The Ecstasy Returns (Whew)

I had my first ecstatic experience in a couple of months in the forest near my home today. I've not had one of these experiences since I gave the fullness of my heart to someone who didn't see it and decided they didn't want it once they did see it. They wanted my body for sex and my mind for the capacity to fantasize as they liked, but wanted nothing to do with my heart. My heart closed up after being objectified and rejected so profoundly. It hurt big and deep. It caused me to question whether I can continue my mission in vulnerability and open-heartedness. I've spent some time going deep inside to lick my wounds, healing through time, writing and loving relationships.

I live near Jacoby Creek and yet in the year that I've lived here I've never taken the time to visit the creek. As ridiculous as that seems, it's true. Today I was inspired on the way home to pull over and explore a path that I've seen hundreds of times on my drive into town. I have a friend coming to visit and I want to be a good hostess not just in my home, but in this amazing forest that surrounds me. I swear sometimes I feel the trees holding me, their roots underneath me, their trunks and branches around me and above me. As I wove my way through the mossy trees and walked through the water and watched little banana slugs on the path, skittering water bugs in the creek and spiders in a patch of wild flowers, I felt a big opening in my heart. I felt connected. I felt the magic of Oneness and the immense miracle of life that I am blessed to participate in. I felt the God in Everything.

Last night I felt my heart opening in a different sort of way. I spent some time with writing and art by people who are witnessing the tragedies of the world and bringing the stories to the American public in hopes of inspiring people to change the unnecessary harm we are causing/allowing to the earth and other human beings. I am recognizing how my capacity to feel so deeply through my empathy and to evoke feeling in others in all kinds of ways by very my nature is a gift to be used in a similar way. I used to dream of art projects in which I told the stories of people whose lives could be changed if enough people woke up to their true capacity for compassion and empathy and did something about the atrocities taking place every minute of every day. It's stories that cause people experience empathy, to feel for the suffering of others.

I watched an Eve Ensler video earlier today in which she talks about how she experiences Oneness through her body (please go watch it, it's profound and only 12 minutes long). She's recognized that her body is a reflection of the larger world, that the cancer that invaded her body is a reflection of the cancer of war, greed, and violence in our world. It's all the same. It's all connected. It's powerful and so very true.

God, I do feel so very deeply. When I approached my car from the creek this afternoon and looked up into the giant redwood trees, I started crying. Tears are how I express emotions that are too big for words. I could feel my crazy deep love for the Divine Spark in everything pouring out of me, streaming amongst rivulets of grief for the wounding of myself and the world. I've cried so many times in the last few days, nearly every time I'm in conversation with a friend. I am allowing myself to feel the fullness of everything I have experienced and am experiencing in my life recently - the grief and the happiness, the disappointment and the hope, the confusion, the doubt, and the moments of pure clarity. And of course the inexplicable depth of complicated love I have for a few people in my life.

I've missed the heartlight that imbued my life so deeply a few months ago - the light in me that responded to the light in the world with giddy joy and a connectedness that seemed to set my cells on fire. Ecstatic states were happening all the time. I recognize that like the myths of Persephone and Inanna, it is necessary to walk through the darkness in order to clear the shadows from the light I shine. I know that I needed to explore the depths of my sense of worthlessness and invisibility the way that I did so that I could discover just how valuable and visible and worthy of love that I am. While I've been deeply hurt, I am incredibly grateful for the experience and for the participation of the other person in my evolution. I am very frustrated by their shadow right now and working on forgiveness, but I still know their light and I still have love in my heart for them, whether they want it or not.

As I've said before, ecstasy and despair, it's all God.

I'm just so very so grateful to have the heartlight again, to bask in its warmth however long it lasts before a descent into the dark is required for the next stage of evolution.

Thank you for listening.

The Power of Vulnerability

I’ve been struggling to write. My heart cries out for me to sit down and pull my feelings out to the written word, but I resist. I’ve started many blog posts in the last couple weeks, but never finish, never go as deep as they promise to take me.

