In the past 5 years I have shared a little on the disruptions, betrayals and ending of friendships that were very dear and precious to me. Yet I did so only haltingly and while keeping the depth of pain, disappointment and devastation I have felt mostly contained to myself. Not out of fear of burdening you or making myself ‘too’ vulnerable but out of a sense of sacredness of those feelings. They were mine to feel and hold in their entirety and to share them with another necessitated, in my healing phase, a deep degree of intimacy and trust with another as well as the knowing they can and know how to hold this space with me as I was feeling and processing.

Now I feel I have come to the end of said cycle of learning and can more holistically and openly share my experience and process as I stand in a space of enough integration and transformation that I can communicate it in a way that makes this a sharing of medicine and not of distortion or affirmation of imbalance. As I progress on my path I am learning the importance not only of the intention behind my words but also their form and accompanying energy and to hold myself more accountable in being mindful of all three.

Looking back from where I stand now I understand how these 3 friendships ended in a way that opened a gateway to my three core woundings and original trauma triggers:

The first outright abandoned me in a rare and precarious moment I turned to him for help. 

The second crossed boundaries, triggered inadvertently my childhood sexual abuse and manipulations and denied me an opportunity to talk about it and ground myself through reconnecting, co-regulation and save our friendship which was very precious to me. 

The third neglected our relationship, took my being there for her for granted, without any willingness and capacity for reciprocity and distanced herself from intimacy and sharing in a time of extraordinary challenges and hardships in my life.

It is hard to convey in words the depth of abject pain I felt at the betrayal and abandonment, the disorientation, the distrust in my relational system and capacity to choose and cultivate friendships… the regression into the wounded child I was, feeling the vastness of despair, disconnection and loneliness and the need to hold my raging protectors in all their anger, resentment and vengeful feelings. All of which lasted for years.

It is fascinating how I was guided to respond to all three in a unique way and how that staid the same or shifted in unexpected ways. 

The first one I dismissed out of my life without any further communication or attempts at repairing because I sensed the impossibility of it and my total unwillingness to accept that in any of my relationships. If he crossed my path now I would be polite but I would not be open to a reconciliation. Maybe if he led with an embodied apology which expressed in all of his words and actions. And even then, he would have to re-earn my respect and trust which I willfully would not make easy for him.

The second one I unfriended after a period of trying to see them in person and process together what happened and repair the sudden disruption. It was his unwillingness to show up that made me choose to unfriend him although I still loved him deeply and ending the friendship hurt me like little in my life ever managed to hurt me.

The third I didn’t unfriend, I chose to divest my energy and engagement to equal hers and reframe our connection as an acquaintanceship, which is its own kind of ending a friendship in my universe. Though she wanted to repair and work on the friendship, after having gone dark for a long time, I was no longer interested and willing to invest more of my energy. In the grieving process of observing the changes in our connection in the period of her silence I realized a fundamental imbalance in our connection and its inherent limitations. I understood we could not travel into new lands of friendship and connection that were calling me and emerging in my other friendships and connections. And here a rather ruthless aspect of me emerged to insist my energy kept being invested in what was blossoming and not in what has become a part of the past. 

In the past years of tending to my core woundings, confronting my trauma and its distortions to my perceptions and most of all to my relational system I had to get very clear, honest and intentional with how I define relationships, how I am willing to show up and invest in them, where I am unavailable or outright unwilling to engage and where I am willing to extend myself even if it is challenging and painful. These have been years of reclusion and hermiting, pulling back from almost all real life social engagements apart from a select few that made me come out of my shell with their love and persistence. Years of deep contemplative inquiry, shadow work, self love and internal consolidation, while holding my remaining inner circle with as much love and care I could muster.

Now I look back with gratitude and see the immense gift these endings have been, each in its own way was a portal into healing the most armored and tender woundings of my past, initiations into a major part of the integration and healing I needed to bring to my being. The anger and resentment I felt have been transmuted into a changed inner landscape and wonderfully forged, nurtured and cultivated close friendships on whom I know I can rely and lean  and who have been my light in the darkest passages of this journey. The disappointment has been balanced with compassion for their humanity and storylines of trauma and wounding. All that is left in my wounded child and protectors is compassion, love, gratitude for them and a clarity on my needs, wants, desires and boundaries for friendships.

