It seems like only last week my knight in shining armour turned up on my door step to steal true loves first kiss. Sadly there was no white horse, however there was one massive arse (I’m referring to you my Skip). While our love story has resembled more the likes of Shrek and Fiona than of Cinderella, it has been that big love that I was calling forward. It has played out in the most ridiculous of manners, with synchronicities becoming the norm for us nowadays. We have uncovered many “sliding doors” moments along the way – many times over the years where our paths *almost* crossed, but never quite did. In fact, a few weeks into our relationship, we realised we had worked at the same place 18 years ago. We joke about how we would never have worked out back then. How we both needed to experience the things in our lives that we have, in order for us to be in a place where our union could occur, and this beautiful big love could ignite. I don’t know about having one particular soul mate, or if they are even a real thing. But I do know that we attract what we are. Quantum physics says so. We attract both the light and the dark. The love and the fear. Every person we interact with serves as a mirror to our own selves, and all that we hold inside. So when you are in a union like ours, where the connection is so big and so strong, you are going to mirror big love back to each other. Aaaaand you’re going to mirror back all the shit too. Bloody Murphy and his stupid laws.

So here’s where I’ve been at these past 8 months since this big love gig kicked off. I’ve been loved up to buggary. Then I’ve completely shut my heart down to him. Coz like the fuckhead that I am, I can do that (not putting myself down here, I’m awesome – but I can tend toward fuckheadery behaviours). I’ve been on high alert, waiting for shit to go wrong. I’ve been reactive instead of responsive. I’ve pulled myself back into my own being, only to get thrown back out by the circumstances surrounding me. We’ve had a fair wad of shit to cross since our coming together. Be it through love or sheer stubbornness of us both, we are coming out the other side more united than when we went in. It’s been my reactions to these circumstances (also known as “life happening”) that has caused friction, but has also provided me with opportunities to dig deeper into me and my own shadows. My Skip just holding my hand with a *knowing* that I’ll come out the other side smelling roses (he’s abit of a legend my Skip with patience of a fuckin Saint). I don’t know if it was a full moon, Mercury doing some weird spinny retro dance, or some other forces of nature that conspired to bring me to that point. But I reached *that* point. You know the one. The “fuck this shit!” point, where you are so sick of your own bullshit that you just gotta call it – that spade is a bloody spade. I reached that point a few days ago. It was time to pull on my big girl pants and go for a scour around these shadow parts again, see what’s lurking, give it love and let it the fuck go.

“Love liberates. It doesn’t bind. Love says I love you” – Maya Angelou.

I’m not quite sure at what point it occurred, but it happened… again. I started grabbing at this beautiful thing in fear I would lose it. I got caught up looking for how love was being given to me, and how it wasn’t in my “language” so therefore I couldn’t receive it. Yep. I was trying to control how love was given to me. As it typically goes, when you focus your attention on what you are *not* getting, you miss seeing what you are being offered. I read those books on love languages. I felt justified in my demands (they weren’t requests) that love be shown to me in the way that *I* receive it. I put my hands on this beautiful big love, and tried to contort it into something I was familiar with. Something that felt “safe” because if it was safe, there would be no room for fear. One problem. This whole language idea is fear based. The premise that we must learn to give others love in the way they receive it so as to “fill them up” is a fear based ideal. It has no place in a beautiful, big love. Because beautiful big love is free. It is free to just… be. It is not your job to fill me up with love, nor is it mine to fill yours. The maintenance of your love tank is your own responsibility and the second you put that on someone else, you are writing cheques they just cannot cash. To be responsible for how loved another person feels is putting restraints on how they express themselves as a loving being. You are saying “no, not like that. You’re doing it all wrong. You’re loving me all wrong”. I am a words gal. My Skip is not so wordy. So because he can’t say the *right* words to me, does this mean he doesn’t love me? Hell no. What about the forehead kisses? What about the reaching for me in his sleep to cuddle me? What about the considering me in every decision he makes? Because he doesn’t give me the words, does that mean he’s loving me all wrong? Again with the hell no. I call bullshit on that whole idea of needing to give love the way our partner receives it. Fear based love is not true love. True love is expansive, non restrictive and the most beautiful, immersive, heart full state I have ever allowed myself to experience. Aaaand then I shut it down again. Because, you know – the fuckheadery. I’ve watched myself block love with any excuse. Don’t get me wrong – I blamed the language thing for a while there. Because there’s books and stuff so you know – its justifiable. When I realised how restrictive this idea was, and how his actions show nothing BUT love, I was again left pondering “what the actual fuck am I doing here”…

“For the Ego cannot love and in its frantic search for love, it is seeking what it is afraid to find” – A Course In Miracles.

