an innate awareness of, and drive to create, the Love filled lives that we are capable of living. I can feel the potential of it and everything in my life is motivated towards growing deeper in love for myself and others. My deepest desire for relationship is to find others who will go to the depths of love with me, who will choose to face our shadows together and work to heal into greater experiences of love together.

There is very little black-and-white duality sort of thinking that I invest in anymore, but I do believe that all of our emotions and choices, big or small, are based in either love or fear. Love leads to expansion, fear leads to contraction. Love allows us to be big and shine our lights for one another, fear causes us to shrink into the shadows. Love leads to Oneness, fear leads to separation/isolation.

It seems that part of my ability as an intuitive/empath is to feel when people are making love or fear based choices. I just know, even when they aren't necessarily conscious of their own motivations. I also tend to have intuition about what a person could do to choose love rather than continue in a fear-based pattern. That isn't just intuition, I have a 15 year self education in self development, psychology, philosophy, religion and spirituality. I have a pretty good understanding of how the human heart and mind work (based on our current collective understanding, of course we still have much to learn).

It very literally hurts my heart to witness/feel people choose fear. Because it hurts, I judge it as bad. I don't know how to change that. I don't know that I should. I watched fear slowly kill my mother. Her fear eventually grew so big that she became psychotic with delusions. I watch my ex-husband sit day after day for 7 years in his bedroom in front of his computer because he was too afraid to interact with the world. He lives a very small and depressed life (and I lived that life with him for awhile because I was afraid to give up my delusions about our so-called partnership and be on my own again). I've felt the big impact fear can have, and I see it's little impact in people's lives every day (including my own).

For a long time I have struggled with the story that my mom, my ex, and others chose fear over their love for me. Because I chose my children when fear could have ruled my life, I have told myself the story that my mother chose her fear, her addictions, and her narcissism over me, as if it was a conscious decision she made very day. Same with my ex-husband. I believed he chose his fear over our family. I made it personal and I am working on changing that. It isn't ever about me, it's about their own relationship to love and fear. But even if I take myself out of it, the reality is that it hurts to watch the people I love suffer from fear based choices.

*

"Closing the heart is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we close it, we attract more reasons to keep it closed. Opening the heart is a soul-fulfilling prophecy. When we open it, we attract blessings." Jeff Brown

Part of my grief process right now is accepting that Knight made a fear based choice four months ago (and actively maintained since) that prevents our relationship from being what it could be. It has nothing to do with poly. It has to do with what is, or isn't, between us by his choice. He told me this when we came back together, but I didn't want to believe it. I chose to hope for the potential for great love I could feel between us. I poured my whole heart into our relationship. But he did not do the same. And now I know that I can't be in a relationship that isn't whole. I can't be in a relationship where fear prevents love from flowing and healing from taking place.

The struggle I am having right now is with the story that Knight chose his fear over his love for me. I don't know how not to take it personally, how not to feel rejected. I realize that the bigness of my grief, and my anger towards Knight, come from the history of the people I love choosing their fear. This is a pattern in my life.

The struggle I am having right now is with my own fear. My fear tells me that I will always feel rejected in his presence. My fear tells me that I can never be emotionally intimate with him again, even as friends. My fear tells me that I am not strong enough to bear watching him having other relationships in this community, relationships that I have to watch unfold and be expressed through BDSM and sex in public, in front of me at the parties that I help create.

I am scared. I am scared of how much more this is going to hurt. I am scared that it will hurt too much. My fear tells me to shut down, to shut him out, to try and make myself cold so that I don't feel it. My fear tells me to stay angry so that I can fall out of love with him.

Now I face the choice between fear and love. What are the loving choices for myself and towards Knight as we transition away from a romantic relationship to each other? What is the most loving choice for the community as I try to navigate my grief as we approach a big party? Can I be a positive role-model by making it about love, by embracing Knight as my friend and his other relationships as part of his joy? I desire more than anything for him to be happy. I just wanted him to be happy going to the depths of love with me.

*

It isn't about being fearless. Most of us will struggle with fear all our lives. We're evolutionarily conditioned for it and it's something we have to change as a species.

