The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Each Other

"I have experienced tremendous tragedies in my life, ninety percent of which never happened." ~ Mark Twain

I am thinking a lot about the stories we tell ourselves about each other - the assumptions we make about the other person's words, actions and behaviors - whether our lover, our friend, or the stranger in the grocery store.

More often than not, it seems like we tell ourselves the worst possible fear stories, rather than look for the best possible love stories.

For instance, we might tell ourselves Susie is quiet because she's snobby and judgmental, when really she's just shy and has trouble with small talk (a story people have told themselves about me). Or maybe our boyfriend knows we have a trigger around him talking to that one woman, so he must be hurting us on purpose by talking to her (and she's trying to steal him), when really he's helping her out with a genuine problem. If someone's not answering a text, email or phone call, they must be ignoring us or have a problem with us, when really they're just very busy and maybe haven't even seen what we've sent yet.

We especially tell stories about the misunderstandings and conflicts we have with each other. That's where misunderstandings come from, we tell ourselves a different story than what the other person intended instead of getting clarity from them. When someone lashes out to hurt us, we tell ourselves they are intentionally hurtful, when actually they are acting out of their own pain.

We make these fear-full assumptions about each other all the time, and then we make an emotional investment in the stories we tell, creating our own suffering in the process.

This is important to me because my last broken relationship fell victim to this all too human tendency in irreparable ways. I was heartbroken because someone told themselves the worst possible stories about things I said or did - even accused me of intentional cruelty - and invested so much energy in those stories that the truth couldn't discharge the negative emotion and bring understanding. I will own that I also told myself stories about them that kept intimacy from deepening. When misunderstandings or conflicts arise, everyone involved starts telling themselves blaming and shaming stories about each other, most or all of which are untrue.

This is also important to me because I'm noticing how I'm doing it in some of my new relationships, although I'm mostly catching myself in the process and shifting the story, rather than taking my false stories and suffering to the other person. Sometimes this takes minutes, sometimes it takes hours. But I strive to come back to the love story unfolding between me and the other, rather than let the fear stories take hold and trigger emotional reactions.

The craziest thing about this kind of story-telling is that we do it the most with the people who love us most deeply -- the very people we should be trusting are always acting with the best intention towards us, even when they make a mistake that hurts us. Over the last couple months I've caught myself telling fearful stories about my business partners, now that I've stepped down as hostess and am trying to figure out my role as a founder-but-no-longer-hostess. I even had a nightmare about it. I've feared that they will think I'm acting entitled in an inappropriate way when I tell them how I still desire to be involved. The truth is that they are as confused as I am about my place and they are certainly open to exploring what's comfortable for all of us regarding my new roles. I also tell myself fearful stories about my friends, assuming that if someone doesn't ask me for time that they don't want to connect with me, when really they've got incredibly busy lives but would make time if I asked for it, or maybe even have their own stories that hold them back from reaching out to me.

I also notice that while we know that we are here for each other in any possible way, we still don't always ask for support, a listening ear, a hug or touch, or whatever we might need that would make our struggles a little easier to bear. We call each other family and yet we don't fully trust each other's deep, deep desire to connect. We all desire to experience love as much as we possibly can. And yet we hold ourselves back all the time. And tell ourselves stories to justify keeping our distance.

I am striving to notice my fear stories and stop them before they gain emotional momentum. I am also focusing on the love stories unfolding in my life with deeper awareness than ever before.

I am sure this will be an on-going work for me. What about you? What fear stories can you change into love stories?

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.

The Free Pass at the Campout

Speaking of living the Love Story...

Last Saturday was the staff party for the Prom. Two weeks after every large event, the Imps have a staff decompression and appreciation party. This time we had a campout at a lovely spot with redwoods and wild flowers in a lodge with a giant fire place in the center of the room.

Knight and I started negotiating the staff party soon after the break-up. We knew it could be a difficult experience. We have been to every Imps event as a couple since we met. Most of the time I was convinced that I would only stay for the decompression. I believed that the grief would be too overwhelming and it wouldn't be good for me (or anyone else) to stay.