I've had this video of social work researcher Brene Brown sitting on my computer for days. I didn't know exactly what it was. Someone posted it on Facebook and I was drawn to the description:

"...she has spent the past ten years studying a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness, posing the questions: How do we engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to embrace our imperfections and to recognize that we are enough -- that we are worthy of love, belonging and joy?"

I was surprised, as much as she was, by what she learned.

The qualities of a wholehearted person:

Courage - Tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. Courage to be imperfect.

Compassion - Be kind to yourself first, which will result in kindness towards others.

Connection - As a result of authenticity. Let go of who you think you should be to be who you are.

Fully Embrace Vulnerability - What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful.

*

It's the last one that really gets to me and it is the quality that she finds to be most important of them all...

Vulnerability - allowing ourselves to be fully seen, exactly as we are.

Two and a half years ago, right before I co-created The Impropriety Society, I made a commitment to myself and the Divine that I would live as open-heartedly as possible. To me this meant that I would choose to risk loving without knowing where it would lead and even if it led directly into heartache. I would express my love openly and I would say yes to every opportunity to love for my self or others.

I had come to this intent by participating in a brief but very intense relationship that also inspired a spiritual awakening. It was a spiritual connection, as much as intellectual and emotional. I chose to be as open as possible, despite my fears and the possibility of rejection. Ultimately she did reject me. But the experience of love that took place inside me made it all worth it. I felt more connected to everything.

I’ve learned that my heart cannot be broken in the traditional sense, it can be bent, beaten, misshapen, lost in the dark and cold, but never broken, never irreparable. And I have learned that the deeper I allow myself to go into love, no matter the outcome, the more love and joy I become capable of experiencing. Risking love in the face of suffering and allowing the heart to break open to deeper experiences of grief, empathy and compassion can lead to an awakened life.

And yet now, after experiencing such a difficult relationship with Knight over the last six months, I find myself afraid and withdrawn, struggling to be vulnerable again. I have new lovers, a married couple and a long-time friend with whom there has been a long unexplored spark, and I am struggling to be vulnerable to them with my feelings and desires.

“I suggest you study the relationship between what you want and what you have to offer.” From Eric Francis’ Cancer Horoscope for 2010

What do I want? I desire to live an awakened life and I desire to live every moment of my life from the deepest experience of love a human being can know.

What do I have to offer? My vulnerability. My willingness to be seen, to be open, to risk for love. When I write here, it is from a place of vulnerability because I hope that by sharing my experience, my story, someone else may find something valuable for their own story.

What do I want from others, in relationship? Their vulnerability, their willingness to risk opening themselves to love, no matter where it leads.

What keeps us from vulnerability? Shame. Shame is a fear of disconnection and a belief that we are not worthy of connection/belonging/love. We think, "I am not _________ enough to belong." (Fill in the blank -- smart, beautiful, talented, wealthy, outgoing, charismatic, etc.)

I don't know that I have ever been as vulnerable as I was with Knight. We had an intimacy that was rare in my experience of relationships. And I feel that Knight rejected me in a very significant way when he shut down his heart to partnership with me. So vulnerability, being fully seen, is more frightening than ever. Will anyone stick around if they see the worst of me? Am I too emotionally unbalanced to be connect/belong/be loved? Allowing myself to be seen in entirety, especially my shadow and the challenges I have in managing my emotions, scares me very much.

I hope to find inside myself whatever it was that I found before that inspired me to choose open-heartedness. I desire to renew that commitment and to open my heart again, as fully as I'm capable. I desire to be fully seen - raw, wild, french kissing life and bleeding on the page with heart-opening vulnerability.

Night Tears

There is a crying
that happens at night
that does not come
while the light is with us.
There are things that cannot
be evaded
once the sun goes down.
Small nocturnal creatures
with sharp white teeth
silently gnaw at the edges of
belly and heart
when the darkness descends
and the void inside
grows larger.

It can split you open.

And bone
in the centre of your chest
aches
like the cracked wishing bone
from the turkey breast.

And if we are strong enough
to be weak enough
we are given a wound
that never heals.

It is the gift
that keeps the heart open.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer © 1995

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.

