A Heartfelt Message and Plea from my Soul – Judgement, Love, Fear, Home

Don’t have time to read? Listen instead.

Judgement

Recently I found myself wondering why I’m so nervous and afraid of what people think after all that I’ve been through in my life. I came out about being raped when I was 15 and spent over 6 years in and out of legal and counseling offices and court facing my rapist (ex-stepfather) and then another 10+ years struggling with PTSD and mental health. I’ve conquered a lot. I’ve faced what surely has to be my worst nightmare, yet honor and integrity have always been very important to me and I still worry too much about what others think. Putting not just my ex-stepfather but also myself on trial and constantly worrying about whether I would be believed was one of the worst experiences of my life. Sometimes I think my legal experience (court, harassment, etc) was just as bad if not worse than actually being raped because of the pressure.

Once people knew, I couldn’t live in denial or in hiding anymore, and I had to pray and hope that the jury and community would see the truth and do right by me. Thankfully they did, or at least tried to. The legal system itself still let me down but that’s another story. It’s also why I gave up my dream of working in the legal system and went into self-preservation mode and studied art which I don’t regret. I credit studying art and design with helping me heal. I still don’t know what I’m going to do career wise with my life as I’m feeling very unfulfilled but sometimes I think about art therapy or something related– I just don’t have the energy or desire to go through another 4+ years of school unless it’s for a doctorate.

I wish I could get everyone’s voices and thoughts out of my mind, at least those that I imagine. “Will people think I’m crazy if I share my spiritual experiences?” “Will people shun me if they know ____?” “I don’t want Karl to be uncomfortable so I better not talk about ____?” “I don’t want to make _____ look bad so I won’t talk about the issues we’re having—instead I’ll suffer in silence” “I don’t want to overwhelm people in person or online so I’ll spread myself out and hold as much back as I can.”

I just can’t hold back anymore. All my life I’ve felt this overwhelming depth of passion and compassion inside my soul that no one else seemed to openly share. I was constantly told I was “too much” “too passionate” “too ___” and that life’s hard, I need to know my place, I need to be realistic, I need to settle, I should be happy for what I have, and so on instead of being told to dream big and to pour my heart and passion into the world and the things I do.

I totally understand that I am “too much” for some people and that is totally okay but no one should ever tell another human being to sacrifice themselves or repress themselves for someone else’s comfort. If only we were all free and encouraged to be our full and true selves. It’s not my job to accommodate you, it’s your job to take care of you. Instead of asking and expecting others fit your mold of what’s acceptable and comfortable you need to curate your life and work on your boundaries and your heart.

I’ve had a lot on my mind the past few years, as I’m sure many others have as well, and I absolutely hate that it still feels so taboo to talk about the challenges and very real human experiences we have.

Why can’t we talk about sex? It’s a natural part of life.
Why can’t we talk about alternative lifestyles, societal programming, religion and spirituality, gender issues, the war against the poor, how and why our food is being poisoned and big pharma’s role in keeping us reliant on them. Why can’t we have a conversation about what’s wrong with our country and brainstorm together on how to improve things?

Marriage Challenges & Love

Life isn’t perfect, Karl and I have our own challenges and problems, and sometimes I wonder if we’ll make it, but in the meantime dear god I am so thankful for him. I am so thankful to have a best friend and partner that’s not afraid to explore the unknown and uncomfortable. We were talking last night about some of our challenges, one big one being that he’s overworked and barely present for himself or for me which is causing a lot of unhappiness for both of us. We don’t have an answer yet but we’re still talking and trying which is a lot more than most people in this country seem willing to do.

Personally, I do think we’ll make it through the things challenging us assuming Karl doesn’t have a heart attack or stroke from work exhaustion. But even if we didn’t make it, we’re a family, we’re best friends, we love each other, and I would never regret the time we have invested in one another. Now we have a third person in our family, my boyfriend Alex, and while we are still getting used to us all living together for the time being, it has been a blessing having a third person around to help at home to take some things of both Karl and my plate.

I’ve mentioned our open relationship status a few times online in videos but didn’t want to advertise it too much mostly because I wanted to give Karl, Alex, and I time to adjust and I didn’t want Karl to feel uncomfortable but we always knew that I would be talking about it at some point because talking about the human condition and experience and the uncomfortable has always been my thing.

Karl and I have been together since I was 16 (1999) and have faced a lot of challenges in our marriage, all of which have made us stronger. Personally, I welcome the challenges we face because I believe in us and in our ability to overcome anything when we work together. I often feel like Captain Kirk and Spock, now we have a Bones or Scotty and we are slowly building our own crew, our own tribe. Will it last forever? I don’t know but the future doesn’t matter. All that matters is the here and now. I believe that when we do our best in the moment that future moments will work themselves out. Anyways, Karl and I talked about the idea of an open marriage for over 8 years before finally deciding to give it a try. There have been a lot of growing pains but we’ve also experienced a lot growth and I it’s made our relationship stronger in some areas. Now, does an open relationship solve all our marriage issues? The answer is no, but it’s helped give me the emotional support I need to help me sustain me as I continue to try to help Karl with his own struggles.

Facing Fears

In my head I hear people saying “why not just divorce?” “why drag things out?” “you’re marriage is doomed” and so on but I remind myself that these are the same people that would give up the first time something goes wrong. Karl and I aren’t like that.  