A couple days before the event, I asked Knight what his ideal situation for the staff party would be and he indicated that he desired to have a shared play experience, which ultimately led to an expressed openness to sharing intimacy on our own or with others. At first it took me some time to figure out if sharing intimacy at the party would create more suffering or not, but then the question changed to what the most loving choice would be. We could focus on our heartache, attend the party and keep our distance from one another, restraining the love and desire that still flows, being awkward and sad. Or we could take an expanded view and give ourselves a free pass to express our love for each other without inhibition or attachment.

So we chose love. It was beautiful. It was healing. And if it is the last time we are intimate, I couldn't have wished for a more joyful ending to our lover relationship. We were so incredibly present to each other and the moment. There was no grief (until the morning after). We saw each other with eyes of pure love. I believe that I see him more clearly now than I ever have. As we've untangled our entanglements and talked through our processes with openness, I have come to see and understand him better -- who he is, how he feels, why he experiences the world and our relationship the way he does. As I witness him stand in his integrity and authenticity around the necessity of change in our relationship, I see a strength I didn't know was there. As I experience his openheartedness with me, despite how I've hurt him, I finally see the profound depth of his capacity to love unconditionally.

We don't know if we will be intimate again. We agreed that nothing would change as far as our relationship transition is concerned. We have no idea what we're transitioning into. We still have processing and healing to do. We are still walking the tightrope between honoring our authentic impulses toward intimacy and breaking our habits of each other. But our experience over the weekend gives me hope. Whatever our relationship looks like, we are already transitioning to a deeper, more present experience of love. Our individual emotional and spiritual evolutions are being transformed by the continued unfolding of our relationship. We have the potential to write ourselves into an amazing love story that defies social convention.

I am voraciously reading The Future of Love by Daphne Rose Kingma tonight. I am deeply inspired by her vision of love and relationship. My spiritual longing has been ignited by this experience and the book is reconnecting me with a spiritual perspective of my unfolding. It has been too long since I consciously nurtured my spirituality. I feel inspired and excited. I feel as though I am coming home to myself again. I hope it is the same for him.

Choosing to Live a Love Story

"That same circuitry is active in your brain today in the amygdala, hippocampus, and related structures. It's hard-wired to scan for the bad, and when it inevitably finds negative things, they're both stored immediately, plus made available for rapid recall.

In contrast, positive experiences (short of million dollar moments) are usually registered through standard memory systems, and thus need to be held in conscious awareness 10 to 20 seconds for them to really sink in.

In sum, your brain is like velcro for negative experiences and teflon for positive ones.

In the moment, this built-in bias puts a negative spin on the world and intensifies our stress and reactivity. Over time, these experiences build up in what’s called “implicit memory,” casting a glum shadow over mood and outlook, and darkening one’s interior landscape. Yes, these hard-wired inclinations have been evolutionarily successful, but Mother Nature cares about grandchildren, not about dukkha."

- Rick Hanson, psychologist, and Rick Mendius, neurologist

Something I have known intellectually for years is finally sinking in experientially -- where we put our attention defines, and even creates, our experience. The way to cultivate attention is to live with intention.

I spend far too much time putting my attention on shadows. Rather than intentionally cultivating gratitude and appreciation for the abundance of goodness I have in my life, I have been focused on not-enoughness, disappointment and other negative judgments of myself and the people in my life. Especially within my changing relationship.

(Oh goodness, I need something to call the man I love with all my being but is no longer my "partner." From now on I shall call him Knight. 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 is a truly good man. He is a good provider who makes a living doing something he loves, which is serving and facilitating healing for others. He is dedicated to family. He is fun and made me laugh a lot. He has a strong masculine/feminine balance and is overall a great communicator. He is remarkably accepting and non-judgmental of mine and other people's quirks and shadows. He is smart and creative. He works toward his own evolution and encourages others in their work. He is curious and adventurous. He is incredibly sexy and a wonderful lover. He is definitely a great catch. I had so many moments with him where I consciously thought about how blessed I was to be in the closest possible relationship to him. I was consistently surprised by the beauty in him -- his openness, his tremendous capacity and desire for love, and his insights into the human condition. I could see the Divine Spark in him and it is so very beautiful.

And yet as his quirks and shadows emerged over time, I took them personally and paid them too much attention. I allowed them to feed my fear stories. I became emotionally volatile. When a situation with him would set off a trigger, I would sink into the fear and shut him out. My communication would become violent -- passive aggressive, blaming, criticizing -- which would set off the fear triggers in him and send us into a tailspin as we tried to inflict pain on one another in some twisted sense of self protection. Our shadows weren't dancing well together and we didn't put the needed intention into learning how to dance with grace. We protected ourselves right out of our relationship. Funny how I don't feel any more safe or secure now.

