{"id":8960,"date":"2024-11-05T15:35:59","date_gmt":"2024-11-05T15:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/?p=8960"},"modified":"2025-06-15T08:53:49","modified_gmt":"2025-06-15T08:53:49","slug":"a-heartfelt-message-and-plea-from-my-soul-judgement-love-fear-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/a-heartfelt-message-and-plea-from-my-soul-judgement-love-fear-home\/","title":{"rendered":"A Heartfelt Message and Plea from my Soul &#8211; Judgement, Love, Fear, Home"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Don&#8217;t have time to read? Listen instead.<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UKuNc8Omt1c?si=Vhw2fdRJ016bVvoX\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Judgement<\/h2>\n<p>Recently I found myself wondering why I&#8217;m so nervous and afraid of what people think after all that I&#8217;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\u2019ve conquered a lot. I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n<p>Once people knew, I couldn&#8217;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&#8217;s another story. It&#8217;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&#8217;t regret. I credit studying art and design with helping me heal. I still don&#8217;t know what I&#8217;m going to do career wise with my life as I\u2019m feeling very unfulfilled but sometimes I think about art therapy or something related&#8211; I just don&#8217;t have the energy or desire to go through another 4+ years of school unless it&#8217;s for a doctorate.<\/p>\n<p>I wish I could get everyone&#8217;s voices and thoughts out of my mind, at least those that I imagine. &#8220;Will people think I&#8217;m crazy if I share my spiritual experiences?&#8221; &#8220;Will people shun me if they know ____?&#8221; &#8220;I don&#8217;t want Karl to be uncomfortable so I better not talk about ____?&#8221; &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to make _____ look bad so I won&#8217;t talk about the issues we&#8217;re having\u2014instead I\u2019ll suffer in silence&#8221; &#8220;I don\u2019t want to overwhelm people in person or online so I\u2019ll spread myself out and hold as much back as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I just can\u2019t hold back anymore. All my life I\u2019ve 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 \u201ctoo much\u201d \u201ctoo passionate\u201d \u201ctoo ___\u201d and that life\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>I totally understand that I am \u201ctoo much\u201d 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\u2019s comfort. If only we were all free and encouraged to be our full and true selves. It\u2019s not my job to accommodate you, it\u2019s your job to take care of you. Instead of asking and expecting others fit your mold of what\u2019s acceptable and comfortable you need to curate your life and work on your boundaries and your heart.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve had a lot on my mind the past few years, as I&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Why can&#8217;t we talk about sex? It&#8217;s a natural part of life.<br \/>\nWhy can&#8217;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&#8217;s role in keeping us reliant on them. Why can&#8217;t we have a conversation about what&#8217;s wrong with our country and brainstorm together on how to improve things?<\/p>\n<h2>Marriage Challenges &amp; Love<\/h2>\n<p>Life isn&#8217;t perfect, Karl and I have our own challenges and problems, and sometimes I wonder if we&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;s overworked and barely present for himself or for me which is causing a lot of unhappiness for both of us. We don&#8217;t have an answer yet but we&#8217;re still talking and trying which is a lot more than most people in this country seem willing to do.<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I do think we&#8217;ll make it through the things challenging us assuming Karl doesn&#8217;t have a heart attack or stroke from work exhaustion. But even if we didn&#8217;t make it, we&#8217;re a family, we&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve mentioned our open relationship status a few times online in videos but didn\u2019t want to advertise it too much mostly because I wanted to give Karl, Alex, and I time to adjust and I didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t know but the future doesn\u2019t 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\u2019ve also experienced a lot growth and I it\u2019s made our relationship stronger in some areas. Now, does an open relationship solve all our marriage issues? The answer is no, but it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<h2>Facing Fears<\/h2>\n<p><strong>In my head I hear people saying \u201cwhy not just divorce?\u201d \u201cwhy drag things out?\u201d \u201cyou\u2019re marriage is doomed\u201d<\/strong> 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\u2019t like that. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t see through their own pain and are lashing out, but my heart still doesn&#8217;t understand.<\/p>\n<p>Karl and I love each other so much that we\u2019re willing to fight for one another including fighting our own fears about what others might think and societal programming. We\u2019re willing to go down the road less traveled in order support one another.<\/p>\n<p>For me, love isn&#8217;t something that dies. It doesn&#8217;t fade. It doesn&#8217;t diminish. There&#8217;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&#8217;s still there, an eternal cord binding your heart and spirit to someone else.