Radical Self Love

I have not been loving myself well the last week and a half, hence my quiet here. I will write another post about what I've been experiencing, but I desire to share this.

A few weeks back I talked about writing a letter to myself for when I feel triggered, to remind me of everything I know when I am not in the fear-fog. This is different than the love letter I wrote to the Invisible Girl, although I think I will keep the letters together to turn to when I need them. I will be carrying this in my wallet so that I can be my own greatest friend when I feel triggered, lost and/or alone.

* * * * *

April My Love,

I am proud of you and I have faith in you, even now. You are in the midst of a psychological and spiritual awakening. You are deepening into love and healing your fear. It feels like chaos. It feels uncertain. And that is exactly right because you are challenging the conditioning of a lifetime and revolutionizing relationship. You are choosing to be a trailblazer in Love.

If you are reading this letter, it is likely you are feeling very insecure, or you have been triggered and you need trigger care. If you are immersed in fear stories (and you know what is fear and what is love), then you need to give yourself time to come out of the darkness before making *any* decisions. Remember the wreckage you have caused by believing the fog is all there is. You may feel lost and out of control, but the loving insights *always* come.

Remember that you are a spiritual being having a human experience. Your longing is a Holy Longing for yourself and for God. Try to shift your perspective to Oneness and eternal connection.

Honor your wholeness.

"Being present--rather than being emotional--is what allows real intimacy to happen." John Welwood

Please don't become your emotions. Feelings are meant to move through you, please stop gripping them so hard.

Be present. Hold space for yourself. Be your own witness and sit with yourself no matter how uncomfortable or painful it is. Trust yourself. Do not resist what comes, let it move through you. Resistance creates suffering. Hell is the rejection of things as they are.

Be kind and forgiving with yourself. It is all right that you still have places to heal. It is all right that you get triggered and break down sometimes. It is all right that you have big emotions, they are as much your gift in relating to others as they are your challenge. You are doing your best. You are not crazy and you are not your mother. You are strong, resilient and functional and you are growing into healing and deeper love. This is just another opportunity to wake up.

Keep your heart open. Remember that safety and security are illusions. Being raw and genuine, even in your heartache, is what's real.

Ask for help and support if you need it. Trust that the people who love you desire to support you -- even if they can't make the space to do so right away.

Remember that you believe in the open-heartedness of poly. Whatever you are feeling, in your body, in your heart, is a fear response. Talk to your fear. Find out what it needs for you to feel safe and loved.

"I imagine God loves in multiplicity, and with no conditions. That God has figured out that there is more than enough of her to go around, that love is never in short supply. I can't imagine God saying, sorry, I'm taken." Lori Lothian

If this involves Knight, remember that you are responsible to this relationship. Remember that commitment isn't about what we call ourselves or how much time we spend together, it's about our willingness to love and hold space for everything in each other. Remember that he is committed to you and holding space for your process. Remember that our strength comes from growing consciously together. He loves you. Trust him and trust the relationship you are building.

Remember that you love Knight for his open-heartedness. Remember that in your love for him, you desire for him to shine his light as brightly as possible – please don’t try to diminish him with your fear. You desire him to be authentic and to experience the fullest possible awakening and joy - that will involve other relationships. Find compersion for those relationships, in the spiritual perspective if necessary. Find the love in Knight's other relationships. Use your empathy to feel the joy they bring one another (you know how blessed anyone is to have Knight's love). Honor that they are opportunities to wake each other up.

Remember it has never been another person or anything other than the fear between you that has caused the rifts in intimacy and trust between you and Knight (or anyone else).

Be grateful for the ways this relationship is smacking you awake.

"...if you love someone, go deep into your own unique experience of what that love is, and just let that be who you are. Surrender to it. Build your identity upon it. You are not a person who is jealous. Not someone who's trying to control. Not even someone who's fearing. You are love experiencing itself deeper and deeper within its own fullness."

You are Love. Love your self, April, all the best ways you know how.

Courage

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. ~Ambrose Redmoon

I am really proud of myself for my courage.

Last night I had dinner with Knight and his new lover, whom I shall call Rose (we share a love of roses). I did not feel ready for it. I had strong urges to back out of it. But I did it anyway and am so incredibly grateful that I chose love.

