The chemistry between Ally and Jack in “A Star Is Born” (2018) kept us all spell bound and is still filling social media with speculations about a possible relationship between Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper… But the message of this movie is that a woman is birthed into her full potential through heartbreak, and that is troublesome to say the least.

How can we in 2019 still accept that a woman needs a man to discover, encourage, and break her open?

** Refusing To Accept Heartbreak As Normal **

Being a dating mentor, I speak to over 50 women a month and most revolt against this myth, but way too many are still held in its grip.

Our culture has come to accept heartbreak for a woman as part of the dating experience.

Maybe this started about 3000 years ago with collective phantasies of a God called Zeus who throned himself above all others and raped any woman he laid his eyes upon. And as even in phantasy it was unimaginable that this could be done without the powerful Goddesses calling it to halt, the phantasy then perverted their power and labeled these towering Goddesses and their just anger as “jealous wives that no one listened to”.

We women are claiming our right to initiate our own journeys into our full potential and into love. We choose a quest for love and stardom without heartbreak, and we know it’s not only possible, it’s the only way that endures. I am super excited that I’ve found a step-by-step plan to do this – and it’s changing lives as I write.

What makes us into the fiery, vulnerable, alive women we are is not being discovered, encouraged and broken by a man. What awakens and sets us free is making our own choices and being welcomed and initiated into a temple of female mentors and sisters, reconnecting to the Goddess within. For the women who work with me, it is reality. Building on this vision I founded 3 years ago the Love for Life Academy, and it’s grown to become a highly successful 8 week dating program. Women come here who are stuck in dating and feel in their bones that finding a soulmate goes hand in hand with freeing the feminine – and who refuse to accept heartbreak as normal.

This program has been running now for 3 years, and happy, healthy relationships are being started here on a weekly basis.

Little Red Riding Hood was “eaten” by the wolf disguised as her grandmother – a remnant of the myth of Zeus disguising himself as various animals to rape Hera. My clients are still plagued by voices that it would be “leading a man on” to be their full radiant pleasure-loving feminine self. To let eye contact last more than 3 seconds and grunt with satisfaction when they sip their green juice.

Even as they are powerful leaders, experts and CEO’s.

But we are revolting. We feel the call of a different reality.

** An Alternative **

Thousands of years before the horror myth of the rapes by Zeus were fabricated, there was a different myth of the quest of woman to find her soulmate. As high school student I refused to learn Greek because I felt that reading about all these condoned myths of rape was like condoning it myself. Little did I know then how I would find alternatives – and inspire thousands of women. The older myth focused on Psyche, youngest of 3 daughters to a queen and king, who unlike her sisters wasn’t interested in marrying a king herself.

Psyche instead was in search of true love and a soulmate. The myth has become famous in its patriarchal version titled Psyche and Cupid, or Psyche and Amor, as written down by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis in the second century CE. Following the work of Charlene Spretnak in her first book Early Goddesses of Greece, and tapping into 25 years of studying ancient Goddess cultures, I have unraveled from beneath patriarchal layers what could have been the original myth. So instead of a heroine who faints when facing a challenge and doesn’t make decisions of her own, here’s a heroine who chooses her own fate and meets challenges head-on, supported by the allies she makes on her journey.

** Dreaming Up Your Soulmate & Not Settling For The Dream **

The myth begins with Psyche leaving the castle of her parents – of course a strong metaphor that as powerful women looking for a soulmate, to succeed we need to leave the culturally sanctioned path and forge our own.

Psyche climbed a mountain top to give her love – fate into the hands of the 4 Winds (you might recognize this theme as being that of Jesus going into the desert after hearing his mission, and indeed there’s many myths from all over the world and from all ages, with hroes and heroines of both genders, sharing this theme).

It was the gentle West Wind that lifted her up and it took her into the dream world. Every night the perfect lover (Cupid, also known as Amor) would come. But by day there was no one. Psyche was supported by her sisters to wake up from the dream, forego this relationship that wasn’t a real relationship, and go on a quest to find Amor, the love she had dreamed up – but now in real life.

Many women who come to me share a similar story of having experienced intimate passionate love by a man “by night”, that is to say by a man who doesn’t partake in her daily life (friends with benefits, a man who won’t commit, …). Finding the power to let go of this love, delicious as it is, is a powerful choice and a first initiation. It takes big courage to trust you will be able to find that quality of love in a real relationship. This is where we need the support of a mentor and sisters.

Note how different this is from Ally who doesn’t step out of the dream, instead keeps saying yes, and note that all the ugliness, destruction and hurt that follow are not part of the initiation, not part of love – they are the price for not making your own choices, and for a culture that sanctions and promotes heartbreak.

** Realigning With Mother Earth & Awakening Your Light **

Not so for Psyche, she leaves the dream and steps into the green grass of life open and trusting. She soon comes onto an altar for Demeter, the great Earth Goddess, and sees the altar is in disarray. She understands this is part of her Quest and spends 7 days bringing the altar in order, praying and singing and making crowns of Demeter’s sacred grain and poppies.