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s what I\u2019ve been doing the last few years and it has been the most difficult battle I\u2019ve faced since coming out about being raped and all that followed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You can\u2019t give from an empty cup.<\/strong> Karl and I talk about this all the time yet I still don\u2019t think he truly understands. I\u2019ve always been Karl\u2019s #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\u2019t 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\u2019ve built together if something didn\u2019t change. Watching someone you love slowly deteriorate from lack of self-care is the worst and I just couldn\u2019t 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\u2019m thankful that we haven\u2019t 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\u2019s a shift I wish more people would make.<\/p>\n<p><strong>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.<\/strong> If we all took care of our own needs instead of suppressing them we would have a much happier and healthier world. Instead we\u2019ve been programmed to always put other people first, to always think about the comfort of others before our own.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">\u2026well if everyone, except obviously those that don\u2019t 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\u2019t rock the boat?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>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\u2019s uncurable why don\u2019t 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\u2019s 85 doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re not still a child in some way. People often forget that we\u2019ve all had different life experiences that shape our beliefs and values. There\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>We all need love, in all it\u2019s forms. The ancient Greeks believed in 8 different types of love, I suspect there are even more, and we all need all of them. &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The problems we have as humans and as a society aren&#8217;t going to be solved by a single party or an election. The only way we&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Honestly most of the issues we have wouldn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<h2>Home<\/h2>\n<blockquote><p><strong>\u201cIt starts at home, but it doesn&#8217;t end at home because love knows no bounds\u201d<\/strong> -Mother Teresa<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The change we want to see begins at home, but <strong>do we even know what home is<\/strong>, and <strong>how many of us actually have a home?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Right now I have 2 &#8216;homes&#8217; but I often have no idea where &#8216;home&#8217; is? Several very different definitions pop up when I look up the meaning of &#8216;home&#8217; and after almost two years of being split between multiple &#8216;homes&#8217; I can tell you that &#8216;home&#8217; at least for me is not the place my body dwells.<\/p>\n<p>When I first began to wonder where my &#8216;home&#8217; was I thought well maybe home is &#8216;where the heart is&#8217; and I thought &#8216;Karl&#8217;s my home&#8217; but right now as I type this, I&#8217;m realizing that my HOME is IN MY HEART. It&#8217;s not where my heart is, it&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>When you hear &#8220;it starts at home&#8221; I hope you&#8217;ll remember that your home, and everyone else\u2019s, 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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<h2>What next?<\/h2>\n<p>Marketers also say to end with a call to action and there&#8217;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&#8217;d like to suggest that you begin by spending a little time with your heart. Get to know it, ask it how it&#8217;s doing, ask it why it&#8217;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.<strong> True change begins at home, it begins with your heart.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/241105-home.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-8961\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/241105-home.jpg?resize=600%2C600&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/241105-home.jpg?resize=600%2C600&amp;ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/241105-home.jpg?resize=400%2C400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/241105-home.jpg?resize=200%2C200&amp;ssl=1 200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/241105-home.jpg?w=1080&amp;ssl=1 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Don&#8217;t have time to read? Listen instead. &nbsp; Judgement Recently I found myself wondering why I&#8217;m so nervous and afraid of what people think after all that I&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-journals"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/241105-home.jpg?fit=1080%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4XnUB-2kw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8960"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8968,"href":"https:\/\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8960\/revisions\/8968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carolandkarl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}