It's a matter of being willing to face our fear, to shine the light on our shadows in order to experience deeper joy, love, and intimacy. Most of us run from our shadows, especially in relationship. Yet there is nothing more intimate than sharing the evolutionary process with another person and actively choosing love in the face of fear together. There is nothing more vulnerable than exposing your darkest shadows to each other, forgive yourself and the other, and to choose to heal through conscious action to be happier and more loving together.

Telling the Truth

I have not written for the last month because I have not wanted to face the truths of my life and my relationship with Knight. Writing requires truth-telling. I have been avoiding the truth. I have been hiding away and telling myself all kinds of sad stories instead.

*

I have been telling myself for months the story that I need to be fixed, that I am broken, wounded, and unable to have healthy (poly) relationship because the way Knight is choosing to do poly and be in relationship to me causes me suffering.

But it isn't true.

I faced my demons and dug through the past and tried to approach love from every possible conscious angle in order work through my poly issues to stay connected to Knight. I brought everything I had to the table -- everything I know and am daily learning about conscious relationship, psychology, spirituality and love. I tried to fix my mind and my heart, thinking that if I just worked on myself hard enough I would stop suffering. (And I have been so very mean to myself in the process.) But no matter how much work I do on myself, the truth is that my needs and desires for Knight and for relationship aren't being met. We want different things from our relationship. When I take all the wounded stories away, the truth is that I desire more than a part-time relationship with the love of my life. If I am going to give my all, I need someone who will bring their all to the table for me and for our relationship.

*

I have been telling myself for months the story that I might be crazy and that I can't manage my emotions. My mother never got better. My mother died because she had a psychotic break after years of trying to heal her depression. She was a narcissist and narcissists rarely get better because they can't get out of their self-obsession. I had a tough time convincing my doctor the other day that I was once Borderline because Borderlines don't usually get better either. She told me Borderline is on the Narcissistic spectrum (which makes sense). The laws of both nature and nurture are against me in this. It is so easy to believe the story that I am and always will be mentally ill because I feel emotions so deeply.

But it isn't true.

The truth is that I have been at the mercy of crazy hormones the last few months because I have Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome and this is the new way it is manifesting (I will write more about PCOS and its impact on my life in another post). PCOS can cause depression and severe mood swings. My mood swings have been on monthly cycles. I am not crazy. I have fucked up chemistry right now. I saw my doctor recently to take steps to become healthy and hormonally balanced again.

*

Today I learned just how healthy and loving that I am. Today I hugged the man who put a gun to my head on the night my daughter was conceived nearly 16 years ago. Today I celebrated with him the amazing and beautiful young woman that we created together in our violence and insanity.

Today I came full circle with the night I hit bottom, when my insanity was at its worst, when I nearly lost my life while my 4 year old son was sleeping on the other side of my bedroom wall. That is the night that turned my life around. When I found out I was pregnant, I realized that I would damage two children the way I was damaged if I didn't pull myself out of the crazy. So I have worked on my self for 15 years. And I didn't just pull myself out the crazy. I raised two remarkable human beings almost entirely on my own. I contributed to my community through my work and my volunteerism every year since, no matter my personal struggles. I am a successful artist, writer and community leader.

The truth is that I am not broken. I am fucking amazing. I am big and powerful and I am worth someone giving their whole heart to. I love big and I love deep. I need someone who will meet me in the big and deep.

As a dear friend once wrote about me, the truth is that I am woman living an ordinary life in an extraordinary way. I am a woman who desires (and strives) to love in extraordinary ways.

The truth is that I am a woman too big for part-time relationships and unfulfilling office work. It's time to move into a life that is as big as I am, in my work, in my relationships, in every way.

*

This past week I finally faced the truth. This past week I learned that I am not broken or unhealthy because I am not happy with the choices Knight is making in regards to our relationship. This past week I finally realized that I both desire and deserve more...that if I desire to give someone all of my heart, I should only be giving it someone who desires to give me all of theirs (even if they share it with others).

I am finally admitting what is true, to myself, to Knight and to my tribe so they can support me in letting go, so they can remind me why I can't go back (even though I am sobbing right now because I want so badly to be in his arms rather than walking away).

