Relationship Liberation
When we seek the spiritual path, we are essentially seeking divine union with Spirit.
And when we ask for Spirit to move into our lives in such an intimate way, we are by default asking for removal of anything in our lives — people, places, occupations, or false programs/belief systems — that interferes with our ability to merge with the Divine.
I’ve had so many layers to remove and programs to offload… lenses through which I viewed the world, lenses which tainted my perspective … and also through which I projected what the world looked and felt like, out from within myself.
The way we interpret reality is essentially like a game of telephone, each layer of our conditioning and programming and coping mechanisms and baggage acting as a lens through which the original input gets changed ever so slightly.
Or maybe it’s more like the reverse and we are projecting the input outwards to create our external realities in real time, manifesting a picture that is colored or dulled or blurred by each layer as it moves outward from our center.
Regardless, we may be made aware of these layers, and after awareness comes the ability to shift them, change them, or release them if they are no longer serving us in alignment with our Truth.
I’ve made some strides towards exposing my true self on my own, but mentors and guides and teachers and friends and no-longer-friends have all provided mirrors for me to be able to see my own layers and programs, and to decide which of those layers and programs were helpful and which were actually detrimental to my everyday lived experience, or my *desires* for how I wanted my everyday lived experience to be.
But by far, the most triggering clear mirror has been my husband.
Divinely supportive of my unique spiritual path while also being divinely triggering of all of my soft spots, all of the wounding and programming I’ve accrued over this lifetime and many others, all blasted into my face all the time by my beautiful soul mate.
So I can heal. So I can deepen.
I’ll never forget, when Taylor and I got back together after being broken up for a year in the infancy of our relationship, I was complaining about how challenging it was at times to relate to him. My friend said, point blank, “Relationships don’t have to be hard.”
I think about that sometimes when Taylor and I are going through a challenging phase. It makes me wonder if I’m doing the right thing or if I’m making myself into a martyr by honoring the sacred commitment I made to this relationship/ceremony when we were married.
But the reality for me is that my relationship isn’t challenging because of my partner. My relationship is challenging because of me. My friend was correct. It doesn’t have to be hard.
I know my higher self (and his) is orchestrating each and every tumultuous wave he and I navigate together.
Because it’s impossible to go through a dark night of the soul, through relationship hell, through the deepest shadow work I could imagine having to journey, without coming out on the other side with new tools in my kit.
These tools are necessary for the spiritual and emotional journey I am on; this journey of union with all that is, of complete surrender to the Divine, of total knowing of my Truth….
All of this is impossible without examining my shadow, my programs, my relationships, my lenses, all the pieces that keep me from my Truth…
and this examination needs an impetus, a sacred shotgun that signals it’s time to dig deeper. For me, that trigger is in my relationship, my beautiful twin flame.
To achieve my desired personal foundation of creativity and of my own channel being open and clear — balanced masculine and feminine energies within myself and within my relationships are required. Nothing great will come if my foundation is not strong and grounded and balanced.
And this whole process can be as easeful or as challenging as I make it. It all depends on how much I am embodying presence, how quickly and seamlessly I can let go of the banks of the river and flow.
When I committed myself to doing what it took to reverse and release lifetimes and generations of trauma and false programming in order to make my lineage a more easeful one, for the next seven generations and beyond, I kind of spiral dove right into the heart of where that darkness begins.
Within myself.
It’s comically impossible to accurately view myself. We all need mirrors.
Hence, the husband. The twin flame. The sacred masculine counterpart that is helping me teach myself how to *be* as a Human in a beautiful way.
It’s a very sacred sort of container !
When we decided to go on this trip to land in a potential new home in Costa Rica, we were very grounded, very much at home in Sedona, living in a home we owned, surrounded by a super solid community of friends who had become family.
Once we humans reach a certain level of nervous system regulation and get out of fight or flight for long enough, we are able to make more macro-perspective decisions.
Three pretty MASSIVE decisions came through me, through us, in rapid succession, boom boom boom, because of how regulated we were there in our safety zone… and we just flowed with the messaging, with the direction of Source.
1) I was to sit with ayahuasca in Peru.
(2) We were to travel down to Costa Rica in order to plant roots there (here) and make a new home in a new frequency with new priorities and a new more easeful way of living.
(3) I was to do a kambo medicine full reset to prepare for it all.
The messaging essentially was: quit all of that beautiful stability and regulation and head out on the road, on the move, boundless, untethered, unencumbered, free, rearrange everything, clear, make space, purge, release.
With that freedom came a sense of ungroundedness, plus then we had only the microcosm of our family and our relationship to Spirit to focus on.
We didn’t distract ourselves with our phones or with sight-seeing or with anything much besides figuring out how to survive on the road with each other and travel from point to point in order to make it all the way to Costa Rica.
