I have written lots about my life dancing with the SPIRAL lately. I am in this moment really embracing the up and down of it all. There are so many moments of uncertainty and feeling like I “should” do this or that. I have many moments of reminding myself that there are rules about this and question myself about how I will explain my choices to another. All of these thoughts feel like dogma and a really small collapsed place to live.
I have been wading into unknown waters in my personal life lately. My partner and I have been transitioning out of what has been and traversing what will be. We have spent months in a very dark and uncertain dance. I have experienced being totally open, honest, clear and direct to be met with cold, shutdown and unwilling. I have spent years trying to mediate and justify his choice to shutdown. I have spent years engaging in behaviours, strategies and patterns to just get him to LOVE me, SEE me, HEAR me, and VALIDATE my existence.
What I have come to discover over weeks and weeks of deep grief and sadness, collapsing and expanding, is that, I have been doing this dance with “another” my entire life. My entire life as a woman has been spent attempting to coerce, manipulate, and coax another to meet me where I want to be. I have spent my entire life trying to get another to validate my existence and self worth. I have discovered hidden strategies that I engaged to manipulate the “other” into their own lives and in doing so, hold the outcome that says, “ there…they love me, see me and WANT me. “
When I came to fully OWN this strategy the other day, it felt HUGE to say the absolute least. It was a dark and yucky secret that I held, firstly from myself, and then the “other”. I would never have allowed myself to go there because the amount of SHAME and DISGUST I feel inside would have set me off. I would have had no other option than to turn inward and hurt mySelf.
I have been really curious about this process with “other” lately. For many reasons but this one really intrigues me. Why is it that I can create and engage in the most sacred, reciprocal, and luscious “relationships” with everyone in my life except…the “partner, husband, lover, “ THE most intimate and vulnerable relationship is the one where I give myself away at every turn. This relationship is the one where I deceive myself the most and engage in really OLD ways of being. This relationship is where I hold my head the lowest, endure, “stick it out”, grin and bear it. This is the ONE place that I continue to SUFFER thru. This is the ONE place that I should feel and BE exactly who I AM.
This is the ONE place where I want to feel and BE exactly who I AM. I have been super slippery with my evolution and journey to remember. I am deeply connected, mindful and awake. I am enjoying and revelling around in the ups and downs of my life. I embrace and welcome each feeling and emotion because I know it is my gateway for the MORE, I so intimately want. YET, I have hidden this dirty little secret. I have turned away from myself over and over in relation to this “other”. I have endured the most awful ways to be treated and justified them. I have been left in a pool of my own grief and sorrow too many times to count. I have turned inward more times than I would expect anyone else to do. I would simply DIE, if I thought that my daughter had endured all of this same pain. I do all of this ….for what? WHY? And WHO else could I be if I didn’t?
I have been gifted this past week with breath after breath to discover the MORE of these questions. I have discovered and stood tall inside my own unlimited SAFETY! I have NOT turned away from myself. I have not hived myself off and given myself away. I have seen the subtle ways I speak or act and in doing so, diminish mySelf. I have decloaked these moments out loud to my “partner” at each and every opportunity. I have delcoaked in the FULL expression that I AM not muting it one bit. I have shared everything that was meaningful and didn’t care where it went. I did not speak up to change or manipulate his actions and I have reached a sense of indifference to his choices.
Now, if I am being totally truthful, I must say that his choices have been completely devastating and eroded all “trust” in our relationship. His choices have left me face to face with his infidelities. His choices have caused me for moments to turn inward and live out my greatest fear, “Being the shameful woman who her husband cheats on”.
I can feel the pull back in this moment as I type these brutally honest and vulnerable words. I can feel the calibration for, “ have I gone too far?”, “ What will he, you or her think?” I can feel the butterflies and the shaking inside of my device. Yet, I can also feel the absolute impulse to share the truth of my own experience, recognizing that they each have their own truth. I recognize that by denying my own truth and living in secret, that I diminish myself.
Too often these moments are moved thru by a set of unwritten rules that we blindly go along with. Typically I act outward, rage, blame and become the victim (I am soooo familiar with this one). I am totally guilty of going with the flow of “this is what we do in divorce”, when I divorced my boys father. I paid no attention to what was meaningful for my children, or me and In fact, I wasn’t even in my body for most of it. Part of creating a new experience requires that I decloak my full process and know that it is just that, a process and MINE. If I choose differently, I will get a different result. That is exactly what this recent experience has offered me.
I have been intimately in relation with mySelf for weeks. I have had to constantly ask the bigger questions as my device engages the fear, rage, grief and sadness. Real time and real life. Every Breath. I would NOT have had access to this level of safety had I not danced with this particular, aspect and known a different process for living (Wel-Systems). It has taken every month and year we have spent together in order for me to discover these densely woven veils of DENIAL and NOT ENOUGH. If I had not experienced this most grievous act, I could not have stepped out of the role of VICTIM and into my own power and safety.
There are moments where I contract and go to a story and blame and BE victimized all over again, AND when I remember who I AM, I come back to my breath and know that this is but a moment in time….then….expansion! I do NOT abandon myself. I stay with the sensation and TRUST my body to break it up and digest each particle of hate, grief, sadness and devastation. I realized that each time I fall prey to the story about another, that I hive myself off and do not honour the SACRED that I AM. This has been an ongoing and relentless process for me these last weeks. It has been as NECESSARY for my life as oxygen or water. I cannot begin to RISE fully until I truly know mySelf as WHOLE and complete and ENOUGH for ME!
By choosing ME in this process and standing firmly in my own safety and magnificence, I am able to access the MOST beautiful dance of my life. The dance of my RISE! My RISE does not depend on or is it dictated by the actions or choices of another. I AM the permission that I need to live fully, openly, honestly, vulnerably, and intimately. PERIOD!!!
I feel expansion inside as I type these words. This is certainly unfamiliar territory for me and perhaps all women that I know. This is a discovered and reclaimed way of BEING, not a passed on belief or skill. I am so interested in the next layer of my discoveries about “RELATIONSHIP”. I am interested in creating a different framework for the status quo that embraces SELF first and when the Self is held as WHOLE, SACRED, ESSENTIAL and in RECIPROCITY…then comes another to embark on RELATIONSHIP.
Unlimited possibility in this moment.
Mahalo and a Deep respect for each of you in your own process and exactly where you need to be.
Mandy
