Manifesting Love: A Journey Within

Photo: Photography Influences, Lou Ludbrook

On December 2, 2018 he came to me, after a lifetime of preparing and six years of becoming whole.  
 
“Your lovely pics and what you are looking for made me think of Yeats’ “When You Are Old,” as if he had known you…” he wrote.  

From the moment we matched, we have matched in every way.  

I know this because I teach it in the work that I do, manifesting is a powerful tool for receiving exactly what you desire – and each time I receive a desire it is full of more magic than I could have ever imagined.

Like many, I have had to overcome some big obstacles in my nearly 48 years; obstacles dealing with men, love and relationships. The first relationship modeled to me was one based on conditional love, and more often than not this love came with a fierce hand and a belt. It taught me that despite my best efforts I was not good enough, and love was for the deserving and that was not me.

It was much, much later that I became aware of a pattern that this first relationship sparked, that I was living out in each relationship I chose.  This awareness came after a decade-long marriage to my college sweetheart, and a series of long-term relationships with the same man over and over who mimicked this first relationship of conditional love, of playing small, and of not feeling deserving of more.  These men were great teachers to me in hindsight.

On July 4th, six years ago, in a theatrical way that only the Universe could orchestrate, my life stood still and was shaken greatly all at once – and this shake became the catalyst for me to set solid intentions for changing, for finding myself, for self-love and for beginning to manifest the man and love of my life.

The shake was a sudden breakup for me and a quick replacement for him, with a man that I held onto too tightly.  The truth is, the years and months of work and growth that followed had very little to do with this man, and much more to do with the break that was a catalyst for sitting still, for choosing me and taking time to become aware of who I was outside of relationship and what I wanted in one.

The beginning of this phase began with big grieving and letting go, a part of me was dying and I was stepping into a journey that was unfamiliar – a journey that would require courage and devotion. This journey became the most profound journey of my life, it is the journey into myself.

After grief came anger, and then awareness, and what followed was more time than I’d like to admit being hard on myself for the choices I have made and the time I have spent with partners who haven’t been what I ultimately want and need.  It wasn’t until recently that I have been able to finally let this go and find acceptance and compassion for myself.

Within this awareness phase, there came a time when I felt ready to love again.  I felt whole and I felt like I had done a lot of work to reprogram this past pattern, and this is when I fell in-love with the last big teacher of my life.  This short relationship was beautiful in many ways, and closer than I had ever come to something meaningful and deep, but it came with conditions and two reckless pregnancies at 46 when I decided to “let go” and “trust” this new love after my break.  It was again a painful reminder of a past pattern, and a program on repeat. And, the suffering was so real and so deep that it sent me into nearly three years of celibacy and deeper self exploration and devotion.

I was hard on myself.  How could I take a break, do the work, feel whole, and still choose a surface, conditional love and not feel ultimately deserving of something better? In yoga we have a word for this deep scar that causes us to repeat patterns, it is called samskara.  And the practice of meditation is one tool for becoming aware of these scars – I began to mediate even more to create space for the conversation with myself.

While I was healing from the shake and this last teaching I began to write poetry which I eventually published.  Many of the poems are about the pain I was feeling, and about the things I was learning about myself as I took more and more time alone. A handful of poems in the book were written to a future man.  At some point in this journey of healing and of diving into myself I began to imagine what the love I really wanted looked and felt like.  In the beginning of this thinking I could barely see it, it was elusive even in my imagination and the harder I tried to define it the harder it was to put into words – or to see in my mind, not to mention begin to feel.  So I started with poetry about him…and the things I could describe.

Dear You
in some
far off place

With your smell
of courage
and your
unabashed wit –

Talk to my
heart
with promises
of
bright days
ahead

Show me the way
with
your sexy
hands
and your
beautiful
light

I began to travel more, I designed my life as an independent woman with her self-made work and a community of mostly women.  I began to let go of safe things, of my home and of things in general.  The lightness I felt was liberating, the whole world was mine and as I moved in it I realized more and more that no matter where I was or where I went, the world of me was becoming so delicious that nothing else mattered.

This place in me became a sanctuary.  This place became my prize and proudest accomplishment.  This place of knowing, this place of deep love, this place of empathy, of compassion, of yoga, of devotion…this pure place of celibacy.  I came to a wholeness and I wanted to stay there because it was safe.  There were many days when I didn’t even think about being in love, where I couldn’t even remember what it felt like to be in a relationship.  This is how I spent most of my 46th and 47th years.

