Divine Earthly Experience 1: Endings

Good Morning Fellow Earthlings,

I write you from my boyfriend's LOVE SHACK. Today is the second to last day of 2016 and a New Year is ahead of us. I'm letting go of A LOT. How about you? For the past year and a half I haven't written much. To be honest, I spent a fair amount of the last year and a half hunkered down in my Seattle home feeling a bit lost. My ex-husband, the subject of my former book and blog, Lessons from the Monk I Married, had an affair and left our 20-year partnership and 12-year marriage. It was the hardest thing, other than my birth I suppose, that I had to go through. My identity and life as I knew it had been stripped from me. I didn't know who I was or how I fit into the world I had created.

 I felt adrift, clinging to the few solid things in my life (my home, my friends, my job) like pieces of recognizable debris floating past me in a gigantic sea of unknowingness. Even those things that felt solid started to blur as I traversed new territories.

I oscillated between feeling ready to burst forth with a new identity and new life to feeling like hiding under the blankets of my cozy bed, afraid to meet friends and family who were ready with their condolences and offers to help. I was embarrassed that I had wrapped my own identity up so tightly with that of my ex-husband's that I could not even imagine what we could or would be when things fell apart.

But somehow, out of the ashes of a once vibrant, happy, adventurous partnership, with the same ups and downs as any relationship, I arose with a new sense of myself as an individual. I realized I was stronger than I thought I was. Grief took me on a trip through denial to acceptance of my situation.

But I'm not perfect, by any means. I still fall into anger and sorrow over what happened, but with each day that passes, I feel more and more that this was a gift. Indeed, new beginnings are often disguised as painful endings and I was long due for a new beginning, so much so that it took a seismic shift, an earthquake, an eruption, a storm to descend upon my marriage. It had been written well before it had happened. I saw the ending in my dreams.

All the passion that had been pent up in me. All the love that I extended to my partner that was continuously pushed away came pouring out of me wanting to be fully expressed. I took a burlesque class where I became VENUS ON FIRE.

Venus on Fire, Oddfellows Hall, Capital Hill, February 20, 2016

I created on stage everything I felt inside that had somehow been denied. It was strange, but I felt I needed witnesses. I needed to be SEEN for who I was. I was passionate, fiery, angry, sexy, strong, lovable and beautiful. On stage, I emerged out of a shell like the Bottecelli painting The Birth of Venus; I was a docile, pure-white vision of beauty who became a fiery, red Venus, like Pele, Goddess of Volcanoes. I owned my life, direction and sexuality. I could be whoever I wanted to be.

I started to feel so much confidence in myself. I knew what I wanted in life and I believe that's how I attracted my current boyfriend, a very loving, mature, affectionate, passionate man who shined a light on all my broken pieces and reflected so much beauty and love back to me. I also received incredible healings and insights from Psychic Awakenings, a place where I learned to ground and own my space; A place where I learned to trust my intuition and abilities to not only heal myself and gain insight into the person I was becoming, but also where I learned to be an intuit and healer for others. I'm currently in an 11-month Clairvoyant Awareness Program there.

I learned to trust my intuition above all else. When I learned to let go of things not needed in my life, a new life, full of travel, love, happiness and joy entered in. But it didn't just show up until I showed up to do the work. I had to face my pain, sorrow, anger, fear and loss.

So goodbye 2016! It was a year of healing. I will say that as much as I cowered under the blankets of my bed, I also faced life full-on. I moved through grief. I still fall into it from time to time, but I'm ready to come outside. I'm ready to show up in the world and live OUT LOUD. Look out 2017!

How was the ending to your year? Is there anything you are letting go of?