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.

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.

Masochism: Lessons in Pain & Unbounded Power

I have a very special friend with whom I have a complex and strangely intimate relationship. He is special because he is a fellow mystic with whom I can share my journey in the most intimate ways. He is special because he was my closest friend after my mother died and an amazing gift in my grief process (although not always in the nurturing way you might expect). But my friend is also a sadist who will consciously and joyfully take me into the places that scare me both physically and emotionally in order to help me face my fear, heal and evolve. This creates a tension in our relationship.

I am a masochist - spiritually, emotionally and physically. I willingly move toward fear and pain. It forces me to grow, to dive deeply into my own darkness and fly out more spacious. It gives me release. It tests my resilience and endurance. And physical masochism allows me to express and transform spiritual and emotional heartache through my body.

My masochist is powerfully attracted to my friend's sadist. The pain he is capable of inflicting with joy is terrifying, more than I know I can handle. And yet I feel a strong desire to surrender to him, to allow him to push me to my edges.

It isn't the same as the submission I surrender to Knight. My masochist and my servant-submissive archetypes are very different. Masochism isn't about service to another's will. It is about surrender to fear and pain, in the hands of someone I trust not to harm me.

My friend and I have had several impact scenes over the years, but always at parties, always light because they were limited by time and space. He is moving away from Humboldt soon and I have been experiencing a growing desire to see what would happen if we allowed my masochist and his sadist to dance without limitation before he goes. I expressed my desire to him recently and discovered he had the same thought.

Last Saturday night we danced. It was an ordeal. It blew my body, my mind and my heart wide open. It mirrored my current emotional experiences in powerful and excruciating ways. I am overflowing with insights. I believe that I was subconsciously seeking an ordeal all along, knowing that my friend would push me to my edges and beyond.

This dance was different than any other BDSM scene I had done before. It was the most physically and emotionally trying scene I have experienced. We started with dinner and a mystical conversation. As we moved into scene space, we talked about some of the things that came up for me (like how it freaked me out when he slapped my face). I was very vocal, which I usually am not. I talked about feelings and fears I was experiencing in the moment. I admitted when it hurt. I cried torrents of tears. I called him names. I stood up for myself when he taunted me. I even fought back to make it stop and refused to allow certain sensations to continue. It was the first time I refused to completely surrender to the physical play.

But I experienced complete surrender emotionally. I shared my raw pain with no inhibition. My habitual pattern is to keep my pain to myself, both in scene and in life. I pride myself on my endurance, strength and resilience. I hide away with my darkness as much as possible. It scares me to be so vulnerable as to share my raw pain with another and trust that they can and will hold me. But I put it all out there with him. I was afraid he would judge me as weak for carrying on, or that he would disappointed if I didn't go as far as he thought I could, yet I didn't push myself any further than I believed in that moment that I could go. I accepted my limits and I expressed the hurt when I reached them. I believe there is a lesson in this for me in "real life."

This scene was also different because my tolerance for pain has changed. I am far more sensitive. While I can still endure a lot, it feels like pain rather than intense sensation that can be processed and even enjoyed. We couldn't break through to the "forever place" (that magical transcendent bottom space that usually comes from an intense scene). In my head I asked myself several times why I was putting myself through it, why I kept surrendering to more hurt. I eventually refused to take any more. All I could see was fear of pain. I couldn't see the spaciousness on the other side.

I looked into the mirror of the experience and saw that I fear that the heartache I am currently experiencing around poly and my triggers will never end. I am afraid my wounds will never heal and it will hurt forever. And I am frustrated that either path I take -- staying with Knight in a poly relationship or giving him up -- both lead to pain. It feels like I have no choice about hurting.

But they are two distinctly different kinds of heartache. Giving up my relationship with Knight would be the loss of the greatest love I have known and tremendous grief. Facing my demons in poly relationship will (likely/hopefully) lead to more love and a healing of these gaping wounds I've been carrying around and picking at since my mom died. I will come out more spacious and joy-full on the other side.

I think I have become too identified with pain (read the link - it's really good!). I think I might believe that my wounds will be open wounds forever and evolving will always have to hurt. Maybe I believe life itself is painful. Maybe I even believe that I deserve to hurt.

