Some things are not ours to understand, but only to experience.
Sometimes we don’t have anything particular to say and just need to reach out to be sure of the other person and sure of the connection. This isn’t being needy, clingy, or anxiously attached; it’s being human and having relationships be an important (vital) part of our wiring, evolution, and survival, individually and as a species.
I’ve said I don’t believe in Soul Mates, and in the pop-culture definition that is true. I don’t believe in one and only one “True Love”. I believe we have dozens, if not more, soul connections, with multiple people (and multiple kinds of relationships), animals, trees, bodies of water, the soil, the air. The more we open ourselves to this truth and feel all our interconnections and entanglements, the more peace, sense of belonging, and love we can feel, embody, and radiate.
All too often trauma will tell us we’re a burden or a bother or are too needy or just too much. Thing is, the people who ARE Our People never think any of those things about us. Not at all.
Connecting to our own inner compass, our North Star, and learning to listen to and be in the flow of our own deep knowing is a multi-layered process and life long practice.
Our hearts can break a thousand times a day for the pain, suffering, and injustices experienced by others, both those we care deeply for and those we’ve never met. Our capacity for heartbreak is only limited by our capacity to love. The more we love, the more heartbreak and grief we experience. This is NOT a bad thing, it is a human living fully thing.
Sometimes we have to be lost so we can both find ourselves and learn how to let ourselves be found.
Others don’t need to understand nor approve of our relationships. As long as it works for the people actually in the relationship, that is all that matters.
Bubbles can be safe, they can contain us, specific relationships, certain ways of healing, and can bring us so much peace. And. Sometimes bubbles need to be burst, so deeper, even more profound connections and healing can occur.
Love is love is love. It often can’t be explained nor rationalized. And. To show and express love and care to another is always a choice. To give our time and energy to someone is a choice.
I’m at the place now in my own trauma healing where I can see and know the importance of the spiritual aspect of this work. For a long time (too long maybe) I shunned the Woo as part of this process. And the reality is I wasn’t ready for this part of the work, I still had layers of my own social indoctrination and the trauma that stemmed from it still to unearth, process, dislodge, and heal.
Loving someone isn’t about fixing them or future potential or what they can do for us. Loving someone is about loving them *as they are right now* and having faith we will continue to love them as they, and we, grow and change. Loving someone means we love them regardless of the things they do or don’t do. It means being in the now with the person right in front of us, not some projection or fantasy. It means loving even knowing they may be gone from our lives one day. It means giving everyone the freedom to *choose* to be in the relationship everyday, for as long as it is healthy for both and it means gracefully ending things when it is time, without destroying each other or the beauty that once was in the process.
We cannot possess or control another person. We can try to manipulate (and even be successful), we can attempt to give ultimatums to get what we want, we can even threaten withdrawal of love and support to attempt to “make” someone bow to our will. And when we essentially take away a person’s choice, when the “choice” is between destitution or relative safety, we are laying a foundation for future deceit, resentment, and conflict that will ultimately destroy any goodness that ever existed between us.
Being emotionally mature, in part, means accepting people as they are and accepting they may walk away from us at any point, and in fact means encouraging a person’s growth, healing, and authenticity even when that means this will lead to an end of or change in the relationship.
Trying to keep people stunted and stuck, so that we don’t have to face our own abandonment issues, is not an act of love or care, it is acting from fear and trauma and only serves to cause more pain and suffering for everyone involved.
Gratitude is not the same as love. Having someone who feels obligated to you is not loyalty nor devotion. Relationships based on who owes who what do not foster actual intimacy nor connection.
My love is always unconditional. My time and energy however are contingent on mutual respect, care, honoring boundaries, autonomy, and individual agency. This is not about manipulation or making people act a certain way, it is about not allowing harm in my life or relationships. Which means simply, I choose where to put my energy and part of that decision is based on the other person’s behavior and treatment toward me.
Overwhelming love, joy, pleasure, are all still overwhelming. Giving ourselves space and time to process and metabolize is important.
Endings always lead to beginnings. In fact an ending and new beginning can be born of the same breath. Being in the flow of death and rebirth, our own, that of our relationships, and or the ones we care about, is a practice, a shedding, and an unfolding that can’t be fully explained, only experienced.
Some people see us on a level that is outside of this realm. They see *us* the depths of our souls all the way to the surface of our masks. These connections can be as terrifying as they are exhilarating, as anxiety provoking as they are grounding and calming. And when we find these connections it is important to nurture and nourish them as much as possible because these are the ones that give us the most space to heal, grow, and most importantly (not so simply) *be*.
This is the first and only publication this RLoT in its entirety.
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Ways for us to connect
Embodied Relating/Trauma Informed Embodiment on Insta*
Gwynn Raimondi Writes on Insta*
Soothe Your Nervous System Card Deck
Individual Sessions (I have a weekly and a bi-weekly spot available beginning mid March. If you are interested in working with me, please click the link and use the email shown to request a free 30-minute consultation to see if we are a good fit.)
Tarot Readings Every month I offer four readings and they are given on a first come, first served basis.
Ancestral Healing & Journeying Work - (Re)Connecting to who we were before whiteness. Individual sessions to find reconnection with your ancesters, healing ancestral curses/processing ancestral trauma, and nourishing our ancestral strength and wisdom.
*Note: I am slowly moving away from social media. The best place to find me, and my work, is here on Substack.
Recent essays on Embodied Relating:
EWG : 21. Reclaiming our presence in grief : Embodied Writing Grief series
Endings, (ego) deaths, & transformations : A Random List o Tings
Judging Others, Avoiding Ourselves : The ways we are complicit in using the master’s tools
Memes, Quotes, & Images
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