I’m finally ready to share my story.

It was 2016 and I had found summer love. I was so enamored by my new flame because he was everything I had been manifesting. I remember thinking: “Holy sh*t! He’s 72 out of the 75 things I’ve been calling in.”

He was almost everything I listed on my “Love Manifestation” list: the physical build, personality, and other attributes.

We were in love. His heart opened to mine, and mine to his. Both of us had been through long relationships and we were finally ready to welcome in love.

Or so I thought.

It was almost out of a dream. There was instant chemistry—you know that instant connection where you keep wanting more and more. He felt the same and didn’t want our connection to end in New York, so he asked me to vacation with him in the Florida Keys.

Off we went on our romantic getaway, falling deeper into the dream we created. So much so, we decided we were going to do this. We didn’t want to be with anyone else but one another.

We had a long distance relationship where we would spend two weeks on, one week off. It progressed to spending the holidays together and finally, into looking into an apartment so we could be in the same place.

I will never forget the day.

That feeling. The sense that something was wrong—the day I stepped off the plane from seeing an apartment with my boyfriend…to never hearing from him again.

I texted, “I landed safely.”

Silence.

I thought to myself, “Perhaps he’s busy…I’ll wait it out.” But there was an anxiousness in the pit of my stomach. I decided to call the next day, thinking he’d probably fallen asleep.

Silence.

And that’s what I was left with.

Complete and utter silence.

I had been ghosted.

He just disappeared from my life. There was no explanation there was no communication, there was nothing.

We had plans to spend Christmas together—my flight was booked. But instead, I was left with a nonrefundable flight cost, uncertainty on whether or not I’d be alone for Christmas, and a broken heart.

It was as though the rug beneath my feet had been pulled out and the lights were turned off. I was disoriented—in complete darkness.

I had spent so much time healing my heart from my previous relationship that had lasted close to nine years, that I finally felt I could breathe into my heart again.

And now, I was being ghosted.

It took some time to process:

To let go of the thought that something was wrong with me.

To let go of the feeling of being abandoned.

To let go of the need to know why.

To let go of the hurt.

To let go of the sadness.

To let go of the anger.

To let go of the resentment.

To let go of the uncertainty.

To let go of the desire to close my heart.

To just let go.

And I did.

I realized that it was never about me.

I dared to love and evoked a stirring of light that he was scared to allow in.

We have this belief: the more I love, the more I can be hurt. I know I’ve fallen into this thought pattern before—the fear of letting someone in. And, there is truth in this. However, if we love unconditionally, we know what love within ourselves looks like, and we no longer suffer.

The script no longer is, “I love you for how you make me feel happy.” The script becomes, “I love you, and I want you to be happy—even if that doesn’t include me.”

When we love without clinging or needing, we love without fear.

This experience did not break me. Instead, it built me. I let go of my fear around love because I had now encountered all of my fears.

Imagine that?

We create what we feed. And I created all my fears in love.

I’ve been cheated on multiple times, taken advantage of, blamed, lied to, abandoned, abused—and now I can add ghosted to that list.

I either could regress behind the built up walls of my heart, or I could step forward into dissolving all my walls around love.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~ Rumi

And that’s what I did and am still doing.

That journey began with letting go; to find the love that was already within myself that needed to be awakened.

Dare to love. Dare to fully go all in. For you can only go as far as you’ve met yourself.

p.s. For all the curious readers: the moment I let go, he reached out and wanted me back in his life. I’ve found another love now, and it’s not one that leaves me in silence. It’s the way energy works; as soon as you let go, something bigger and better emerges.