And with that a fundamental shift in my relational system has come about that fills me with amazement and awe as I observe its unfolding and blossoming. 

For most of my life my system could only conceptualize, feel and allow people to be in my life if the connection aligned with my wishes and expectations and if we had a huge falling out it was impossible to repair or reconnect. Now there is a spaciousness in me which can accept and adapt to the shifts of relationships and allow for others to weave in and out of my life within my internal framework of sovereignty and self love. Which means that I need not create strict boundaries and walls to keep people out or in, I trust myself to respond adequately or repair where I stumbled and allow others to do the same as long. I no longer lose sight of my sovereignty, wellbeing and self love in my friendships.

Another gift of this painful cycle is my ability to fully surrender to the leadership of my higher self or soul. A surrender and total trust which allowed me to fully be present and open-hearted with the second friend when he crossed my path a couple of weeks ago. This synchronistic event allowed me to experience the healing of residuals of the above mentioned themes of this cycle with full consciousness in the slow and measured pace of my soul, body and heart. To witness the grace of liberation of past pain and limitations is beyond words. All I verbalize is that I feel a depth of humility and awe for the becoming I am gifting myself, for the blessings I now can fully appreciate in unison of all parts of my being, for the excitement of the possibilities that are opening up and a warm welcome and receptivity for what wants to be born from this.

I have no idea if the reconnection is a process of closure before parting, or if it is the beginning of a new friendship, which may be based on a more conscious and heartful foundation, or whatever else it could be. All I know is that I have grown and get to taste the beauty of freedom and wholeness in sweeter ways than I have ever tasted them in this incarnation. For this I give thanks with all of my being!

So my loves if your friendships break, if people fall away, love yourself into wholeness and sidestep best you can any temptations to frame them as toxic, unworthy or similar. 

See it is our dearest soul kin who will volunteer to teach us our most painful and lessons, not out of negativity but their souls generosity and love toward ours. They avail themselves to enter the field of trauma and take the karma upon themselves of hurting us for our consciousness and soul expansion. I bow to these souls in gratitude and in the knowing of the costly gift they have given me, even if their human expression is unconscious and not capable to show up in the love of their soul essence or if my human decides they no longer have a place in my life.

May our human family evolve into a state where we can co-create our lessons without utilizing pain as the messenger and pathway of learning. And may we be gentle with each other and hone our skills of healing self and our relationships until we get there.

And may we hold the ones who stand by us in loyalty and love with the gentlest and most nurturing embrace and keep showing up for them in all the ways they need. I bow to my beloveds who carried me through this time of pain and healing with their love, presence, compassion, humor, being and radiance. 

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She looked at him. “First you have to learn how to FEEL into her”, she replied.

“Well then teach me. Isn’t there a type of tantric massage I can learn to do that?”

“No sweetheart” she said, “you can only learn to feel into a woman by feeling into your own inner feminine.”

“My what? …How?”

“Every time you feel lonely you rush outwards looking for company. When you feel sad you rush outwards looking for entertainment. When you feel horny you rush outwards looking for sex…

…and every single time you rush outwards you neglect her- your inner feminine.

Inside you there is so much depth but you have never entered. There is pain you have never held. There is desire you have never witnessed. There is pleasure you cannot even in your wildest dreams imagine.

That is the She.

She lies within you, neglected and betrayed. Unheard and unseen and abandoned again and again.

She cannot open, blossom and shine unless you listen to her.

She cannot awaken until you are present with her.

How can you even think you can just open a woman outside of you when you have not opened the She within you?

There is a vulnerability and depth yet to be matured within you. Yet you are hoping to open a woman?

You think you can enter her yoni when you have not entered your inner realms? The most you can do is stick your physical body part inside her!

There is no trick. No tool. No technique.

If you “do” anything at all merely give up your actions, stop following your desires. Pause a moment and find what’s at the ROOT of your desire instead of losing all your focus on the object of your desire.

