 At 42, I learned how to experience and express healthy love. And it is better than I ever imagined. But first, I got dumped.
Our breakup was the wildest wave I’ve ever surfed. I had an extremely difficult time coping with it all. The animal of my body seemed to experience it as a death. ”It’s just a break up. I’ve gone through this so many times. I’m good at getting over break ups! Why am I still grieving?” I had so much support surrounding me… incredible friends, community, helpers, nature, a solid meditation practice, an ability to hear my guides. Still, though, the animal of my body wouldn’t stop grieving. “This is my person. I know this. So why are we not together? Why couldn’t we make it work? Am I wrong? Did I do something wrong? Am I crazy?” I began to notice that when I believed myself to be crazy, when I believed that my curriculum was to “just get over it and move forward,” the animal of my body protested with grief. However, when I let myself know what I knew, when I allowed myself to align with my own inner truth, the animal of my body calmed. Seeing is believing. You’ve heard that phrase, yes? I was asked to flip that on it’s head, I was asked to believe what I was sensing without a scrap of evidence in the outer world.
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 I was 41 when I met the love of my life.
I still remember seeing Marco emerge from around the corner. All 6’5” of him… tall, dark and handsome. (sexy Abe Lincoln! Shhh, don’t tell him I said that!) I had just finished a breath workshop and I was feeling super high and giddy. A little too high and giddy. We sat in lawn chairs and I asked if he could talk cause I was out of it. And so he did. I found him fascinating, intelligent, articulate, and strange. A good kind of strange. My kind of strange. We ended up talking til late into the night. And that was kind of it, for both of us. In the first 7 days, we racked up countless hours of intense, deep, and adventurous conversation, staying up till all hours of the night, no matter how much I would insist on getting off the phone early that night. Not a single subject was raised that we didn’t find hours of exploration to dive into. The conversations made us high. It felt like we were traveling to Jupiter and back. And yet, it was real, authentic, grounded. It was balanced. It was effortless. I was just being myself. And he was just being himself. And look at all the fun we had just being these two Koo-koo birds together! I had met my match. “Holy sh*t. THIS is what that’s like!” Oddly enough, despite having waited 41 years for this, despite having worked diligently for 6 years for this… I felt calm. Meeting Marco, feeling his energy and our energy together, was incredibly calming. I felt at home. I didn’t have to do all the things I once did… please him, save him, prove that I could be something he needed. I was just me. And that was the thing he loved most. >>> Record scratch. <<< Two weeks into our blossoming love-fest and all night talk-a-thons, we hit a major speed bump. Wait, that’s an understatement. It felt more like stepping on a landmine. Our Higher Selves decided we were ready for the LOVE SUPER BOWL!  I got truly, deeply, purely happy at 39.
This wasn’t a “blink of an eye” kind of happy. This was a step by step process of learning what it was that made me happy, giving myself permission to pursue it, and then living in the increased states of inner peace and happiness that bloomed as a result. I found out I loved kirtan and ecstatic dance. After having done seated meditation for years, I found an explosion of God-connection through song and movement. I moved from LA to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and got to remember how much my soul delights in rivers and waterfalls. I spent hours on the phone with my conscious girlfriends, dissecting our dating lives to discover where we were stuck in limited thinking, not-enough-ness, or just plain ole’ inauthentic BS. (one of my primo BFF’s above!) I took workshops on Mary Magdalene, Intimacy, Tantra, & Non-Violent Communication. I had hard conversations with a bestie. I saw unhealthy patterns that felt terrifying to communicate. I spoke up in the name of learning to do better, learning to be authentic, learning to have healthy communication. I had a lover. Like, a bonafide lover. One who was there for playfulness and pleasure, and nothing more. It was so liberating! Through this pursuit of happiness and authenticity, I was actually amplifying LOVE itself, from the inside out. The false ideas of love could not hold in this newer frequency… they had to let go. Instead I learned….
My relationships began to take on a deeper kind of connection. My friendships had more room for authentic communication. My clients got a deeper, more present version of me. And I was … well, I was just plain ole’ happy.  I got divorced at 36.
At the time, I remember feeling pretty solid in my sense of self, and guessing that an amazing and deeply committed “spiritual partnership” was right around the corner 😂 Instead there was 1.) Hot, young dude, 2.) Polyamorous dude, 3.) Older dude who just got out of a 30 year marriage, and 4.) Dude that didn’t really want a relationship (which was basically all of them). From where I sit now, it was no surprise that I kept calling in these types of "relationships"... but at the time, I was so confused. I thought I was loving so fully, why were these relationships so painful and unfulfilling? I was loving fully, but in an imbalanced way that had no chance of creating true intimacy.
Turns out that most everything I thought about love…. was distorted. There was some good stuff in that mix, but there was also a whole lotta imbalance (and codependency). I had to muddle through that curriculum time and time again until I could no longer stand the experience of feeling so depleted, unfulfilled, and frustrated. Finally, I didn’t want that feeling anymore, I wanted love to feel expansive, liberating, and nurturing. I wanted healthy love. Something had to change. Of course, that something was me. I had to change so much of what I knew about love, and it began by understanding and loving myself more deeply. What I want to say to you today, is that LOVE will find YOU! If you are calling in unhealthy relationship dynamics, and if you are ready to create a different experience…. if you are willing to see the truth about yourself and your woundings, if you are willing to know something more, if you are willing to know more of real, healthy love… then LOVE will find YOU. The perfect book, the most healing workshops and practitioners, the most perfectly timed podcast episode…. it will find you. |
AuthorI write about the human-ness from a place of consciousness. And playfulness ;-) ArchivesCategories |
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