In the Spring of 2018, I sat with a Balinese healer in Bali who read my palm and calculated my numbers and he told me that I would never marry again, that I was too independent and that this karma had come with me into this life.  In a complete refusal to accept this fate I asked him if there was anything I could do to reverse this, and he suggested a temple purification ceremony and lots of temple prayers.  Serendipitously we were just a few miles from a very auspicious and local purification temple. We went the next day and it is a day I will never forget.  I was purified and blessed by a woman temple priest, and the healer went from deity to deity praying with and for me – on this day I prayed for my king to come, I asked for a love so deep and so perfect, and I prayed that I would feel ready and deserving when it arrived.

In October of 2018 I found myself sitting in a retreat circle of beautiful people, led by a dear, dear friend.  The invitation was to make a list of all of the things you find hard to love about yourself.  When it came time to share I shared that I wasn’t proud of the love I had chosen for myself in my life, that I had chosen partners who didn’t see me and love that was shallow and conditional, and I expressed that I was afraid to trust myself again for fear that I would repeat my pattern.  My friend, seeing me clearly, shared her thoughts on what she saw in me and told me that my courage with love inspires her, and that I have all of the tools in this new place to trust, and that the work I have done will show in the next choice.  I cried, and I believed her with my whole heart.

I set an intention leaving this retreat, to trust myself implicitly and to begin to manifest love.  I returned to Paris and began to date.  I began the practice of listing the things I wanted in this new love and man during my meditation conversations or before falling asleep each night.  I described him in as much detail as I could, I described how I felt with him, how he made me feel, what he did with his life, who he was…and slowly the conversation went from a list of things I hoped for, to a list of things that my real man had.

I love the way
your thumb
presses
into the heart 
of my palm

Your boyish
eyes
speaking
to mine

How your lips
hunger
for honesty

Your tongue
speaking
far away
truth

The way
we move
together
without
moving 
at all

How proud
you are
to
call me yours 

The poetry followed, I began singing to him and thinking about him and trusting and knowing that he was close.  I had a deep sense of this, and this sense gave me peace of mind to be patient with the process of meeting others who didn’t feel like a match. I remember feeling supreme clarity, and in my power and fully trusting during these days.

When I received the Yeats poem on December 2nd, it stopped me in my tracks.

No words that I have, or could write, will ever do justice to the love that we have found in and with each other.  This love is deeper than I have ever felt with a man, its depth is similar to the love I have found for myself but different in the most beautiful ways. It is the compliment to my wholeness that I asked for and dreamed of.  Each moment I am in it I feel its power erasing any love not aligned with it, and this is intoxicating.  It is a love that requires choosing and being “in” it, one that will evolve and grow. It is a love that challenges me to be fully me, bravely me, and seen like I have never been seen before.  It is a love between two whole people, a love happening with divine timing at hand, and a love that transcends lifetimes.

One of the many gifts of this love is the feeling of being deserving of it, this feeling is multiplied because of the time I have taken to find myself whole first.

My love and I were on a plane together recently and I looked down and saw that his thumb was softly pressed into the heart of my palm, he was holding my hand so sweetly and so naturally.  He is the man I have been writing about, singing to and imagining for many, many days and it feels so incredible to be in-love with him.

UPDATED ON MY 49TH BIRTHDAY: May 14, 2020

He asked me when I posted this, "what will you do about this post if we don't make it?" and this foreshadowing loomed for many on and off months until it eventually became the end of our story.

"The story is true no matter the outcome," I told him.  And the truth is this relationship, like all of the others, became a great teacher for me. It is because of this love that I deepened into a journey into my inner masculine, with the sole mission to continue my healing journey, and soften. Out of this continued commitment and devotion to my own heart, I birthed two new beautiful offerings to share with women also on this path. 

I am grateful for every bit of love that comes, and goes, in my life. I am the (forever) Fool as Osho says, always falling...and I would not rewrite this story any other way.

The truth is my lifelong love affair with love keeps bringing me back into my own heart, over and over again. Often times I'm led by my own hand, sometimes I'm on my knees in deep devotion, and there have been many times when the pain of heartbreak helps me to find my way.

Love. It is all love.

I am whole. I am healed. I am holy.