*

I will be writing again but this will no longer be the story of my relationship with Knight. While I believe we will eventually be close friends again, I am moving onto a new chapter in my life. This will be the story of my grief, my growth and my resurrection into greater love and joy.

Needs

I am having a lot of difficulty with the concept of needs. So much of the reading I've been doing about conscious relationship, polyamory, self-love, etc. talks about needs, meeting our own needs as well as communicating our needs so that they can be met by our partners. But there is no real definition of a need vs. a desire. I am really struggling to understand what my needs actually are and how important they are. Is having most of my perceived needs met more important than being in a loving relationship that meets some of them?

As human beings we have basic needs. There are survival needs: food, shelter, clothing, etc. For a vibrant life, there are also needs for self-care and connection to other human beings (to be witnessed and intimacy through conversation and touch). But beyond that, can anything else be called a need?

If I am a healthy single person with friends and community but not dating, then anything that would be called a relationship need is null and void. I can live without sex with another person. I can live without romantic intimacy. I can live without the validation. I can live without everything that comes from romantic involvement. So what are my needs in romantic relationship and how many of them should I expect to be met by someone I'm dating vs. a boy/girl-friend vs. a life partner?

Over the last two weeks Knight and I have had a series of situations involving poor communication around the changes and losses taking place in our relationship in order to accommodate his relationship with Rose. I have been trying to determine what I need in order to feel emotionally safe and cared for in an intimate relationship with him (or anyone). One need I have established is to feel considered and included in decisions that affect our relationship and time together.

On the heels of our emotional heaviness, this weekend was the first kid-free weekend that Knight chose to spend with his other lover. We have spent all of his kid-free weekends together since our relationship began, except for the couple weeks between "breaking up" and coming together in this new relationship.

What I am learning about my experience of transitioning from a full-time life-partner relationship into part-time poly-dating relationship is that it isn't just the lost time that is difficult to adjust to, but his inaccessibility during that time. I can't call him for any reason, no matter what's unfolding in my life (unless it's an absolute emergency). I can't flirt by text with him when I'm feeling loving or sexual. Nor can I call on him when I am having a difficult day. He is inaccessible because he needs to protect his relationship with another. We have been communicating nearly every day of our relationship and now even that is decreased by this new relationship.

What caused me suffering this weekend was that after spending 7 hours cleaning and packing my house on Saturday and again on Sunday, I was extremely tired and sore and all I needed (desired?) was to be witnessed and held by Knight. I needed to be naked and raw with someone, witnessed and held in my experience, and he is the only person with whom I have that level of intimacy. But he wasn't available. I couldn't even reach out to tell him what I was experiencing. I was alone.

In the moment it felt like a need and I suffered for not having it met. But here I am on the other side, still a whole person (yet sad and confused because the man I love wasn't there for me). So was it need? Or just a desire? Is it a temporary feeling that will shift over time as I continue to share him? Or do I need a partner who is more accessible to me?

I am caught up in sadness and confusion (amplified by exhaustion and physical pain) and likely to darken our date tonight with my grief over the changes that keep happening to our relationship. This was the man I was going to share a life and a home with. Now I have to accept that not only is that dream not coming true, but I am losing time, accessibility and intimacy with Knight because of what he is choosing to give his other relationship.

I have a lot of questions coming up for me around the sort of poly arrangement that Knight desires to live and whether partnership could ever be an option. Can one be a life-partner if they are only sharing half their life -- half their time and accessibility, half their resources available for intimate relationship?

Knight talks a lot about desiring to treat us both like whole people. But I don't experience my wholeness being honored when I can only have my needs met on our date nights and the rest of the time I am on my own...like a single person. How do I continue to be completely vulnerable and open with someone in a part-time relationship whom I cannot depend on except when time is scheduled? Do I truly desire to?

