An Unconditional Love Story

On letting die to let live.

In my early 20s I met a man that unlocked my heart entirely. Along with that unlocking came all of the things that locked it up. I let myself breathe with him into a dream we had of a life of wonder and intense, passionate love. He loved me so deeply. He loved women deeply. That was why I had to leave him.

His love for women was corrupted by a thick shadow that plagues our men, our boys. I could feel his passion for the feminine, the soft, the wild, the ridiculous amount of abundant beauty, the pleasure that is a birth right. I could feel his shame in wanting that and not being able to access it without taking it or hurting it. It is easier in the face of trauma induced shame and indoctrination to hurt the thing we want rather than feel all that has kept us from it.

I have experienced this with many men. The abuse, the pushing away, the running from- alongside so much desire to be undone by the full sensation of emotional potency that lets them know they are alive and loved by Her- by me. Yet my own entanglements in shame and trauma were the perfect strings to keep weaving the story of pain and separation from true love with these men. Laws of attraction working their magic, seeking healing.

Years went by, he and I remained in one another’s lives through nostalgia, guilt and true deep love. What he and I experienced was a connection and a contract unsurpassed by anyone else I have met in my life, he would say the same, despite the web of pain. We maintained an awkward and painful (for me) friendship at a distance until 2020 when I knew I had to say goodbye to our connection. I still subconsciously held, I suppose it was not subconscious because I was aware of it, a lot of grandiose love story projections that blurred our field. I loved what he could be. In return he projected a lot of fear and judgement upon me because of the radical, soul rendering life I lead. We had not been together for 15 years and still there was this thing- I could feel it gripping both of our lives even though we had both “moved on”.

Then there was a conversation where his old anger patterns emerged and I was done. No one in my life, no one, speaks to me that way. Why was he really still in my life anyway. Addiction to shame, addiction to pain, addiction to trauma, addiction. If anything new was to come into my life, even though he and I had not engaged in such a long time, then we as we have known one another had to completely die.

I said a clear prayer in the presence of a circle of women. I wished him well by way of the wind and it was like the cosmos knew what to do. Without drama and the letter I wrote feeding the fire instead of being sent to him, he simply stopped reaching out as though a little bird told him so. I shook and I cried and felt the Earth shift. It was done. In beauty be, it was done.

Thing is, my love is unconditional. I practice the art of this embodiment daily as I wrestle with the voices that want to keep jealousy, separation and scarcity alive and continue to trick me into choosing men and situations that aren’t good for me. The worth wound is such a disease and winds beyond the imminent and often even the current life story. The truth of my heart is that I want everyone in my life to fly high and to know the love of life I have known, and know everyday because of my willingness to look behind the curtain of life.

Through my trials I know now to pull back the desire for anyone to be anywhere other than where they are. Any projected prayer or longing for someone to touch the potential of their soul, that I can so clearly see, is to display great distrust in their soul’s perfect intelligence and own natural rhythm in evolution. So I have learned to see everyone on their perfect journey and how to choose what is right for me in the living, breathing, reality of what is. Very hard for an empathic healer who sees everything and just wants to love bomb everyone. Often our desires to hang on and stick with someone’s potential has nothing to do with love and has everything to do with our own wounding. If they rise into what we see, then that says something about us and our inner child who is seeking acceptance from places and spaces that are long dead and gone.

Anyhow, months went by. I went to Mexico. He sent a message around my bday. I replied. Many more months went by and it was mid July 2021 and I felt a void in the Universe where he used to be. It was around his bday. I got worried that he was gone, like dead gone. I called. “Hey- happy bday”.

He was one sentence into our conversation when he shared he had experienced a seriously traumatic loss in his life. I could hear him and witness him without any entanglement. The death of the old ways between us had given rise to a rebirth between us where the unconditional love blossomed. I was not grasping at or reading into anything in him. I had true presence with this man without projection of wounds and personalities. There was only my full heart for a human I shared something beautiful, albeit painful, with.

Recently I guided him through a profoundly healing psychedelic journey. There was no way this would have emerged has there not been a full alchemizing of our past wounds into present, fresh medicine. I could him now witness and not absorb his process. I could love him and not project or manipulate. He was able receive from me without any old fear of the medicine path that has carried me. He could finally feel his feelings and his life and find his soul’s light, he could grieve, we could grieve- 20 years later. In a way it’s like I got what I wanted the whole time simply by way of letting go, choosing new patterns and letting the mystery of life guide us, guide me.

We never know why people come into our lives and tear them open, shatter them and scatter them about – like Osiris, until Isis, until unconditional love and a true death of lies- puts us back together. Like Innana rising after being stripped alive and being left to die in the dark, dank truth that there is a greater hand guiding us along.

We collide with one another because from what I have come to know is that the medicine attracts the wound. That the wound, the trauma, is always and only seeking unconditional love in hopes that the two people wound into the interplay of light and dark trying to dance into One spiral of evolutionary magic will be able to see the gift that Love’s hand is granting.

Sometimes that dance doesn’t reveal itself in the moment. Sometimes things need to break apart, take space so that the clarity of being can settle in. Sometimes that never happens between two people because we have ideas of what relationship is supposed to look like, what life is supposed to look like, of timelines that fit our personalities.

Maybe the whole reason I came into his life long ago was for this moment. Because I am the only one he trusts to help him begin his deepest healing work. He is now willing to be undone, to die to his own lies by way of “enough is enough” through pain and heartbreak that has reached its limit. Not that I am some thing that can grant anyone passage back home- but I am somewhat of a salmon.

After our session he gave me these photos he took of me in my early 20s. He has had them all along. I would be lying to say that seeing them didn’t blow me open a little bit. I can now look back upon this life with him and everyone, every moment, every heartbreak, with blessing. I see a woman who was and continues to be a catalyst for evolution simply by carrying the torch of truth in my heart that everything, everything, rises from and is only seeking to LOVE.

Below is a poem that speaks to how we never let go of those who have touched us, we simply give them a proper shape in our lives and carry our broken open hearts with a divine pride.

The Cure – Albert Huffstickler

You are here:

We think we get over things.

We don’t get over things.

Or say, we get over the measles

but not a broken heart.

We need to make that distinction.

The things that become part of our experience

never become less a part of our experience.

How can I say it?

The way to “get over” a life is to die.

Short of that, you move with it,

let the pain be pain,

not in the hope that it will vanish

but in the faith that it will fit in,

find its place in the shape of things

and be then not any less pain but true to form.

Because anything natural has an inherent shape

and will flow towards it.

And a life is as natural as a leaf.

That’s what we’re looking for:

not the end of a thing but the shape of it.

Wisdom is seeing the shape of your life

without obliterating (getting over) a single

instant of it.