I believed that love comes naturally.  As the frequency of all things in this Universe, shouldn't it be easy for us to engage in love as a part of our every day process? Love of parents,  siblings, extended family, friends,  pets, the collective world family,  we get unlimited chances every day to love. However,  is it really love that we are practicing?

This question came to me recently as I have been deep in my healing process for the past few years. Sparked about six or so years ago when I first wondered if my spouse was having extramarital affairs. When he would stay out late, come home late,  take an hour to leave the office,  this intense electrical surge would rush through my body creating a quick rush into anger. 

Anger is really difficult to hold and I found my ferritin levels were almost completely depleted and assumed all of that fatigue could be associated with low iron stores. In part I know metabolically (what a word... say that three times quickly) low iron causes fatigue.  But the fatigue I was feeling was so much beyond this level. 

They categorized it eventually as CFS/ME, chronic fatigue syndrome. We don't really know what causes this. They believe that it comes from the body response to an infection. One of those infections is the measles which I had the German measles six times in early childhood. However I also now feel that it is associated with the electrical response that I have to these stressor and traumas that happened early in life and were repeated throughout my early adulthood and my marriage. 

Every time my person would yell, throw a chair into the wall, follow me through the house when I wouldn't agree and they couldn't let me disagree, every email that I would get from his attorney... it was all so immediately deeply triggering where the fight or flight would rev up to mass overload. I would be running on adrenaline until there was none left, and then I would crash. 

However what is of interest is how much more quickly I can process this now as to comparing to a few years ago. About a year ago I had what I can only call the big complete adrenal crash before a series of what we call in tarot, tower moments. Think of this as my 9.0. big earthquake followed by many aftershocks over the proceeding year. The big one took me out and the aftershocks slowly took me closer and closer to thinking "there's no tomorrow. "

As I couldn’t move from under the debris, I could only lie there and let the aftershocks flow through me. I felt my own mortality in the darkness of this space. In that space when there was no one else to love me, hold me, comfort me, I started to come to myself and find what or whatever I was at what felt like the end. I wasn't sure, because I didn't know her beyond the fractured parts of myself that childhood and lifelong trauma had created. My warrior was a strong badass, but my inner child was still afraid and feeling unloved and unworthy to be loved. 

I think as I had allowed myself to slowly open in my shamanic journey,  I was being reparented in many ways, on the journey to fine tune into that frequency, love. 

Part of that is realizing that we are all human.  We were all born and we will all die. In between we will face many little deaths along the way. None of us get a pass from that. As I came to my own personal spiritual mortality,  a part of me opened up to the idea that maybe in all of this if I can find the ability to love myself despite all of the reasons I had determined made her unlovable, then maybe I can be loved. 

Letting someone love you doesn't mean they won't hurt you. I will find the ways in which to hurt myself again. I am human. Anyone I love will at some point find the ways to hurt me. They are human. Acknowledging this opens the door to freeing yourself from the debris. 

As I found that, which is hopefully leading me to an unconditional love of myself and others  - I was open to letting others help free me. Because here, in their own aftershocks they were rising up to take a brick at a time off my mind,  body,  and heart. 

As a healing Divine Feminine energy the masculine energy that has shown up has been flawed but exceptional at caregiving,  and in a manner of speaking,  protective. These are luminous warriors who have fucked up, hurt others, been hurt, broken hearts, had their heart's broken, felt lack, and found value. Not perfect masculinity, but honest masculinity that lets the heart speak before the mind,  and the mind follows that knowing. It allows me to see that the loving bond of the yin and yang is possible in many varieties of ways. Teacher, student, lover, friend. All opportunities are there, and my body now recognizes the way old narratives show up and doesn't resist letting the Divine Masculine energy shine that light for me, and step up to love and guide and grow with me.

As well the Divine Feminine energy around me has stepped in as something so much greater than it ever was. I am learning that we are not here to compete with each other but to commune with each other.  My sisters,  my mother crones,  my curious children,  we femininity are able to learn to not overthink the ways in which we love, which means our bond is not our worth. I was long taught with my relationship to myself that women need to protect themselves from other women because we as a collective are spiteful, egomaniac and worse yet looking to take what is not ours.

That's very true of the unhealed femininity. But the healed feminine will call you over, bring forth a community, encircling you with Divine love to nurture you and protect you from the storm. 

For all of this I am forever grateful.  In my journey today my mind (Eagle) gifted my heart the metamorphosis of the Butterfly which is messy AF sometimes, but the finale is beautiful!! We spend so much time in that learning and growing state, but it is that caterpillar soup state where the magic really begins. The heart gifted my mind the fire  suggesting we use it more for ritual, cooking, warmth, and the connection with the community. If you're here you are a healer and a fire keeper (which I go deeper into in my 'From The Diary Of Woo' book). The fire keeper is the heart of the community, but must also be able to use the gift of the mind to connect to the grids of knowledge and light. 

I was also shown the volcano which we cannot and shouldn't contain because if we hold back our authentic life purpose the volcano will still erupt but maybe sooner, and definitely causing additional harm as the cap splinters into fractals of hurt, anger and pain. 

Flow like the waves. You, volcano, aren't just lava, fire, smoke, mountain, you are that which flows beneath us all and yet powerful but beautiful and your ash creates the most magical soil in which a fertile new beginning grows. 

To myself, there is no end nor beginning but just the every changing flow that has brought you to exactly where you need to be.

To my future love, I am not perfect, but I have learned to love. I will not hold you to perfection,  but rather to walk through these lessons together.  I will hold the extra space surrounding you when you are hurt. I know you will rise up and give me the grace and pick me up when I fall down. And best of all, I know that when it gets messy, together we'll flow through that soup and figure out the transformation together, resulting in the most magical butterflies the universe has ever seen. 

Aho-

Barbara xx