Instead of focusing on how Knight was choosing me as a life partner, to the point of making compromises for me, I focused on my fears around his desire to be polyamorous. Instead of maintaining gratitude and appreciation for all the consistent ways he supported me, listened to me, encouraged my growth, and expressed his love and desire for me, I tripped out on him when I misunderstood him or he was self-absorbed or fell down in his own fearful stories. Instead of practicing compassion and holding space for his experience, which would have deepened our intimacy and strengthened our bond, I became self-absorbed in my fear and pushed him away.

*
I believe that I have been too focused on my own shadow. While we cannot bring our shadows into the light without paying serious attention to them, I believe that we can focus too much on our "deficiencies" and live in a consistent fear of fucking up. We pay so much attention to our fears that we bring them to life. I have seen this pattern in others, but I have never consciously experienced it in my own life like I am now.

In recent months I have had to face the shadow of violence within me. I have become aware of how I communicate violently and how I sometimes hurt people I love with my words and my tone. And it has made me afraid. I am so very afraid of hurting anyone ever again. I am judging and blaming myself for the pain I've caused. I am perceiving judgment all around me, believing that people see me as a fraud, incapable of living the love I claim to be striving for and ask them to strive for. I have been so afraid that I started worrying the crazies might be coming back -- or never really went away. I have been afraid that I will do the unforgivable, and living so deep in that fear that I created exactly what I was afraid of. I did something that may be forgivable, but has lost me one of the most precious gifts the Universe has given me. How can I not feel like a failure? I don't think I have failed so big. While I can usually find the opportunity, and even the beauty, in every failure or disappointment in my life, I can't imagine how that is possible with this. I have lost the love of my life, someone with whom I feel more potential for a love-filled life than I have ever felt before. How do I find the grace to forgive myself and believe that I am deserving and capable of a healthy, loving relationship?

Instead of writing a love story, which is what I believed myself to be doing, I was writing a fear story and brought my fear to life. I don't know that I have ever understood my own creative power so well. It's time to put that power to better uses.

One of the questions I am living is how can I trust the Universe if I cannot trust myself? How can I trust someone elses love for me if I cannot trust my own love? I am more violent with myself than I am with anyone else. I have voices inside, voices that I spend much too much time listening to, that tell me I am a failure, that I have no right attempting to make change in the world when I have so much change to make in myself, and that I should hide away with my fucked-up-ness. My saboteur runs rampant in me and keeps me from doing all that I am inspired to do. I am terribly unkind to myself. I neglect my body to the point that I am living with near daily discomfort or pain. I strive to take good care of the people I love -- my children, my tribe and the greater community I serve -- but I don't take care of myself. I try to meet everyone else's expectations -- sometimes to my own detriment -- and yet I don't feel deserving to ask for what I need or desire from others.

I desire to be living a love story, not a fear story. And not just with Knight, but with myself. Oh wow, I just realized a whole new layer to what is unfolding. I have been unable to forgive my mother for choosing a fear story over her love for me. I have also struggled to forgive my ex-husband for choosing a fear story over his love for me and my children. I have judged them, blamed them and struggled to forgive them because they are a mirror for my own fear choices. I have been doing the same damn thing, choosing to give attention to my fear more than my love.

When my mother died, a friend told me it was an opportunity to be free. I have convinced myself that the path to freedom is digging into my wounds. I have given tremendous power to my wounds, allowing them to disrupt the flow of love in my life. Every difficult moment I had with the Knight (and in all of my other relationships) was based in a fear story that reinforced my wounding. Once I was emotionally triggered by a situation, I couldn't break free of the wounded story. Instead I fed it and reinforced it by setting limitations for myself and our relationship.

I haven't broken free of my mother's hold on my life, I have become her.

