I was changed forever on new years eve…
For my entire adult life I have wanted one thing more than anything else:
To find love, to find partnership, to be deeply, irrevocably chosen.
And all my life, hearing this desire, people have said the same thing:
It will come when you stop looking for it.
This made me so damn pissed.
How? I would bite back angrily, Am I supposed to stop wanting what I want?
Yes, I had discovered that my wanting was not coming from a place of peace, but a place of anxiety and fear.
But I couldn’t force that out of my system. I couldn't force myself to stop wanting what I really fucking wanted.
Not unless I plastered a love and light bandage over the top and in an overly etheric, helium voice, floated around in saying: Oh, I don’t mind if I find love, I’m in love with myself enough already.
I simply couldn't do it, until…
On new years eve, a tectonic plate shifted inside me, so seismic that I was forever changed.
A few months back during a heart share workshop I was asked to reveal what my heart's greatest longings and greatest fears were.
Facing my partner, tears swelled in my eyes and a pressure grew in my chest as I vulnerably shared:
My heart's greatest longing is to find a partnership where I am deeply loved and chosen, and get to create my own family, the family with a mum, dad and siblings that I didn’t have.
When I shared my fear, the fear of not having this desire actualised, I stated defiantly:
If I do not get to have this desire I will feel ripped off by life, like my life wasn’t fulfilled.
I have often thought about dying.
Whenever I would think of it, I imagined all the people who would be so devastated by death, but most of all I felt the grief for all the things I wouldn’t get to experience. The highest always being: to fall deeply, truly in love with another.
The idea of leaving this life before that should happen felt unfair, unjust and wrong.
Within that feeling of wrongness was a belligerent defiance with God to ensure I was given my desires before I departed.
Then something inside me changed forever.
On new years eve, at a gathering of all my dearest friends, in the beautiful serene Australian bush, we sat for tea ceremony.
If you haven’t sat tea ceremony, I highly recommend it. It's a time of utter stillness, where the tea pourer artistically infuses, honours and serves cup after cup of ancient tea.
As I sat in reverence taking sips of ancient tea in pure silence, a voice entered my head.
Clearly it asked “Would all this really not be enough?”
“If you didn’t find love, but you had all this, all you have had in your life, would that really not be enough.”
Like a punch to the guts the wind was knocked out of me as images of my life filled my tea cup, their colours and textures of joy, adventure, travel, community, connection, pleasure, family, nature, soul and so much love..
Something cracked in my chest. Yes. Of course this was enough. This life of mine was so much more than many people dreamed to have.
I have loved my life, I silently started to sob.
The voice returned, not finished with me yet, it asked;
“Then can you accept that the love you ask for might not come in this life, can that be okay?”
My body writhed in discomfort, it was an effort not to cry out loud in the tea ceremony, the parts of me so desperate for the symbolic validation that being chosen represented.
They clung to the corners of my being, digging their feet in in unmovable defiance - No! No no I must have it, I must have it!
Their pain was a searing heat inside me, so easy would it be to say no, to wallow in their pain and loneliness that I knew so well.
But as I took the next sip of tea, something older and stronger rose within me, as if washing out the old and giving me space for the new…
Inhaling long and deep, my fingers trembled around the tea cup.
“I accept that I may not find love in this lifetime.” Tears leaked from my eyes, an ocean of old pain inside every drop.
But with the words spoken, something deep inside, deeper than bones started to shift, the weight of carrying that defiant need slipped into the crack and was swallowed, and in its place rose…
Me.
Me, in this body, in this life, present. Whole.
Enough.
“If this is it, if this is all I get, then I will lap up every drop of what you offer.”
I finished the final cup.
Since that moment I have felt the tectonic shift in my being, it’s so subtle and yet so big.
I still desire to experience loving union, to make a family in this lifetime, that desire has not left me.
But the undertone of dissatisfaction, of fear, of not enoughness…that has melted away.
I will never say that the way they find their partner is to “Stop wanting it.”
I didn’t think you could will that.
What you can do is learn to love yourself. To work at it every damn day.
From morning till evening.
Do the courses, retreats, programs, practices, prayers, eat the food, read the books, do the exercises that bring you more and more into a state of you-ness.
Prepare for old parts of yourself to strip away and for others to cling on showing you what requires your attention most.
Cultivate a capacity for vulnerability and strength and trust in the timing of your life.
If you’ve read this far, my invitation for you is to take some time today to write down what you are truly grateful for in your life.
Perhaps meditate for 10 minutes before writing, somewhere you love, nature, your favourite spot in the house.
And If you’d like to join me on one of my offerings of self love it would be an honour to work with you.