I have been a single mother, navigating life on my own and for other human beings, since I was 17 years old. Even within my so-called marriage I was alone in significant ways -- the only (4.5 out of 7 years) or primary breadwinner and the only one to keep the house and family functioning while my ex-husband played on his computer all day and night. I very strongly desire a life-partner -- someone to share the day-to-day joys and responsibilities of family, someone to share community with, someone to provide support when life gets rough, and someone who desires to meet most of my emotional needs in intimate relationship. I desire to have someone I know will at least strive to be there when I'm falling apart. I also desire to go as deep into conscious and spiritual partnership as possible. I just don't know how that's possible in a part-time relationship.

I am deeply concerned that no matter how much Knight and I love each other, we just may not be compatible in our desires for relationship or structures of polyamory. I am not giving up yet. I am just trying to see the truth of the situation.

Rewriting the Fairy Tale

Someone asked Knight recently how he felt about being called Knight in my blog. When I was writing one of my first posts about our story, I felt I needed a pseudonym because I wasn't sure that he wanted his name used. Of course, the people who read this blog who are part of our tribe already know who he is, but I desire to respect his privacy as much as possible (fortunately, he loves the way I write our story and doesn't feel his privacy is invaded by my blogging).

Knight was the first "name" that popped into my head, so I followed the intuitive nudge. At the time I wrote, "In many ways he has been my Knight in Shining Armor, even if we may not live happily ever after from a traditional perspective. We are rewriting the fairy tale and redefining 'happily ever after.'"

Knight feels that perhaps it's too big a name to live up to. But I don't feel that it is, especially when looked at from an archetypal rather than literal perspective.

Part of my path as a modern mystic is to look at my life and the world through symbolic sight. Caroline Myss is an excellent teacher in this regard. Symbolic Sight is "a way of seeing and understanding yourself, other people, and life events in terms of universal archetypal patterns. Developing symbolic sight enhances your intuitive ability as it allows you to view events, people and challenges in an objective light."

I am striving to understand our relationship through symbolic sight and archetypes. I don't perceive Knight as my rescuer or savior. That's part of rewriting the fairytale. Our traditional fairytales are about a princess being saved by a hero. I believe our fairytales need to change.

"A true soulmate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake.” from Eat Pray Love

Knight has been a catalyst for me to save myself. Loving him and being loved by him is smacking me awake to the truth that I am the Queen and Heroine of my own life. And in my love for him, I am cheering for him to be his own Knight and rescue himself from his own wounding and sense of separation from the All.

What if we had fairytales about couples who catalyze one another to save themselves?

What if we had fairytales about couples who build each other up? Instead of stories of co-dependence or independence, what if we told stories of healthy interdependence?

What if happily ever after looks like a commitment to an authentic, healthy relationship, no matter how hard we have to work on ourselves to make it possible?

What if happily ever after looks like loving each other forever no matter the form our relationship takes, even if it means letting go because it's the most loving thing to do?


***Photograph by Annie Leibovitz

Faith (& Poly)

"Her wounds came from the same source as her power." Adrienne Rich - On Power

It has been an excruciating week...again. Last weekend Knight and I went to Harbin Hot Springs, which was a very healing experience on many levels. The first 24 hours was pure joy, feeling the love between us and the love that infuses the land and water of Harbin. Then because of a book I was reading, I had some significant insight into myself (I hope to write a separate post about that), which sent me on an emotional roller coaster for awhile, but Knight held amazing space for my process. As he held me, I recognized that I had been looking my whole life for someone to hold space for me to be the intensely emotional woman that I am. I've also been looking for someone willing to do the work of conscious relationship with me. Things were really, really good.

Until Monday. I had another significant insight that took me into some grief, right before I had to leave him so he could get ready for time with someone else that night. I had to go home with my pain while he went and had fun with another woman for the first time since our sort-of triad last year. That was really, really hard to sit with.

The next day, when I went to see him at lunch, he told me they had sex and my body went into immediate fight-or-flight response. My entire being buzzed with agitated energy and I felt like I just wanted to run and run and run away. I also became sick to my stomach. Knight tried to hold me in my heartache. He expressed every intention of being willing to bear through it with me, but I couldn't trust him.

I was triggered and once I am triggered, all I can see is the fear. For the next 24 hours the only option I could see was withdrawing from Knight as a lover. I told myself and him that I needed to listen to what my body was telling me (which was true, but I was misinterpreting the message). I told myself and him that I'm not ready for poly. I said I am too broken, maybe even too crazy. And I devastated him...again.