"The whole world is waiting for someone to open their heart first." Byron Katie

This is my wake up call. I have always had a passion for self development because even though I was born into such a deep fear story, I was also born with a deep intuitive knowing of what living a Love Story can be. I have never been able to explain it properly to people, but I can feel the potential of living a Love filled life. I can feel it within myself, within others, and in relationship between myself and others. I work so hard on myself and on my relationships because I am striving to create that Love experience. I work to bring information and experiences to others that will encourage the Love because I am striving to create what I feel is possible. I believe in Love fiercely and I will do whatever it takes to open myself to it to my fullest capacity and encourage others to do the same. Right now that means ending the fear story I've been living and intentfully writing my Love Story.

Thank you for being a part of it.

"You suppose you are the trouble, but you are the cure. You suppose you are the lock on the door, but you are the key that opens it. It is too bad that you want to be someone else. You don't see your own face, your own beauty, yet no face is more beautiful than yours." ~ Rumi

Standing My Own Witness

There are so many things I desire to write about tonight. The ideas are flowing faster than I can keep up with them. I am titling future blog posts so I can remember the topics that inspire me and hope that when I get to them, it will be right timing and all I desire to say will be said.

But right now my heart tells me to write about this…

I received an anonymous love and gratitude note in my mailbox yesterday.

April, Thank you for everything you do and are. You share so much of yourself and I know sometimes you don’t feel appreciated, but you always are.

As you heal your heart, call on your creativity. Make something beautiful. Pour your love and disappointment, your joy and anguish into the art. Heal yourself through your joy of creating. You are an amazing woman, and have strengths that are admirable.

Love, A Sister on this Journey

I am deeply touched. I feel incredibly loved. The Universe is totally looking out for me right now. Many messengers of love and guidance are being sent my way.

One of the primary causes of my relationship strife has been a sense of not being fully supported, not always being held when I think or feel I need to be, and fear that I am not really seen or loved. It is so incredibly easy (and lazy) to believe such things. It takes work—diligence, intention, discipline—to consciously maintain an experience of abundance.

Right now, even in my grief, the abundance cannot be ignored. The Universe is showering me with blessings. I am experiencing being supported and held, witnessed and loved every single day. But it isn’t always so apparent. When visible, audible, and touchable experiences have spaces between them, it is easy to fall into the old stories. I start telling myself the stories of invisibility--the stories that say I am not seen, so I am not loved.

Rewriting the old stories is hard, hard work. I am the daughter of a mentally ill, narcissistic, addicted mother. My bio father disappeared before my birth, my adopted father had his own dysfunction and did not protect us from my mother’s sickness, and my stepfather was an alcoholic and drug addict. Instead of my needs being met for proper emotional development, I experienced trauma after trauma. Most of my existence was about surviving neglect or violence of some kind. My brain was programmed from birth to think that I am invisible – I am not seen, I always live in the shadow of others – and I do not deserve emotional support. I was also programmed to believe that violence—physical or verbal—and emotional manipulation is normal and acceptable behavior.

I have been consciously working on changing the stories for a long time. As a teenager I knew there was another way of being and I sought it. I started reading self-development books at 15. I read all of Leo Buscaglia’s books. I read Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled and Christina Baldwin’s Life’s Companion. I also took religion very seriously. I have been in love with God for as long as I can remember. I have always known that there is a place of healing for me in a combination of Psychology and Mysticism.

And then there was the writing. I have always been a writer. I wrote letters to my friends and started journaling in junior high. I wrote out all the heartache that I was experiencing at home. I wrote to connect with others. And eventually, I wrote myself sane.

I was diagnosable with Borderline Personality Disorder when I was a young adult (that is a whole story of its own that will come one day). I tried many approaches to mental health. I took medications. Zoloft for depression. Something else for panic attacks. And I went to therapy with a few different providers. Medication managed my symptoms but didn't change any stories. Therapy was intermittently effective. At least I was witnessed and I could talk myself into insights. But I needed more engagement and guidance than therapy offered. I needed to really understand myself. I didn’t just need to be listened to, I needed to learn.

I took my healing into my own hands. I read everything I could get my hands on about psychology, consciousness and various aspects of spirituality. And I wrote. I wrote a lot. I have a trunk full of journals. I wrote about everything I was experiencing and how I was evolving. I wrote about everything I dream I could be. I also wrote creatively. Poetry, creative nonfiction, and essays/articles.

I truly believe that writing saved my life and by extension my children’s lives. I believe I am a good mother with fairly healthy (not broken) children because I studied and wrote myself into enough emotional health to meet their developmental needs.

