If your heart is still broken it may not be the time to find new love.

One time a friend lost her son to a rave concert. Observing her grieve with a cheerful smile pasted on her face made my judgment feathers stand up on the back of my neck. My own experience of love loss once left me crumpled in a darkened closet, where I planned on sitting till I died, and here was a mother who lost her son—apparently coping in her pain.

Questioning her sincerity, I asked the question: “How?”

She told me her faith in Jehovah was her key. She explained her belief that if heartbreak overtook her like a flooded river following a storm, then she would not be available to God’s next assignment.

Her faith is not my path, but maybe it was spirit that wiggled me from the despair I’d felt while crumpled in that closet. Eventually, and reluctantly, I shuffled forward to discover my work.

Ill-prepared for another heartbreak, I decided (at the advice of a wise mentor) I would remain single until my goal list consisted of qualities rather than accomplishments and until my heart was open to love and to the possibility of being hurt again. In the meantime, her instructions included going out into nature to learn how to be a tree.

Until that time, my choice in partner resembled choosing from a menu at a diner where everything is greasy and laden in fat and sugar. It always feels good going down, but the full stomach always leads to gas and heartburn. Pursuing love in my life was no different.

Each new love had some qualities of a true partner, but always cloaked in unavailability and responsibility elsewhere. Falling in love, I felt like a rabid dog in heat, insatiable and foaming at the mouth. The more unavailable the partner, tracking for crumbs of attention became more important than loving me.

One day, a shaman presented me with a vision. In it, I sat atop a horse, feeling confident and well prepared for my journey, but suddenly love flung me to the ground. A standard joke in my life was just how harshly love did fling me around in a musical chairs way.

I opened my first restaurant to help realize my partner’s dream, but soon closed it to follow another love interest south. When she eventually snuck off in the night I opened another restaurant to give the third lover a job, and then quickly sold it to escape an affair with a waitress that I began, when my partner proved unable to do the job.

Finally in Denver, isolated from self again, the trunk arrived from California, again full of all my personal baggage. This time I knew that it was time to clean out the old patterns that no longer fit, and to stay out of relationship until I became the person I wanted to meet.

The black and blue heart almost closed.

Then one morning on a hike in Boulder, nearing the top of the trail, after trying desperately to become a tree, I stumbled into a cloud of love. From the limited vantage point of the trail, I could see only the back of someone sitting in a deep meditation, but the prevailing winds of love permeated the entire peak. I thought for sure I had found my soul mate. After all, I had made my decision just weeks before not to follow in a family tradition of becoming cold and embittered to romance.

Patiently I waited on a rock for the other to finish meditating. Alas, after waiting patiently while trying to calm my building excitement, a man in his late eighties turned and smiled.  In that moment I saw clearly how the love vibration has little to do with sexual attraction.

In order to become the I  that is me in you, it was clear that I had a great deal of work—there was a huge discrepancy between my physical attraction and energetic alignment to someone who was a true match for me.

From here, from this new understanding, the real work of attracting a true partner could finally begin.

~

Ed: Amy Cushing

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