Then the fear-fog suddenly lifted and I started seeing clearly again. I paid attention to all the things I said to Knight and realized how caught up in the fear stories I had become. I was choosing fear all over again, but at least I am seeing more clearly what it is that I am afraid of.

I am afraid that I will die crazy and alone like my mother did. This is why I have been unable to find peace with my mother and her death. After years of struggle with depression, narcissism and addiction, my mother had a psychotic break in the months before she died. Constant pain issues that couldn't be resolved were part of her illness for many years. But then she believed that "fibers" were growing out of her skin and she created sores all over her body trying to remove them. It started on her head, so she shaved her head to pick at the sores and wore wigs out in public. It spread to the rest of her body, becoming more and more visible, and the school she worked for was about to make her go on leave because she looked so sick. My sister and I talked the week before she died about the possibility of having to take steps to take care of her because she was no longer able to take care of herself.

My mother died from an accidental prescription narcotic overdose. I can blame her mental illness for her death because it is the reason she was taking so many medications (although I also blame the irresponsible doctors who gave her meds to shut her up--sometimes meds that were actually contra-indicated and caused more harm).

I have a mental illness inside of me and I have healed myself; not only into functionality, but into a thriving, healthy and productive life. For years, rather than accept that my mother was mentally ill beyond help, I have told myself she just didn't try hard enough and didn't love herself or us enough to get better. I believed it was a choice for her just like it was for me. I have not been able to accept her crazy because if I do, I have to wonder if I might really be crazy in a way that can't get better, too.

I am so afraid of being crazy because crazy drives people away. My mother drove everyone in her life away with her crazy. We all gave up on her. I am afraid that my trigger events are a kind of crazy and that neither Knight nor my friends will want to continue holding me if they hear or see the truth of those experiences. I am afraid they will give up on me. So when a trigger event happens, I run away, telling myself and the other person that I am too broken and will only hurt them.

"...It's an act of faith to allow things to unfold and unfold and unfold, and to be willing to include in your life not just what makes you happy, but also your agitation, confusion, doubt, and personal displays of ridiculousness without drawing harsh conclusions. Actually, faith begins to look a lot like fearlessness. It looks a lot like genuine confidence." Susan Piver

I am not crazy.

I need to have faith and confidence that I am not crazy. Trigger events do not make me crazy, they just mean I still have wounds to heal. Getting lost in the fog of fear sometimes does not make me crazy, it makes me human. I always find my way out and experience more healing on the other side.

It is reasonable that my emotional evolution has been incredibly intense the last two years with the Imps, my mom dying, and trying to have the first truly healthy relationship of my life. I am in the midst of significant psychological and spiritual repair so that I can have a happier, healthier life. It will not always be this way. But I will heal faster if I stop resisting the experiences that feel crazy and learn to hold space for myself, which will allow me to trust others to hold space for me.

Healing comes from moving through the heartache, not resisting it. I need to have faith in my own strength. I need to have faith that the healing I have done is real and that more will come. It won't always be this hard and scary. It won't always hurt so much.

I need to have faith that Knight and my friends desire to hold all of me, including the most terrifying parts. I need to have faith that I am worthy of that kind of love. I don't think my friends realize just how scared I am that I will lose them or drive them away and why I try so incredibly hard to do relationship right (why it may seem like the only thing I talk about!). Emotional health is my mission (and obsession).

*

As far as polyamory is concerned, and Knight having another relationship, I need to have faith in our love. I need to trust in my knowings of what Knight and I share. What we have is unique. We cannot have it with anyone else. It doesn't matter what we call it. It doesn't matter what other relationships we have. What matters is that we remain committed to consciously growing into deeper love and healing with one another. What matters is experiencing the sacred purpose in our relationship.

If this relationship fails, it will not be because of another person or relationship. It is not other people who are acting out in fear and creating rifts in our intimacy. Right now it is me. I can blame no one but myself for pushing him away and undermining the progress we've made the last four weeks. Now it is up to me to repair the damage I've caused and work to heal the parts of me that get triggered so that I don't cause more damage in the future.