From the link above: "Personally, I haven't run from my pain. I compensated for it. I spent so much time accommodating it, "working with it", paying attention to it –- NOT avoiding it, that I neglected my very agency and power: my joy. Unbridled, unabashedly sweet, essential joyousness."

I think I am afraid of my power unbounded by the limits of fear and heartache. I am afraid of my own bigness. I am reminded of this well-known quote:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I am interested in seeing what unfolds in the coming days because I have a sense that even though we couldn't move me into the "forever place," we broke something open in me energetically. I seem to be extraordinarily sensitive, not just to other people's energies, but the energy of life itself. Those ecstatic states I recently wrote about? More. Bigger. Deeper. I feel the Divine moving through me in strong currents, a sort of electricity through my body and my heart. I feel Oneness, my connectedness to all of life through my Divine Spark.

Lunchtime at the marsh today I really felt recognition that the God in me is the God in everything, which makes me as big as the Universe. It brought me to tears.

One of the things we talked about over dinner before our scene was my frustration with feeling disconnected from the Divine. Even with my new spiritual practices, I have been struggling with really feeling connected to God like I did when I was younger. My intuition is telling me that this new opening to the energy of life may be my door into the personal relationship with the Divine I have been craving.

What might life be like if we are capable of sustaining a sense of Oneness most or all of the time in all that we do? What might our relationships be like if we are aware that we are relating God to God in every conversation and in every touch?

It sounds so far-fetched, doesn't it? Who am I to talk about being God? Yet everything I have studied and experienced in my life has led to this and it is what I strive for -- to know myself and you for the delicious (and quirky) facets of God that we are.

On the practical level, there is something in this for healthy polyamory, too. When talking to my friend recently about my struggles with Knight's growing love for another, he asked the question: what if I see her as an aspect of myself in the Divine? What if I see her as an aspect of the God in me who will love and hurt him differently/uniquely, but just as perfectly as I do for his evolution into his own Divine nature? Where is the room for fear and jealousy in that awareness?

So many big questions. I look forward to living the answers.

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.

I Imagine God Loves in Multiplicity

Holy Moral Dilemma

There is promise here, in this paired place,
of a safe ease without the buzz
of what next, what if, if only.

And yet here, I am sometimes restless.
As if my soul is wired for action, for split
second love and last minute partners,
adventure in each turning.

As if I am alive only
when I walk the edge
of maybe.
As if certainty
is certain death.

And I think to myself:
do I have "commitment issues?"

Perhaps I commit fully
to not knowing.
the way a warrior
commits to battle--
with my life.

Or the way a monk
commits to God,
in each holy moment
with no expectations
for exclusivity.

How special we make each other
when we promise to love
in twosomes, as if we
are the last pair on earth
and our narrow love
will save the day.

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.


November 9, 2009 By Lori Lothian

Love Letter to the Invisible Girl

I feel lighter and happier today than I have since Knight started his new relationship nearly two weeks ago.

Those who know me well have heard me talk a lot about The Invisible Girl since my mother died nearly two years ago. The Girl is an archetype in me, the way that I have come to perceive my inner child. She is the part of me that never outgrew the pain of the invisibility that came from living in the shadow of a narcissistic mother. She is the part of me that doubts I can be seen and loved for who I am. She is the part of me that is terrified of abandonment, and becomes incredibly sad or throws temper tantrums when I feel unseen or I'm afraid I'm losing someone. The Invisible Girl is the part of me that gets triggered and overwhelms me with fear.

I have been trying to work with this part of myself, to really understand our relationship so that I can manage trigger experiences, and eventually learn to prevent them from happening at all. I have spent a lot of time observing her when she freaks out, especially since I have been in relationship to Knight. While I have had incredible insights into the source of my fears and the reactions they stir up in me, I haven't felt like I've made any real progress in managing the Girl or her triggers.

I've learned recently that the problem is when I observe her, I hold a lot of judgment about her, and even hatred for her existence. I have believed that her existence is evidence of my crazy brokenness. I've blamed her for making my emotional life so difficult. I have been incredibly unkind to her.

What I am learning in my studies into radical self-care is that my Girl needs to be mothered...by me. I need to hold and comfort her when she is terrified. I need to accept our feelings rather than resist them. I need to talk her to with kindness and compassion. I need to help her understand that I don't need her to protect me any longer. I need to find out what we truly need to feel safe and secure (as opposed to what she thinks we need).