Sometimes I wonder about people who have divorced or broken up that have bad relationships with their partners and do all kinds of things to defame or sabotage them. I find it hard to believe that those people, at least the one being toxic, ever actually loved one another. I try to tell myself that some of these people are just so hurt they can’t see through their own pain and are lashing out, but my heart still doesn’t understand.

Karl and I love each other so much that we’re willing to fight for one another including fighting our own fears about what others might think and societal programming. We’re willing to go down the road less traveled in order support one another.

For me, love isn’t something that dies. It doesn’t fade. It doesn’t diminish. There’s no scarcity to it. Love is eternal, love is unbreakable, once you have it you can never unhave it. Sure, it might change form a bit and become a bit less pronounced but it’s still there, an eternal cord binding your heart and spirit to someone else.

When you love someone you fight for them, you explore all options, and then once depleted you fight for yourself so that you can regain the strength to rejoin the fight and fight for others once more. That’s what I’ve been doing the last few years and it has been the most difficult battle I’ve faced since coming out about being raped and all that followed.

You can’t give from an empty cup. Karl and I talk about this all the time yet I still don’t think he truly understands. I’ve always been Karl’s #1 and for most of our life together he was my #1 and I still like to call him my #1 but finally two years ago, afters years of various struggles and a whole lot of spiritual experiences and dreams telling me that I was suffocating and that I needed to detach myself I finally realized that I couldn’t continue to try to help Karl from an empty cup and that I needed to be my own #1 and take care of myself and my own needs. It was a profound moment, I heard a voice inside my mind say thank you when I finally decided that I would in fact give up the life we’ve built together if something didn’t change. Watching someone you love slowly deteriorate from lack of self-care is the worst and I just couldn’t bear to continue to live with a first row seat watching the person I love most in the world fade away from me and himself. I’m thankful that we haven’t given up and are still working on things but just making that decision for myself, that I would in fact choose my own happiness and take care of myself was like a huge seismic shift for me as a person, and it’s a shift I wish more people would make.

We need to take care of ourselves and find our own joy so that we can not only give from a full cup but also so that we can lead and inspire others to do the same by example. If we all took care of our own needs instead of suppressing them we would have a much happier and healthier world. Instead we’ve been programmed to always put other people first, to always think about the comfort of others before our own.

…well if everyone, except obviously those that don’t care at all, is always putting other people first and sacrificing their own comfort and self expression; is anyone actually comfortable? Or are we all just pretending to be okay so we don’t rock the boat?

I want people to be comfortable, I want people to feel safe being and expressing themselves, and dammit I want people to feel free to love without having to feel guilty or apologize for it. We all have friends and family that differ from us belief wise, does that make them a bad person? No! Instead of treating others like the enemy or someone that’s uncurable why don’t we just recognize that their heart or soul is wounded in some way and they are the most in need of our love and compassion. Just because someone’s 85 doesn’t mean they’re not still a child in some way. People often forget that we’ve all had different life experiences that shape our beliefs and values. There’s a reason for everything and a lot of those reasons are trauma and programming, lack of access to healthy supportive communities, and an enormous lack of love.

We all need love, in all it’s forms. The ancient Greeks believed in 8 different types of love, I suspect there are even more, and we all need all of them.  

Some of my spiritual people talk about cutting energetic ties and cords and such but personally I think we need to create more cords of love. We need more connection, and the world needs more love to help it overcome the fear and anxiety that have infected it like a disease.

The problems we have as humans and as a society aren’t going to be solved by a single party or an election. The only way we’re ever going to make things better is to come together as a community and as a human family to talk about, understand, empathize, and brainstorm solutions.

Honestly most of the issues we have wouldn’t be so big or dire if people just spent more time with one another, including people that are different, to help build empathy, understanding, and connection.

Home

“It starts at home, but it doesn’t end at home because love knows no bounds” -Mother Teresa

The change we want to see begins at home, but do we even know what home is, and how many of us actually have a home?

Right now I have 2 ‘homes’ but I often have no idea where ‘home’ is? Several very different definitions pop up when I look up the meaning of ‘home’ and after almost two years of being split between multiple ‘homes’ I can tell you that ‘home’ at least for me is not the place my body dwells.

When I first began to wonder where my ‘home’ was I thought well maybe home is ‘where the heart is’ and I thought ‘Karl’s my home’ but right now as I type this, I’m realizing that my HOME is IN MY HEART. It’s not where my heart is, it’s not who my heart belongs to, my home, my true soul home is in my heart. Not the organ beating in my chest, but the spirit beating within my soul.

When you hear “it starts at home” I hope you’ll remember that your home, and everyone else’s, is your heart. If you are feeling upset, agitated, or struggling with something or someone look first to your heart. Examine it, talk to it, ask it why it’s upset, and then comfort it by spending time with it and connecting with the hearts of others. We are all one family, one human family, and its way past time we started acting like it.

What next?

Marketers also say to end with a call to action and there’s a lot I could suggest here, from getting involved in your community, volunteering for a nonprofit, or talking with a stranger, but instead I’d like to suggest that you begin by spending a little time with your heart. Get to know it, ask it how it’s doing, ask it why it’s feeling the way it is, and figure out how to translate your hearts feelings to your mind so that your mind can help you figure out how to help it. True change begins at home, it begins with your heart.