I never thought I’d have a partner who would SEE me. And I mean really See Me.

Not just the parts of me that I want her to see, or the things I’m projecting, but the moments when I’m not paying attention to Who I think I am or Who I think I should be.  Actually… Just Being.

She sees…

Moments like this standing at the 2017 PDX Pride Parade fully jet lagged from being in London, England the day before she says,

“Don’t Move…”

My eyes go wide and I think ah shit what kind of bug is on me!?

“Just don’t move,” she says again.

My eyes are still wide but my breathing settles because we’ve spent a lot of years laying a foundation of trust so I listen and don’t flinch.

She hands me her phone to show me a picture of myself,

“You’ve been standing like this for the last 5 minutes. With your hand on your heart.”

And she’s right. My hand IS on my heart.

Because I FEEL it.

On the inside AND on the outside.

Honestly, there were moments in my life when I couldn’t feel a thing.  Because the pain, the loss, the griefs were too much and so I chose to just disconnect from any sort of feeling center (which is honestly how I got so heavy).  But in that disconnection from pain I also disconnected the pathways for joy, happiness and love.  And without anything passing through any of those feeling center pathway pipelines I ultimately just felt Empty all of the time.

Emptiness led to despair and zero connections which honestly feels like gravity pulling on every ounce of what I thought I knew of myself, of my world.  The combination of heaviness and gravity led to a sinking ship.

I rode that boat for a long time.

Until I hit a moment of realization where knowing that ANY feeling pain/loss/grief or love/joy/happiness was better than this despair of feeling absolutely nothing, going nowhere and with a constant air of not just riding a sinking ship but actually being the sinking ship.

And so I chose in that moment of realization to connect to Love because I believed it had to be out there and I needed to feel it inside in order to live a full whole life.  I chose through action each day to witness it, to accept it, and receive it in the best ways I knew how and that actually worked for who I was and who I am in this lifetime and to move through those pathways (instead of cutting them off) to then expand, grow, feel and be inspired.

I guess for me it was an ultimate act of forgiveness to myself, to Life and everything I knew of it.  The transformations that came after were nothing short of a miracle.  It has all been the hardest AND the easiest thing I have ever done.

And so now…

I Feel it all just by being present for it and letting it be.  At the Pride Parade I felt the moments of these human beings passing by exuding love, exuding courage, exhibiting pride, and exuding a desire for acceptance. Wholly and fully.  In these moments when I am not trying to be or do anything I am one with them.  It is healthy functioning empathy through experience.  It is also something I have always wanted from my peers, from my parents, from my family, from my church, from my state, from my country, from this world…

I suppose it wasn’t until this moment that I realized I was asking for something that maybe others just couldn’t give, that maybe even I couldn’t give…  Honestly, I’ve hardly known there was a how until being in this relationship with Gretchen.

But SHE does.

She knows how to accept fully, wholly and unconditionally.  And she’s teaching me through honoring all of my personal truths in this relationship.

Gretchen is a pro at Empathy, at listening, at seeing the truth in whatever reality is occurring…  She’s especially excellent at it when she feels safe, secure and loved…  That’s where I come in.  And this is our combination of magic together.

The moment I embraced who I was, what I needed, and where I wanted to go truly and honestly is the same moment that this woman walked into my life.  It was a convergence of desire, action and intention.

She calls it reality.

I call it truth.

The way that we have learned to communicate and describe this space, to grow, to open, to expand has been Our Journey Together.  Life.

Knowing, feeling, fully, wholly accepting… this is what we do. This is who we are. And this is a partnership that I am beyond grateful to be a part of.

There is nothing we are trying to be other than supportive, respectful and unconditionally loving to each other, with each other and through each other.  Someone once said to us quite recently, “You two have cracked the code.” And I smiled thinking YES we’ve done it! People see it!  I needed a little recognition because honestly our first three years together were spent intensely working on these things.  An authentic spiritual partnership.  It was our only focus.

But now what is there to see other than who we are?

Who we are truly being in this reality.

We are strong. We are stubborn. We are independent. And WE are IN this Together.

We are also willing to trust, to accept, and to receive Love IN this Life Together.

Happy 5 years to my Spiritual Partner! 

 

 

If you are curious about how we got our start in having a real true authentic relationship  then check out Spiritual Partnership:  The Journey to Authentic Power by Gary Zukav (no affiliation).  It gave us leaps and bounds of practical lessons that we could apply in walking this path together.