The roots will lead you into an inner world so vast you cannot believe it’s there. Vast underground caves FULL of treasures.

But you must choose.

Choose to go down and in for once, instead of out out out.

Then my dear, then… after developing a loving relationship with your inner She…. THEN you can open a woman. You will not even have to ask how.”

via: Shashi Solluna Tantra

Photography: Unknown

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“Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. If the first woman they passionately loved, the mother, was not true to her bond of love, then how can they trust that their partner will be true to love. Often in their adult relationships these men act out again and again to test their partner’s love. While the rejected adolescent boy imagines that he can no longer receive his mother’s love because he is not worthy, as a grown man he may act out in ways that are unworthy and yet demand of the woman in his life that she offer him unconditional love. This testing does not heal the wound of the past, it merely reenacts it, for ultimately the woman will become weary of being tested and end the relationship, thus reenacting the abandonment. This drama confirms for many men that they cannot put their trust in love. They decide that it is better to put their faith in being powerful, in being dominant.” 

~ Bell Hooks 

You could change the gender and see the same and related coping mechanisms in way too many humans who are partly of wholly emotionally unavailable.

The wounds of rejection and abandonment by our primary caretakers profoundly shift our relationship with love in deeply subconscious and sometimes even conscious ways. Our definitions and ideas of love and relating are skewed and distorted by the experiences we had in our early childhood. The healing and transcendence of our unhelpful coping strategies and misperceptions can only happen in relationships just as the wounds happened in relationships, which of course is a challenge as we usually attract mostly people who will repeat our past experiences and not be wise companions for our healing journey as long as we live from subconscious patterns we blind ourselves to.

Even in making our woundings and patterns conscious we will be attracting those who will repeat our past dynamics and hurts with us, offering us a chance to find new and healthier responses to such occurrences. The degree to which we have developed self acceptance and self love and inner strength defines how much emotional resilience we will have in coping with situations and challenges taking us back to our core wounds.

I have encountered many men who play out complex or twisted unconscious coping games who are adamant that their relationships with their primary caretakers were nothing but loving and perfect. Often emotionally unavailable as they live in a disconnect from their emotions, though they might believe themselves to be connected to them. Those whose ego keeps them in the belief of all being fair and “normal” are the hardest people to be in relationships with, as you clearly see their drama play out while they remain decidedly blind and in denial. Many a conversation, tearful moments and sleepless nights of my life has been wasted on making sense of it of trying to find a way to help them see, make them understand. And yet almost all attempts were to no avail. It took me many years of self work to not allow such painful relationships to last and keep shredding my heart.

These days I leave these men the moment I realize that they are incapable of stepping into a meta level of reflecting on their own behaviors and words. And really who am I to change their survival strategies when they are not ready to let them go? Who am I to dictate their soul’s timing for healing?

I chose to honor our shared sovereignty, the rightness of our individual journeys and to love and honor myself, my needs and wants in relating by loving such beautiful but troubled souls from a distance. There is no denigration in accepting that we are incompatible and do not relate in ways that assure loving and joyful growth and expansion with each other.  I trust that both of us will find others better suited for our unique needs and trajectories.

Unfortunately some men choose to react in immature and unworthy ways as they frame my retreat in their ongoing narrative of unlovability, (ab)using me in their mental self harm rituals. Which truly saddens me but I no longer waste my precious lifetime on trying to change what is. I can see these patterns clearly because my ego has been doing the same often enough to teach me. See, there is no judgement just clear observations and definitely no mincing of words to protect fragile egos which limit and torture. 

I have my own patterns and failings in relating therefore I appreciate those who bring them to my awareness, and I point to the dysfunctional patterns I see if I care for someone and believe they are capable and willing to deal with those things. In my world it is seen as a gift of love to shine a light on these things. 

If you prefer to live in Lalaland and not be made aware of subconscious patters I will accept it but it will exclude you from being in my inner circle and world if you are new. In my world everything is about awareness, consciousness, respect, truth, honesty and growth – if you do not bring these to the table you have to keep it moving, simple.

Photography: Unknown

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