Fear (noun): An unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain or harm. Yep, I was a-feared. Why? Cause shits gotten real in the past. Be it past lovers, family issues… whatever the cause. I felt pain and I was trying to avoid that again. I also wanted to feel big love. Guess what – you can’t have both. You can’t control and be in a state of big immersive love simultaneously. It just don’t fly. Despite feeling the fear, I continued to drop my walls and let him in. Then one sentence from him and boom! Back up they go. So I wasn’t completely paralysed by these fears, but bloody hell their reappearing act was giving me the shits. Something was missing in my “big picture” as to why I’ve had the awareness of these fears and triggers, yet I was still allowing them to play out. I own my shit, I take accountability for my actions. This was frustrating the life out of me. So as I often do, I threw it out there to the universe, powers to be… whatever you want to call it… “show me what I’m missing here”. I was not prepared for the influx of information that has hit me in the past 72 hours, but I definitely got my answer (careful what you wish for eh?!). The work of Dr Brene Brown fell into my lap, then jumped up and slapped me across the face. The more I delved into her research and subsequent interpretation of that research, the more I could see exactly what was going wrong here. If you’re not familiar with Brene a) you need to get familiar, and b) she is a shame researcher. Yep. She researches the emotion we know as shame.

Shame (noun): the painful feeling arising from the awareness of something dishonourable, improper or ridiculous, done by oneself or another. I always associated the word shame with embarrassment – it means the same thing right? Wrong. Shame is a deep seeded emotion that embeds itself into the very core of you – should you allow it. It is an emotion that once felt, we try to avoid feeling again in the same context. So what do we do once we have experienced shame? We withdraw. We stop doing the thing that caused us to feel this emotion, because we don’t want to feel it again. The thing about shame is that it can only exist in the presence of judgement – be it of ourselves, of another, or another judging us. When I was a teenager, I had someone say to me “Im glad I never heard you sing, I bet you sound terrible”. Boom. Shame. So no one heard me sing (sober anyhow). Im 37 years old and my children only just started to hear me sing a year ago. No partner has ever heard me sing. Because I associate shame with singing. And I don’t want to experience that feeling again so I avoid it. As a small child I offered my whole heart to someone who told me it was too much. Wanna guess what I did as a result? I stopped giving my whole heart. I felt shame around giving my whole heart to someone. I felt my love was “ridiculous” and “too much”. I did the same thing with sex. One bad experience, one person saying awful things to me (that likely had nothing to do with me anyway) and again the flame went out. I hid the raw feminine, sexual essence of me away for fear that once again, I would be shamed. This flicking my light on and off – be it singing, dancing, sharing my truth or giving my heart has never been able a self worth issue. It is a shame issue. And now I see this shadow I am able to bring it into the light.

So it seems I’ve found the cleanup crew that keep on resurrecting that wall after I’ve knocked it down and let my Prince in. Past fears that caused me to feel shame have led to vulnerability when I have offered these parts of myself to him. He loves to joke and to shit stir, that’s one way he shows love and I love that about him. When I have let my walls down and gone all in im so scared and so vulnerable. And his smart arse responses have seen me shut down time and time again. But Im so grateful because now I see all the shame that was hiding and I can let it all go. I just don’t need it anymore. In triggering me the way he has (ironically by offering me love the way he does), he has shown me where I have been withholding from him, and from living my truth. I have been so afraid to give the full extent of my love – to anyone, even my children. I have been so afraid to embody the sexual being that I am. I’ve been so scared to sing. I don’t want to hide anymore.

“Theres a hero, if you look inside your heart. You don’t have to be afraid of what you are. Theres an answer, if you reach into your soul. And the sorrow that you know, will melt away” – Mariah Carey, Hero.

To overcome our shame, we must be prepared to be vulnerable. It takes courage to say “I know this feels scary but fuck it, I’ll do it anyway”. Brene says “vulnerability is the birthplace of every positive emotion we need in our lives – love, belonging, joy, empathy….being vulnerable means I’m offering you something I know you could break. But having the courage to offer it anyway”. As opposed to pacifying a fear, we overcome our shame stories with nourishment, kindness and love. We overcome them by speaking them out loud, having the willingness and the courage to be vulnerable with those we love. With awareness, compassion and love we can achieve anything. I can’t know what the future will bring, or if this is my happily ever after. I do know I want to fully experience every beautiful aspect of it. I’m all in.