There was a sense of isolation we imposed on ourselves. Traveling through countries where we didn’t speak the language fluently, away from friends and family… feelings of loneliness crept in, with a purpose.
We were invited into deepening our connection with something else, outside of our families, communities, and selves.
Loneliness was, for me, an invitation to deepen my connection to god/dess, to nature, to Love.
One of the big lessons for me on this trip was that true devotion to what is, to presence, to truth and love, means that I am never actually lonely or isolated, because I am always with the present moment, which is God.
Once I made that commitment to presence and to the god/dess all around and within me (thanks in large part to my experience drinking ayahuasca in Peru), Spirit came in HOT to throw everything up in the air so I could examine what was working and what was not in fact in alignment with this experience, to which I had just fiercely committed, of living in resonance with my highest truth.
My relationship dynamic needed some work.
Within my marriage, our energies were out of balance. We had some (a lot of) shadows from our past experiences with each other and with others, that needed to be brought out into the light finally.
Once I started adjusting my own balance of male/female energies within my own system, and honoring my commitment to my capital T Truth, everything else kind of shuddered and shook as it realigned and rearranged itself to accommodate this prayer.
For me, there was one big ball of dark shadow energy that was not allowed to come into the future with us. And unfortunately for us (perhaps), my old coping mechanism of “flight” was ignited.
Instead of bringing up this conversation in a super grounded and curious way, I brought it up in a defensive and flight-oriented way, with an ultimatum.
“Let’s heal this shit that’s been hanging over our heads for 10 years or I am not going to be able to exist within the confines of this relationship any longer.”
Since then, I’ve thankfully been able to see how deeply my coping mechanisms are still implanted and I can confidently say in the future I will not resort to threatening to leave when I feel big shadows to work through in my relationship.
Since my big commitment to Truth, I had begun embodying this super clear vision of what my relationship with my lover would look like in the future.
And with that clear vision, the current version of relating felt a bit like the skin of a snake that needed to be shed. I couldn’t bear one more moment of intimacy in this container that felt so…. Wrong..
Subsequently, we talked and talked and crawled our way through the initial period of discomfort after this conversation, and then came to a balanced place of seeing each other where we were.
We agreed that we needed some space from each other.
Four months of traveling together, with much of that time just within the microcosm of our own family, no friends or outside community once we split off amicably from our bff travel-mates Brie and Alain (which is perhaps a story for another email), just me, and Taylor, and the kids… together … all the time… without community to distract us or occupy our time and energy.
It created a bit of a pressure-cooker situation for us. And the steam vent valve had just been opened.
So… the kids and I went to Costa Rica by plane on our own…
Taylor stayed in Guatemala to have time to himself and also to attend a retreat there he had already signed up for.
We hired someone to drive the camper to Costa Rica for us (camper never made it here (yet?), which is also a story for another email haha), and Taylor planned to fly down to meet us here in Costa Rica about a week after his retreat ended.
The space was so good for me, for sure.
I had a tiny bit of time to myself during our two week break — thanks to a beautiful nanny who joined our family — to feel into what I really wanted, where I was in that moment, and how I might get to this future version of relationship that feels so important.
Walking through the jungle one day during one of these periods of nanny-induced-blessed-alone-time-contemplation, I realized a big desire of mine that wasn’t being satisfied within my relationship with Taylor….
The realization that came in was:
I want to be adored. I’m *ready* to be adored.
Or I should say, I’m ready to ALLOW myself to feel the adoration that flows toward EVVERYone (not just me).. from god/dess, nature, the world..
Instead of allowing myself to feel the opposite of that sensation in the majority, — chaos, maybe? — which also flows toward everyone from the external (which is actually the internal??!).
This — I know — is a primal craving: to receive adoration and unconditional love.
The roots of this craving are obvious to me.. A childhood wherein I didn’t feel this sense of unconditional love and adoration, just for being me.
And with all emotions that I crave, that I long for because I never received adequately in that supremely tender stage of life, I know I must create the landscape of the emotional frequency inside myself first.
I must love myself first.
I must adore everything about myself.
This will pave the way for those around me to match my frequency and give me what I will be showing — internally and externally — that I know I deserve.
And in order to adore myself I have to be ok with releasing the programs that keep me from doing so… and there are many.
And in order to be adored by my husband, I have to adore him, too.
And I have to remove any fears or walls that keep me from doing so. And there are many.
The thought of adoring him and opening myself up in that way, softening my heart in that way, feels scary in my body. I feel fear. Of potential rejection, pain… caused by him. By past versions of him. (And of course going back even further, to my childhood caregivers.)
I also do know that as a carryover from my childhood coping patterns, I often am seeking externally, outside of myself and outside of my relationship, for something “better.”