I stopped writing for most of my 7 year marriage. I didn’t have the time or solitary space for it. And I couldn’t risk what I would have to face about myself and the life I was choosing if I did wrote it down. I knew I wasn’t living an authentic life. I traded a sense of security (believing I was seen and loved) for an authentic expression of everything that I am. I did whatever I had to do to maintain the illusion. With him that meant making myself as small and afraid as him. I stopped doing nearly everything that really mattered to me. Until I met my mama-writers group and I wrote myself out of my marriage and into a significantly more authentic life.

Then the Imps happened and I stopped writing again. I have been so busy with being a hostess and developing a multitude of amazing relationships. I have immersed myself in relationship again. It’s a much healthier immersion than my marriage, but it’s still immersion and it has shadow. I am so hungry to be seen and loved that I try to spend every minute with someone else or doing Imps work that makes me visible in the community. I haven’t made the time and space for what I need – to write, to study, and to nurture a relationship with the Divine.

The result? I have been out of control emotionally and now I have lost a life-partner relationship with the love of my life because of it. This is my wake up call. I am going to heal myself through writing. I am going to meet my own needs through acts of self-care. I am going to find my Center again and consciously strive to maintain it.

My “Sister of the Journey” has affirmed that I am on the right path. Right now my creativity is writing, telling my story. I am “pouring my love and disappointment, my joy and anguish” into this blog. I am believing that my own story is beautiful.

As I’ve thought about the growth of the Imps and my desire to do work-of-my-heart, I’ve considered turning this blog into part of our/my marketing strategy. I've been reading about the business of blogging so that I can sell myself. But that’s not what I need right now. I just need to write for my healing so that I don’t ever have to experience giving up the love of my life again. And so that I never hurt another human being like I have hurt him…and myself. It doesn’t matter how many people read this or if some people don’t like that my posts are so long and personal. The people who are meant to will read it. What matters is that I tell my truth and witness my own experience.

Wow! More serendipitous support. A friend of mine asked me the other day, “How can you stand as your own witness?” I see now that this blog is the answer. I can trust that I have a story to tell, a story worthy of being documented and witnessed, if only by myself.

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.

Where I Fall Short

I have been thinking about the community a lot the last couple of days. There has been a discussion at the Imps Yahoo Group about social status, cliques, and potentials of real or perceived inclusion and exclusion in the community. I have found myself feeling defensive when faced with the idea that anyone may feel excluded from our community or think that we are an exclusive club. I realize my defensiveness is based in sadness - heartbreak that there are people in our community experiencing isolation and loneliness, feelings that they don’t belong and that somehow they aren’t “enough” of one thing or too much of another to be included. I know those feelings too well, which is why I try so incredibly hard to create an atmosphere of acceptance while holding ourselves to standards of healthy interaction (we love you, we want to know you, but we do ask that you at least try to interact with us in a healthy, uplifting way; we'll help you back up when you fall down and hope you'll do the same for us).

We make big effort towards letting people know that our mission is to accept, embrace, and hold space for anyone and everyone who seeks a safe space for their healthy creative and sexual expression. We train our staff in inclusivity. We make decisions all the time that are based on principles of inclusivity rather than our own feelings about individuals and we ask others to do the same. It’s not easy, but it’s incredibly rewarding to watch people who are visibly struggling with insecurity and unconscious/unhealthy social behaviors integrate into the community because we seek out their light, we practice forgiveness, we are willing to risk awkwardness, and we are learning open and healthy communication together.

But the reality is that I can recognize all this and also recognize my own falling short of being an example of the openness I desire the community to practice. The thread about ageism and single older men being perceived as creeps makes me aware that I suffer from judgments about people that keep me from interacting with them. I also struggle with typical insecurities that I will not be liked or that no one is interested in what I have to say. And I struggle with light-hearted social interactions. What we call “small-talk” is an ability that I do not naturally possess in most situations. I am wired to talk about how I feel rather than what I think or what I do, which is usually a more honest and complicated conversation than most people want to have at a social event. So I struggle both with not knowing what to say to people when I have a chance to interact, and fearing that if I talk about what comes into my mind (heart) that they won’t want to interact with me. In most opportunities I have to start or continue a conversation, I choose to just stay quiet.