Knight started talking about the three of us getting together within a week of their relationship beginning. I was hesitant for many reasons. For one, it feels like everything is moving really fast and the idea of meeting implied a bigness to their
NRE that I don't want to acknowledge. Knight and I didn't call ourselves a couple for nearly two months and I didn't meet his daughters for more than three months. Yet here he was asking me to invite this new lover into my heart only two weeks into their relationship.

Secondly, there is the bigness of my own process around accepting their relationship. I am still suffering from nervous belly every day. I am struggling emotionally every time they have a date. I have no idea what will trigger me. What if I was triggered by their interaction during dinner? How could I take the risk of exposing my shadow, or failing to have grace, with someone I don't know? How much vulnerability am I capable of?

I am capable of so much more than I imagined.

Last Friday, in my ecstatic state after writing the love letter to the Invisible Girl, I wrote an email to Rose. I desired for her to know that it is my goal to embrace their relationship, as well as some other details about my process. In her response she expressed a desire for the three of us to meet and talk as well, but was willing to respect my timing.

I thought it would be weeks before I would be ready to come face-to-face with their relationship. But the other day I felt an intuitive nudge to just do it, so I let Knight know I was open to it and last night worked out for us all.

Yesterday was difficult. My belly discomfort increased exponentially. The fear was huge. I came very close to backing out. But I chose acts of self-care instead. First, in the afternoon I followed a recommendation from a co-worker/friend to pick up an herbal de-stress formula that she had found effective during periods of emotional stress. I took it immediately. Within an hour my belly discomfort had subsided significantly and my emotional state felt more mellow. I also went home to relax for awhile and picked up The Places that Scare You again. This time I was drawn to the chapter called "Learning to Stay," which talks about staying with our emotional states rather than repressing them or acting out from them. I was in a fairly calm state by dinner time.

It started out awkward. We (mostly they) small talked during food preparation, but when we sat down together it got very quiet. No one knew where to start. But then Rose took the initiative and talked about her own willingness to be awkward and vulnerable, which led us into a two+ hour deeply honest conversation about poly, our desires, our fears, our histories and so much more. Although we are very different, Rose and I have some significant resonance in our histories. She is compassionate towards my situation and willing to honor my limitations for the time being (I know that I am not ready to see them be physically intimate beyond a greeting/goodbye hug and kiss). She also gave Knight and I gifts she had made.

We talked about having a once-a-month dinner with the three of us. We also talked about her and I spending some time together without Knight, which I think is essential to discovering if we have friendship chemistry.

Overall it was a great experience. While I don't believe my struggles with the fear are over, I do feel that this is a significant step towards increasing my comfort with the situation. I have a better understanding of what draws them to each other and what impact they may have on each other's evolution.

But most importantly, I feel my heart opening to Rose and her place in Knight's life, which I believe will lead me toward a deeper experience of Love.

The Tight Rope

I feel as though I am walking a tight rope. I must strike an intricate balance to take full responsibility for my fear based choices and the resulting consequences without falling into shame, humiliation and regret. I must allow the grief for what is lost to move through me while maintaining a bigger perspective on the perfection of what is unfolding. It is an unsettling teeter totter. I start to fall and try to lean back into a more loving story. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I lose my balance, fall into the dark and then have to do the work of climbing up the ladder to the light again.

Last night's revelation that I have become that which I most fear, and that which I have been unable to forgive in others, weighs heavily on my heart today. For as long as I can remember I have said that I do not want to become my mother. I have consciously worked on my mental-emotional-spiritual health for 15+ years so that I do not become my mother. And yet here I am, making similar fear-based choices. I spent so much time fearing that Knight would choose something or someone else over his love for me, that I couldn't see how I was choosing to live in my fear rather than my love for him. I am astounded that I've lost control of my emotional life to this degree.

It seems like it should be easy to choose love, but it isn't, not when you've been living a fear-story since birth. Choosing love takes incredible intention and attention. Right now it requires nearly minute-by-minute vigilance as I witness what unfolds in my mind and heart as I go through my day. And isn't just about choosing love in my relationship to my self and Knight. It's about choosing love in every interaction at work, at home, and in my community.