A feeling of challenge to be satisfied with *what is.*
Not that I feel this way all of the time, and not that this drive to better things isn’t a healthy aspect of the feminine sometimes too… just that I must be wary of slipping into the shadow side of this desire when I can sense it’s based off wounding instead of coming through my clear channel.
So, I still have some work to do, in order to be able to clearly and accurately delineate when I am seeking better within my relationship in a clear way vs a wounded way… and to determine where this specific experience falls on that spectrum.
I’ve been realizing as I get older and my relationship with Taylor becomes more seasoned, complex, and beautiful, that relationship issues are — for me — an invitation to look *within* and see how my own internal landscape is reflecting itself *in my relationship.*
Also, the invitation is (always, in everything) to deepen into my relationship with nature and with god/dess.
I receive so much from these divine energies.. and the *potential* to be *aware* of *all* that I receive from these energies is there… I know I’m only scratching the surface :)
I “only” have to remove all the layers between me and this realization of the depth of beauty and bliss and adoration to me from Source (which is also .. me.. and everyone and everything else in existence or potential form) in order to never feel sadness or disconnection or emotional cravings/lack of perspective. Ever. Again.
And to remove all of those layers and false programs, I must have mirrors to show me where they are :)
So…. Taylor joined us in Costa Rica and things didn’t feel quite right.
There was some energy lingering that didn’t feel resonant.
Neither of us could really put our finger on it, but as is so often the case with us, things sort of pressurized and escalated over the course of the first 36 hours of his presence here til Taylor came over to sit by me and tearfully said “I don’t feel like I belong in this family.”
Wow. What a big and brave thing to actually say out loud.
We talked for a long time about what that meant. To both of us.
I equated it in my mind to that time that Taylor and I were broken up in the infancy of our relationship. During that year of separation, we tried to hang out a few times as friends (for me, also with the intention of seeing if we would be able to get back together), and it didn’t feel right the first time or the second time.
But the third time, ahhh, what a different feeling it was to be in resonance again. That was just over one (whole!) year after we hand broken up.
And we have stayed together ever since then.
So, Taylor’s arrival into our flow in Costa Rica also had that same feeling of dissonance.
And instead of interpreting that as reason to not be together at all, we chose to interpret that as just needing more time for separation, within the structure of our relationship.
Basically, Taylor needs more time to himself to feel free, align with his Truth, and not trapped/distracted by the day to day minutiae of being a dad and a partner.
And I need more time to come into my own energy again, and to dive more deeply into my own truth and self-discovery and mastery of self, so I can be that version of me regardless of what is happening in my relationship.
Basically: we are staying married — and— changing our idea of what it means to be married.
Being married — to us — doesn’t mean being with each other physically all or even most of the time.
It doesn’t mean forcing him to be in a situation where he feels trapped often, or forcing me to be in a situation where I don’t have as much time to myself to become grounded in my own energy and to clear my channel as I would like either.
It means loving each other enough to hold space for what each other needs in a very real and liberated way.
We have a foundation of total commitment to each other, even when we are apart, but we have the space we each need right now to do what we want to do.
I feel somewhere deep inside myself that this is how families used to operate in tribal times, but maybe that is just my imagination :)
The men, during their warrior phase, were often away for weeks, months, or even years at a time… being warriors, deepening into their masculinity, providing for their families, hunting, going to battle, clearing and grounding into their own Truths, etc… And then they would come home to their families for periods of time when they were able.
And the whole time, there was community — “the village” — back home to support the women and children while their partners were away.
Taylor is still in his warrior phase. And it makes sense that over the last handful of years he has wanted to escape to go be by himself in the forest for a while. That was not a flaw or a challenge but in fact in alignment for his Beingness.
And it makes sense that I too have pushed him away a handful of times over the last handful of years. My human design requires I spend time alone in order to come back to my Truth. And I haven’t been getting alone time in a lonnnnnng time.
Over the course of the 4 months of this trip, Taylor and I were together for so long, just the two of us resonating with each other, no outside people or community to balance with, that the frequency of our thinking and feeling and emoting aligned to the point that some parts of each of us (the parts that love polarity lol) pushed each other away.
Or maybe we became so resonant that our differences showed themselves much too plainly to be ignored anymore… these cosmic shadows that we’ve had awareness of but haven’t chosen to deal with before.
I truly feel that this separation with Taylor is to *cause* a homecoming for both of us...
We are both coming home when we eventually do rejoin our energies, but not to each other, per se …
We are coming home to a frequency, to resonance, to a place (which is more like an energetic field) we can call home, which we can only co-create together when we are so solidly embodying our Truths that there is no questioning the cosmic rightness of it all.
And THAT is divine union. 🙏🏽