I choose love.

Speaking the Truth & The Work of My Heart

Ronna Detrik, who writes insightfully about women and truth-telling, shared this last night...

"I’m going to do the work that I know I need to do, that I must do, that I’ve been waiting my whole life to do, without waiting for an audience...I’m not going to care anymore whether people like me when I speak my truth. I’m never going to ask for permission again. As Eve Ensler said, “I am going to hold who I am in the face of anything.”" Patti Digh

Wow!

I feel the power in those words. I feel it from the the heat in my heart and flutter in my chest to the goosebumps moving across my skin. I am feeling the call to do the work I've been waiting my whole life to do.

Tonight I had dinner with someone who spoke of her need to stop making herself small, and how she has always felt like her heart is bigger than her body can hold. I know this feeling. It's time to stop making myself small because it's too sissy-woo-woo, hippy dippy to be vocal about my passion for living a sacred and conscious life. It's time to stop being afraid that people will find me ridiculous if I share what is meaningful to me. It's time to stop being so damn quiet and timid.

How is this for ridiculous? I have been feeling embarrassed for how passionate and big I feel about this transformation that I am going through. I'm talking about the shift in my relationship to Knight, but I'm not really talking about the other significant shifts happening for me. I feel embarrassed when I am around my friends that I am blissed out for reasons I can't put into words other than I am so incredibly in love (with everything). I am having mystical experiences, but I am not fully trusting them or myself. When I am on my own I am often big and expansive, but when around others I make myself small again. I am afraid to talk about my excitement for this process. I haven't been telling anyone how I think that sitting down with this blog every night is helping me create the life of my dreams and that through my commitment to speaking my truth I am going to find My People and the work of my heart. This is BIG, EXCITING stuff and I have been too afraid to trust it or myself enough to share it, and afraid to trust my tribe to hold space for it it.

Havi talks a lot about finding "your people." Your people are the people who resonate with you, who believe in you and your ideas, and who like whatever it is you offer from your most authentic and quirky self. Today I found one of my people. Someone who jives with what I'm sharing here in my blog. Someone who is excited by the fact that I identify as a mystic. Someone whose life is touched by my story and who is touching my life with hers. I need to trust my relationships can hold me, and if it turns out we don't resonate anymore, I need to trust my people are on their way to me.

Today Kelly Diels came out with the work of her heart and she is inspiring me in ways bigger than words can describe, especially since there are commonalities in what turns us on. Ronna and Havi also inspire me. They have created the work of their heart and they each radiate love through their work in their unique and quirky ways.

You must lead with your strengths. You must choose the things that light you up so that you can light the way for yourself, and for others. Kelly Diels

This is my bliss: Relationship. Intimacy. Connection. Empathy. Sharing our stories. Learning and evolving together. Creating together. This is what I want to be doing all the time, relating to people who resonate with me, both personally and professionally -- through writing, through art, through working with people one-on-one and in small groups, and through community leadership.

I believe that my work with the Imps has been leading me toward recognizing my bliss work is intentionally working with people around sacred and conscious relationship. When I pull all the threads of my life together, it all leads to sacred and conscious relationship...with my children, my partners, my friends, my community, my world. Growing towards deeper, richer, and more consistent experiences of love is my passion. I love Love. I love to love. I desire to be a walking embodiment of love, every minute of every day with every being that I interact with. That's what makes me a mystic. I am in love with all of existence. I focus that love in my relationships to other people. I see and feel the Divine Spark in others and I desire to get closer to it, to feel the warmth and bask in the brightness of light that each person has to share with me. I facilitate events so that people can feel free and open to express their Divine Spark through their creativity, sexuality and relationship. I build community because I know that we feel safest in expressing our Divine Spark when we're with people who support us. Mysticism is the driving force behind my work with the Imps and yet I've been hiding it in the closet as much as possible.

The pieces are coming together. The Universe is talking to me through all of these amazing women (and many other teachers) and I am listening. I am finally beginning to see what the work of my heart looks like and I am finding the courage to speak my truth as the ultimate act of love.

For more inspiration, check this out...




***Image source aussiegall