As I wonder about what contributes to a person’s perception that there is an exclusive clique(s) in the Imps community, I wonder what people perceive in me and my quiet. I know in high school, when I was painfully shy, some people thought I was snobby because I didn’t interact and that maybe I thought I was better than other people. Does my quiet make people think I’m not interested in them or think that I am better than them? Is this compounded by being at the center of the community as a Hostess? Any position of leadership is accompanied by some negative perceptions, whether deserved or not. I had a staff member tell me a few months ago that people are intimidated by us because of our position. I can’t comprehend being perceived as intimidating when I’m sitting here so damn afraid that you won’t like me, and yet I fear my quiet is much of what may make me intimidating.

I’ve realized that if I don’t give people a story, a context for my behavior, then they are going to make up their own story about me and what my actions mean. So here I am, telling you my story...that I am experiencing the same things that many of you are when you come to our events. I’m scared and I don’t really know how to be myself around you. I am fighting “to be nobody but myself.” I am learning how to express myself, what matters to me. Despite the quiet you see, what matters to me most is connecting with YOU. You have no idea how much I love you, how much I think about you, how much I want to witness the stories of your unfolding. My desire is to break free from the fear of being myself with you and in doing so, to help you break free from your fear, too. My desire is to create a space, a community, where everyone can absolutely be accepted for who they are from the moment they walk in the door. Is that an unrealistic Utopian dream? Maybe, but does that make it any less worth striving for?

“Wanting and desire are potent, and they lie latent, dormant, silenced for so long – sometimes our entire life. Other voices (religion, family of origin, partners, work, culture) tell us in no uncertain terms that to want or desire, is selfish, dangerous, and a huge set-up for disappointment. Those voices are lying. They are the voices that keep us from being ourselves; that keep us from being “nobody but myself.”

Acknowledging that we have desire(s) – that we want, is what awakens everything that makes us who we truly are, “nobody but myself.” It’s the best weapon in e. e. cumming’s fight and mine. I’m betting yours, as well...Have faith that what you want and desire is inspired, beautiful, powerful, and worthy. Have faith that your truest voice, your inside voice, is the one that the rest of us most need to hear.” Ronna Detrik

Autobiography by Poetry

I Know (For Virginia Woolf)

I.

“Five hundred a year stands for the power to contemplate,…”

when you grow up
eating white beans
and ham-hocks,
peeing off the back porch
of a condemned house
without plumbing,
and wearing your mother’s
wedding dress
for eighth grade graduation,
self confidence
is as unattainable
as your own room

when you birth
your first child
at the age of seventeen,
learn neither friendship
nor romance will
play in your sandbox,
and survive on three hundred
a month and food stamps
to earn your diploma,
the dream of composing poetry
is as impractical
as a prom date

when madness
creeps in to take
your wits hostage,
a naïve choice in a lover
leads to his gun
in your bedroom,
and your second child
is conceived in rape
rather than love,
freedom of mind
is as hopeless
as a safe place to sleep

when your days become
blurred snapshots,
writing research papers
while nursing at midnight,
picking lice from your
daughter’s corkscrew curls,
and crumpling into bed
alone and weeping,
the power to contemplate
is as unlikely
as finding a devoted father
for your children

when winning bread
means struggling
to keep poverty
from possessing your family,
success entices you
to give up your imagination,
and the american dream
attempts corporate
conquest of your heart,
your greatest power
lies in your courage
to pick up a pen and write


II.

“…a lock on the door means the power to think for oneself.”

my stories are not
hidden behind wiggling
door handles,
my insights strut between
silly songs and giggles
with my babies

my stories are not
opened with brass keys
tinkling on a silver ring,
my brainstorms swirl and burst
among homemade bubbles
in the back yard

my stories are not
bound by scrawls on paper
or pixels on a computer screen,
my tragedies bleed from
tiny fingers with splinters
and paper cuts

my stories do not
wait for a quiet room
to reveal themselves,
they run naked through
my house and office
when least expected

my stories learn with me
that privacy is a luxury
a mother must demand
after so many years of interrupted
movies, meals, showers,
and sexual tanglings

my stories gather in my lap
each day as the sun sets,
where I kiss them one by one,
tuck them in a pocket
of my heart and whisper,
“Our time will come."

* * *

This poem was written as part of a submission to a competition for a writing grant for women, in response to Virginia Woolf's quote about a woman needing a room of her own and an independent income in order to be able to write.