story time from my real life: a return to longer writing
FIRST A NOTE:
i have found recently that i am tired of the smaller spaces. i want to somehow be both slower and bigger. to take the time to share the felt sense, the bare feet pressing into the decking, the nuance of how many ripples appear on our inner lake before we choose what direction to move ourselves in. i hope you will join me if you want to slow down also, and take time to read some longer stories. let’s begin here…
ON MOVING TOWARDS THE UNKNOWN | 8.06.25
“it feels really good how much you love me right now,” i say, as i peer at him through the screen door.
he was out late on our boat with one of his boys, i was home making hot dogs and helping my girl shop for bras. i am sleepy, so i took nighttime supplements and brushed my teeth and got into bed with a podcast before he even got home.
but i got up to get the kitten in for the night and as i walked back to bed i saw him out on the deck. i felt this tugging pull in my chest as i saw him out there through the windows and then noticed my first wave of instinct is to hide.
i have been tracking this primal fear response, as i call her, closely for a few months. it was really painful at first. this deep deep line of tight hot pain along my core and central channel. the birth place of my utterly adaptive freeze response.
i’ve spent years and years tracking the emotional overlay on top of this primal fear. she is just as important for me to know. she says, “no one loves me. something is wrong with me.”
but she is sort of laid on top of this deeper muscle, bone, and fascia fear that i didn’t know i could feel and hold.
funny almost, how seeing the man i love - and have been with seven years - will activate a fear response in my system.
funny.
tender.
sweet.
acceptable.
and okay.
instead of hiding, or going back to bed, i pause and turn my attention and curiosity towards my own inner landscape.
if i show up ok with the fear, and ok with the “what if he doesn’t love me?” that sits on top of that fear - if i am curious what else is there - i feel something present and true. a longing. an ache. a gratitude.
we have been in a new place lately. or i could say i have been in a new place lately, as everything in the relationship tends to be a barometer of where i am at with me. when i say relationship work is a playground to get free i mean:
- all my parts show up in my long term relationship.
- all my reactivity shows up in my long term relationship.
- all my stories scream loudest in my long term relationship.
- all my unconscious beliefs and ancestral patterns play out in my long term relationship.
i should be forthright here and say i am pretty obsessed with awakening. i want to try to describe that awakening though because i am personally weary of buzz words.
awakening means coming home to live in my body. it means touching love and joy for no reason. it means developing faith in my capacity to feel whatever arises. it means identifying as awareness of what arises.
awakening means letting life move through me with force. it means being open to radical honesty with my self and in my relationship with my thoughts, beliefs and actions.
awakening means making space for the unknown.
the unknown is sort of the opposite of my personal addiction to knowing what is right and what works. believing i can know what is right, and what works, are parts that want to keep me safe.
feeling safe is the potential antidote to feeling the primal fear. feeling safe is sort of the balm to feeling not loved or lovable.
it all makes sense. and it is all constructed. it has tightness and judgement wrapped up in it.
so as i see him on the deck and i feel this wanting, i turn towards it. i want contact, i want connection. i want to see if that thing i have been feeling in my space with him is there. i know exactly how this night goes if i “hide” and get back into bed, i have done that a million times in a million ways. the unknown is moving towards a different choice.
the thing i have been feeling, the sort of more naked closeness popping up in our relational field, isn’t something he is creating. it is something i can feel because of where i am going with myself. where i am going is deeper in towards the spaces that have felt too soft and vulnerable to let anything close.
this is emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual. it is the whole everything. in my practice space alone, and in my exploration of how i engage with my reality, i have been willing to go in deeper with me without knowing what it might get me or what might come up.
i feel all of this with my awareness as i see him on the deck. i walk to the slider door and pull it open. i take a deep deep breath. i lean my face into the screen lightly.
“it feels really good how much you’ve been loving me now,” i say.
“what?” he calls back to me. and then before i can reply, “come out here.” he says. and then again before i can protest, “just trust me. come out here. trust me.”
i slide open the screen as i gently acknowledge my own inner resistance. going out is the opposite of hiding and freezing. going on to the deck is even more then saying a sentence through the screen. moving towards is the opposite of what i already know exactly how to do.
i pad across the deck in my barefeet and pajamas. he is at the furthest corner. he takes my shoulders and turns me gently away from him.
“la luna,” he says into my ear as he pulls my back into his chest and wraps his arms around me. the right corner of my forehead presses into his cheek lightly.
“mmmmmm,” i reply.
i feel myself tighten. i take a breath. i invite some softness. i slow my patterns down.
“mmmmmm,” i sigh again.
we rest for a moment like that. his arms wrapped around me from behind. the moon above us. we take some breaths.
“what did you say before?” he asks.
i turn and face him. i can feel the parts of me that are scared to say it again. unsure how he might respond. unsure what i even exactly mean by what i said. unclear what will get me what i think i want.
i breathe again as i feel these parts and i take a moment to decide how i want to be in the now. i look into his eyes, ““it feels really good how much you’ve been loving me now,” i repeat. “that is what i said. it feels like you love me more than ever and it feels so nice to feel that.”
“maybe you’re just letting it in more,” he says.
“i probably am,” i reply. “but what it feels like is that you are loving me even more. and i am loving how that feels so that is what i said to you. i feel you loving me and it feels really good. thank you.”
he pulls me in again. we rest there quietly under the moon until the moment gently closes itself and i pad back inside to get in bed.
i am the same but utterly different.
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