Right now choosing love means forgiving myself, Knight, my mother and my ex-husband for choosing love over fear. Because of this experience, I have a new depth of compassion for all of us.

Choosing love means actively rewriting my stories, both past and present. It's time to transform my wounded stories into something more empowering. When the stories start looping in my head, I must be vigilant about stopping them in their tracks and redirecting them toward love.

Choosing love means holding back from reaching out through text or phone call every time my heart longs for him because I need to learn how to act from love rather than yearning and habit. It means trusting that just because we no longer talk every day, or share life the way we did, we are still connected and he still loves me.

Choosing love means believing I am lovable.

Choosing love means trusting that remaining open-hearted and vulnerable despite the heartache will bring healing.

Choosing love means taking action towards self-care. To care for my body I am walking every day. To care for my mind I am writing. To care for my heart I am giving myself permission to grieve without turning it to suffering. To care for my soul I am nurturing my relationship to the Divine through prayer and paying attention to the abundant sources of guidance and support being offered on my behalf every single day.

Choosing love means walking this tightrope until it transforms into a comfortable walking path towards my growth and healing.

Death and Rebirth

I haven't written in awhile. As big Imp events approach, there tends to be less space for reflection. But now that we are headed into summer, I have a feeling - actually it's an intention - that I will be writing a lot more in the coming days. It's time to make some significant changes in my life and writing helps me significantly during times of transformation. I feel compelled to share this story as it unfolds, partially because I seek to be witnessed and partially because I always hope that sharing my story will be useful to someone else. It is in the sharing of our stories that we can find connection, meaning, insight, and a plethora of other gifts. And sometimes hearing someone else's story just lets us know we are not alone.

Don't hide your heart but reveal it, So that I may know mine too, And know what I am capable of... - Rumi

As I've said before, I've hesitated to be completely vulnerable in my writing here because this blog is associated with the Imps and because people I interact with regularly read it. As I bounce between the risk of transparency and the belief that I have to be "professional," I realize that I just need to honor that this is the space I created for writing the unfolding story of my life as an erotic hostess. The personal is just as much a part of that story as the professional is.

The image above is the Transformation card from the Osho Zen Tarot deck. In other decks it is known as the Death card. I love this card and because of it I have come to lovingly label times of intense transformation as "burning in Kali's Fire." The Fire of Transformation burns away the old (illusions, fears, wounds, all the things that keep us small) and forges a purer heart. Sitting in the Fire is painful, but it always leads to healthier and deeper capacities to love.

"You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith.” Mary Manin Morrissey

It's been an excruciatingly painful week for me. My guy and I ended our partner-relationship. It turns out that neither of us is ready or able to fulfill the potential of our connection because we are nowhere near as profoundly in love with ourselves as we are with each other. We had been planning to move in together on June 1st, but the last few weeks/months we have been sinking into unhealthy patterns and hurting one another in the process. It all exploded last Monday and we have been navigating the wreckage since. There is no blame and there are no sides to take. We both made mistakes. We both neglected to put intention into the relationship and the necessary work into our own self-care and healing. Our trust in ourselves, each other and the relationship eroded. Our shadows and our fears took over. We have chosen to end that part of our relationship for now because it is the healthy choice to untangle our entanglements and overcome our dependency on (addiction to) one another. We both need time and space to focus on cultivating as much love for ourselves as we have for each other.

What makes this break up different than any other either of us have experienced is that our love is immense. And we are still madly in love with each other. We have put on the breaks before we stopped being in love. While it might feel easier to do the traditional break up -- to become distant and shut down our hearts to one another -- it isn't the loving choice that we desire to make. We are striving to remain open to the love we share and just shift its expression. We desire to maintain intimacy and support one another as we try to align with our right paths as individuals. We are open to new possibilities as we change. This is a death that will lead to some kind of rebirth. Maybe we are meant to be together and this whole process will birth a much healthier, richer relationship than we had before. Or maybe we were meant to be catapulted into our individual evolutions by our entanglement and then move forward as intimate friends. We have no idea about the future, we only know what we need to do now to move forward in love rather than fear and to build trust again.