Yesterday morning Knight had a date with his new lover. I started out the day all right but by early afternoon, when I hadn't received any texts from Knight, the Invisible Girl started throwing fits. Before and after his last date we had flirted by text and it had helped me feel connected to him. I told him how much it helped. So even though I didn't outright ask for it, I expected him to do the same yesterday (unexpressed expectations = inevitable disappointment).

As the Girl started telling me stories about how he's forgotten me, how I don't matter, how he likes his other lover better than me, etc., I realized I needed to do something to shift the momentum. I drove to the marsh to change the scenery and connect to nature, which always helps calm me. As I sat in the car, I was suddenly inspired to write a letter to my Girl.

While I have resisted the idea of communicating with parts of myself through dialogue or letters, as has been suggested by a variety of sources but always felt sort of hokey to me, I'm beginning to understand what a healing practice it is. For the first time I accepted everything that I was feeling and I felt significantly different afterward. I felt lighter. I felt hope that this may not last forever.

I woke up this morning feeling expansive again.

Here is my letter...

Precious Girl -

I know you are scared. You feel like we are in the dark and it reminds you of the closet we used to sit in when we had no one and truly doubted we existed at all. You wonder if we continue to exist if no one is present to witness us. Do we continue to exist to our Love if he is seeing, touching, loving someone else?

But we are real and we are loved. We are a Divine Spark - a child of the Universe. Not only do we exist, but we are amazing. We are so very strong and resilient. We have overcome so much together. And our story is witnessed by many. We are loved by many. We have never been so visible or loved before. We have touched so many lives with our poetry, our art, our writing, our service to community, our friendship, our vulnerability, and our willingness to share our story to be a light on the path to healing for others. There is so very much to love about us.

We are not alone - even when we are. People do not stop loving us just because we aren't interacting. We are loved every minute of every day by everyone that we love every minute of every day, whether we are consciously thinking of them or engaging with them or not. It is no different for those we love than it is for us.

I know you're scared by this new relationship, but the truth is that Knight made us first, to his own detriment, and we still felt invisible. It isn't about his new lover or him. It's about us. It's about me. It's about how I have been rejecting you when you most need to be held.

I am sorry. I am so sorry for making you more invisible by rejecting you and believing I am broken because you are inside of me. I am sorry for hating that you are a part of me. I am sorry I haven't given you the love we need when you are only trying to protect me.

It's not our fault that mom couldn't see past her own crazy to really see us. It's not our fault that the fathers in our life could not see past their own fear and addiction to see that we needed to be saved. It does not make us unlovable that our parents could not love us well. They really did the best they could.

Mom's illness is not our fault, and it's not hers either. I think she was an Invisible Girl, too, and she never figured out how to heal. Let's love her rather than blame her.

Precious Girl - it's time to heal. It is time to believe in ourselves. It's time to believe that we are our own super-hero and we can save our self.

Really look at our life, our story, and see how we have been our own super-hero all along. We saved our self from insanity. We saved our self from violence. We saved my children from a legacy of brokenness. Now it's time to save our self from this fear of something that is no longer real so that we can have the fullness of love we desire.

It's time to rewrite our story together.

Thoughts on Polyamory

Tonight my business partner asked me if I have really considered that polyamory may not be part of who I am right now. I have considered it, very deeply. What I am experiencing is excruciating at times. I have asked myself many, many times if it's worth it. And I absolutely believe that it is, not only because I believe polyamory is an authentic expression of who I am and what I know about love, but because I also know what I know about fear.

My emotional reactions to Knight's new relationship are all based in fear. The topsy-turvy feeling in my belly is fear. I will not live a life based on fear, especially in my relationships. I have already lived fear, contraction and making myself smaller than I really am. I have watched the people I love choose fear. My mother died at the hands of her fear. My ex-husband lives his life through a computer because of his fear. When any of us hurt ourselves or each other, it is always in fear.

I choose love and I am willing to do whatever it takes to get there. I will sit through the fear, the heartache, the bellyaches, the memories, the insights, the breakthroughs and everything else in order to have love. I will work, like I have worked all my life, to create a life of joy, intimacy and creativity with Knight, my tribe and all the loves who come into our lives in the time we are together.