When women join my program, we start with taking 7 days to reorient her towards her relationship with Mother Earth, her own body, her sacred womb and her intimate circle of friends and family – all embodiments of Demeter. Through meditations, listening to music and simple practices we “bring the altar in order”.

As the woman realigns with Earth, awakens her connection to her body and especially her sacred womb, and allows her heart to be touched again by the love of her dear ones, she quickly feels whole and fulfilled. Her inner light starts to shine and love surrounds her. She then easily goes on to attract the right kind of man, but the myth shows us something else still needs to happen first.

Notice it’s not the man giving her this radiance. It doesn’t happen because Jack tells Ally she is beautiful – and if the film does anything, it proves the dependency that is created when we let a man give us confidence through his words: for the same Jack a few months later tells Ally in a fight “you are ugly”. It’s the epitome of humiliation and betrayal, and no one should set herself up for this. Each time again I am thankful when I can show women there’s an alternative. The love quest begins with honoring Demeter.

This beginning is totally against everything we have learned, and one of my clients described it as “I had no idea where Klara was going, but I knew I needed to follow her”. 8 Weeks later, she had broken through a lifelong pattern of fleeing from the right men, and she is now in a happy, committed relationship, learning more every day.

The only healthy way into love is by our own choice – and as our relationship to earth and our bodies is distorted for almost all of us, “bring the altar of Demeter in order” is a beautiful metaphor of where to start. Like Psyche, we take 7 days.

** Pleasure & The Radiance Of A Pharaoh **

Once the task has been completed, Psyche thanks Demeter, and Demeter gives her blessing for Psyche’s quest. Psyche continues her journey and comes upon a temple for Hera, the powerful Goddess who had been raped by Zeus and then had the even worse fate to be portrayed as “silly and jealous”. This temple too needs ordering, and Psyche understands this too is part of her quest for a soulmate and chooses to stay.

Before Hera’s identity became twisted she was akin to Hathor, the Egyptian Sun Goddess found on the forehead of every pharaoh in the form of a serpent. Feeling all the symbolism here?

In my program, in this phase I guide women to throw off all the negative judgments on the feminine and stop identifying the feminine with too emotional, jealous, overly romantic and naïve. Instead, they claim back their essence of intuitive, wise, wild, relational and powerful.

They take pleasure in their own body, and not only in the limited sense these words have come to mean – but to enjoy the touch of our own fingers on our own skin, the movement of our pelvis, the sensuality of our breath and our lips. They learn about energy and how to allow the energy between woman and man to build without any sexual acts.

It’s a joy to see women starting to feel beautiful and shiny in their own way, from within, without running the risk of anyone taking that away again. Women grow when they know how to allow that spark to happen, and bust the myth that some women just “have” it and others don’t.

The stay at Hera’s temple is another 7 days, and after that my clients re-enter the dating world, and though it’s only been a fortnight since they started the quest, they enter it now from a totally different place. Now, they have the power of Demeter the Earth Goddess and the blessing of Hathor, the sensual golden one – plus the support of a mentor and sisters.

** Venus & Persephone, Love & Death **

For Psyche, her quest now takes her to Venus, the Love Goddess. Venus has three challenges for Psyche, and then sends her on to Persephone, Goddess of Death and the Underworld.

You could argue that the destruction and ultimately suicide of Jack that Ally was exposed to was an expression of meeting Persephone.

But it’s the difference between tender and brutal, between choice and rape, a flower opening or a lid torn off. Meeting death to my clients is shredded in beauty. It is about daring to say what is true in their heart – even as they fear it might drive the newly found partner away. To then experience the miracle and paradox of love: that it is this very act of courage and revealing oneself naked that pulls the other in – instead of scaring him away. This is the miracle Psyche experienced as she found Amor upon her return from the Underworld – and this is the miracle my clients experience again and again.

This final shift frees a woman totally from the “Jack and Ally” legacy and brings her a soulmate. Many share about the deep gratitude this evokes. It’s the final key to attracting the right man and crafting and keeping a relationship vibrant and alive year after year, and this is why in only 8 weeks women get the keys to a lifetime of happiness and love.

Typically, my clients have been stuck in dating for years, or even decennia – even as they thrived in work, career and other areas of their life. To then shift this all around and find a true soulmate, a heart companion and life partner in 8 weeks and also understand how to keep the relationship healthy and alive is a true initiation and a beginning of a new life.

** Coming Out Of The Wrong Movie & Finding A Soulmate **

What is holding us back in dating is not that we’re not worthy, too old, too young, or anything like that. What has been holding us back was being stuck in the wrong movie. A star isn’t born at the hands of an alcoholic. A star is born of her own choice, following ancient pathways, aligning with her Goddesses and supported by a mentor and sisters.

Love is closer than we think.

In the words sung by Bette Midler in the Rose – author Amanda McBroom:

“Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender reed

Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves your soul to bleed

Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need

I say love, it is a flower, and you, its only seed

…..

“Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows

Lies the seed, that with the sun’s love in the spring becomes the rose.”

When we leave the drowning, bleeding and aching and choose fertile earth, Sun Goddesses and love, a soulmate and committed, happy relationship is close by.

It’s time.