Besides our personal motivation for remaining connected, there are other motivations as well. As much as I struggle with it sometimes, being part of a close-knit tribe and being community leaders for the Imps demand that we interact in healthy, loving ways. We will be attending a meeting on Wednesday and the staff decompression-party on Saturday. The following weekend will be a graduation celebration for tribemates on Saturday and an intimate gathering on Sunday. Unless one or both of us isolates ourselves from our tribe and/or stops working for the Imps, we have to maintain a relationship. It's a win-win for everyone that we desire to. I trust our tribe can hold space for the heartache and awkwardness that we will experience as we shift to a new sort of relating. They have already started.

Of course I have no idea what it will look or feel like when we attend future Imps events and play with others. While neither of us are in the right space for long-term relationship, that doesn't mean we won't have other intimate and sexual connections as we work on our personal evolutions. Unlike other communities where sex is kept behind closed doors, continuing to participate in this community requires an openness to the reality that we may see the other have sex with someone else. It's a very scary thought to me right now, but I am trusting that I will reach a place of ok-ness within myself in time so that I am not overcome with jealousy and other fear-based reactions.

It hurts like hell to do it this way. We can't escape, distract or disconnect from the heartache too much when we're continuing to interact. There is a necessary willingness to sit with the heartache and to process through all the negativity that comes to the surface. We are still talking and listening. There is a surprising willingness to hold space for one another as we untangle the mess we've made. Some moments I want nothing more than to blame and shut down. Some moments I am very afraid that I am alone, will remain alone and will not experience love like ours again. Many other moments I feel expansive and connected and I know to the core of my being that this will lead to very good things for us both. Choosing love is always the right choice.

More Brave, More Real

"i know i’m inspired when i read super-intimate tweets by friends & other artists, when i read interviews with diamanda galas talking about her extreme personal details. i feel less alone, more human, more brave, more real. in the end, it’s not about the ass-pimple. in the end, it’s about the humanity, about people willing to share their imperfections & strange little habits so that we don’t feel alone." Amanda Palmer

I came across this quote the other day on Amanda Palmer’s blog and am grateful for the reminder that people respond to deeply intimate sharings. It’s a way of building connection, one of the most important activities of my life.

It’s a new year, a marking of time that lends itself well toward manifesting new intentions...or reviving old ones that need re-commitment. Like telling my story. I am feeling the call to write again, to start telling my story again, as raw and open as I used to when I was blogging to people I didn’t know, people who didn’t live in my local community. I don’t post here as often as I would like because I’ve been afraid to be open here. I have to see the people who will read what I write. I can’t hide behind anonymity here. But I am deciding that’s ok. I am taking my next step in open-heartedeness.

This blog was meant to be a diary of an erotic hostess. How can it be a diary if I don’t write my most personal thoughts about this journey that I am on? And where better to start than by telling the story of what led me here, why I give everything I have to nurturing the Imps community? It’s a compelling story. I have experienced many miracles and traumas in my life. I have been through the school of hard knocks more than once. And out of that I have created a life rich in love and acceptance of who I am...emotionally intense, incredibly vulnerable, long-winded writer and all. :)

I now have a job where I have quite a bit of free time and no one is monitoring what I do with it. I think the wise thing to do with some of that time is write. I miss writing, both the personal sharing of it and the art of crafting thoughts into compelling sentences and paragraphs. I miss processing my life through writing. I miss sharing my evolutionary process with others through the written word.

And the truth is that I want to transition to making a living from something I love, like writing and facilitating evolutionary experiences for others, whether through coaching or producing erotic parties or other transformational activities that I haven’t even imagined yet. I am hoping that by dedicating some time to practicing writing again through my blog, it will lead me to writing articles and/or a book, which will lead to new opportunities for my career.

So the coming weeks will not only become a more consistent documentation of my life now, but I will also start telling the story of what led me here. I think I will begin tonight by sharing a couple of poems I’ve written about my past.