I know that once I work through the fear, I am capable of compersion. I know what it is to be desired and loved by Knight. It's a gift and one that should be shared. I cannot possess it. I cannot ask him to hold it back from others, to diminish his light when he feels drawn to shine it in sexual and/or emotional ways. If the relationship turns out to be long-term, rather than fear Knight's new lover, I would like to get to know her and to understand the opportunity in her for his capacity to love to deepen.

I believe in love. I know with all of my being that love can overcome my fear. Not just the love between Knight and I, but the love for myself that I am slowly growing, and the love from my friends as they bear witness and support me where they can, and the love of the Divine that flows through me when I am not afraid to let it. I believe that God, my community and I can love me into healing. I believe that the light that Knight shines in his love for me inspires me to burn brighter in my capacity to love (and vice versa). I will not walk away from it in fear.

*

As I consider the work of my heart, I keep coming back to something a spiritual teacher told me a few years ago. I was in a state of self-pity about how much trauma I've had to endure in my life. He told me that he felt that my purpose was to learn how to live through these traumas and heal them so that I could help others navigate their way through. Instead of going to university to become a psychologist, I am living the life of healing so that I can share my story and the tools that I am learning to use along the way.

I have overcome so many things: emotional abuse and a neglect as a child, a mentally ill mother, an alcoholic/drug addict stepfather, sexual molestation at 11, teen pregnancy/motherhood, single mothering, a gun to my head, rape resulting in another child, more single mothering, Borderline Personality Disorder (and all the consequences of acting out), and an extremely unhealthy and violent marriage.

What I am experiencing now is nothing in comparison to those traumas. This isn't trauma, this is fear of trauma. I can overcome this incredible fear that came from all of those things I have experienced. What I am afraid of is what happened before, not what is happening now. What is happening now is that I am in the most loving and healthy relationship of my life (even with its issues). What is happening now is that I have found someone willing to give me everything I have ever wanted -- to be known and loved for everything that I am, light and darkness, and to grow consciously together towards less fear and deeper love.

Sitting with my fear and feelings while my lover has a joyful, loving experience with another person is not the most horrible thing in the world. Facing my fear so that I can have compersion for his other relationships is something worth working towards. I believe that all relationships have spiritual purpose--that we are drawn to people who can help us wake up to greater love, if we do the work in relationship to them. If this is true, then every woman that Knight is authentically drawn to has the potential of waking him up to more love, which then allows him to share more love with me. The same goes for me and my other relationships when they happen.

I have been looking for love, and actively desiring to overcome the fear in my heart and home, since I was 14 years old and started reading every book that Leo Buscaglia wrote. I have known about and believed I am poly since I was 21. If you look at my bookshelf you will find many titles with the word Love, or which have ideas about how to experience more love in life. My life is about love, experiencing it in every possible way, as deep as it can possibly go. I can't and I won't choose anything else.

I believe that everything about who Knight is, including his authentic desire for polyamory, is here to wake me up to greater love. I believe that what I am going through right now is absolutely necessary if I am to have the vibrant life of love and creativity that I desire. I also believe it's absolutely necessary so that I can help my community move into lives of vibrant love, too.

I had the thought today that maybe there are other people who struggle with emotional and mental health issues that desire to be poly, but maybe having a more difficult time like I am because of brain chemistry or really fucked up childhoods or whatever. When I read resources about polyamory, what I don't see is someone addressing the deeper issues that result in intense jealousy and fear-based reactions to our partner's other relationships. Some of us have psychological (and spiritual) work to do in order for poly to be workable. I wonder how many people might be giving up too soon because they don't know what they need to make it work?

Just questions for now, but possibly another piece of the puzzle. There are a lot of serendipities pointing the direction towards me doing work with people around emotional-mental-spiritual health.

Blessing to Lovers

My love, you are a river fed by many streams

I bless all who shape you,

The lovers whose delights dance patterns on your back,

Those who carve your channels deeper, broader, wider,

Whitewater and backwater lovers,

Swamp lovers, sun-warmed estuary lovers,

Lovers with surface tension,

Lovers like boulders,

Like ice forming and breaking,

Lovers that fill and spill with the tides.

I bless those who teach you

and those who please you

and those who hurt you.

All those who make you who you are.

--Starhawk

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.

Sacred Sexuality

An aspect of reclaiming the Sacred in my every day life is putting intention towards Sacred Sexuality. Sex is a significant aspect of my creative and loving expression -- as a lover, as an artist and as a community builder. I have long desired to unify my sexuality and spirituality, but have not put real intention toward it.

I desire to relate to my lover(s) and friends from a Sacred perspective, where I express my devotion to them and longing to merge in Oneness with them through acts of intimacy. I seek to experience my sexuality as an expression of love for both the Divine Spark and the unique person with whom I am blessed to share intimate experiences of union in primal hunger, lust, pleasure, sensuality, cuddling, kissing, play and/or sexual fulfillment. I know that bringing the Sacred into my sexual and relationship life will lead towards greater experiences of love.

I desire for the people I love to attain their greatest potential in life and in love. Within the practice of polyamory, when I can recognize sex as an expression of love and longing to merge with the Divine Spark in another, it no longer feels like a threat to my relationship with my lover. It becomes an experience of shared love and abundance. It is a beautiful gift that I wish for my lover and their other partner(s) to experience with one another. When I live from the spiritual perspective that all relationships are Divinely Ordained, and that there are gifts that each person offers another for their potential evolution into deeper experiences of love, then compersion naturally flows for my lover's other relationships. I know that if my lover is drawn to someone for intimacy, no matter how the relationship manifests, they must have a potential gift to offer him for his spiritual development. In light of that, I desire to never again allow my fears to compromise another's (or my own!) expression of intimacy with others.

*

Last night I transformed my experience of longing for Knight into a rich sacred-sexual experience. After writing the blog post, I was considering how much I miss kissing Knight's cock in the mornings, which led me to thoughts about cock worship, which led to a fantasy about a sacred-sexual experience of worshiping his cock as a manifestation of the masculine creative life force. Instead of imagining a typical blowjob, I visualized an experience of spending time in devotion to his cock as an expression of my devotion to him -- both the man and the Divine Spark within him. Instead of having a quick self-pleasuring session with the goal of orgasm, I lingered with the fantasy, exploring it in rich detail as touched myself softly and slowly. My arousal was so intense that even though I did finally release, I am still carrying the arousal with me today.

My body is buzzing with arousal. I carried it with me to the Marsh for my walk at lunch and it was greatly enhanced by the energy I could feel in the nature around me. The wind embraced me wildly. Bird songs filled my ears with songs of desire. I felt deeply connected to the flowers and trees. I slipped into a private place, leaned against a tree, and deepened my arousal by caressing my clit. It may be the most erotic experience I've had with nature.

*
"He who desires perfection of the soul must worship the lingam." - Linga Purana

In Sanskrit, the cock is called Lingam. Lingam means "wand of light." I love the idea of meditating on the cock as a wand of light -- a symbol of light in the man and the Light in the Universe.

I have had a love affair and worshiped the female counterpart, the Yoni, for years. I had a multi-year art and writing project about the Yoni. I have deeply explored the Sacred within the Yoni from a variety of perspectives. And when I am gifted with a sexual experience with a woman, I always experience the Sacred in worshiping her yoni with my mouth and hands.

But as I've written before , I had a much more complicated relationship with the lingam until Knight. It seems that my love and adoration for his lingam continues to deepen.

The difference between last night's fantasy and so many I've had before involving Knight's cock is that this time it was purely about the expression of my devotion rather than about what inspires my own arousal. Usually I fantasize about cock worship within the context of submission to Knight's dominance. I love it when he grabs my head and "forces" me to suck his cock. I love it when he fucks my mouth to the point of making me gag and taking my breath away. But this fantasy wasn't like that. It had nothing to do with force or dominance. In fact, it was more about his surrender to my devotion. I imagined a love-making session that is focused entirely on him and the pleasure to be derived from worshiping his body with my own.

Tonight is our only night together for the forseeable future, due to both the logistics of other commitments and the uncertainty around our unfolding relationship. Rather than take the time for granted by just doing "whatever", I desire to bring Sacred intention to our time together. I am going offer him the gift of my devotion through an experience of cock worship as I fantasized it last night and today. I've done some reading on lingam worship in the Tantra traditions for inspiration into both the symbolic and practical. I hope to share an experience that will be as much a Sacred Gift to him as the cathartic scene he gave me Saturday night was to me.

***Image Source: Willow Arlenea