Tag: growth

  • Permission

    I wanted to be so cool.

    I wanted to only feel excitement and support and compersion.

    After all, I’m the one who opened this door wasn’t I?

    It was me who fell in love with someone else.

    It was me who kissed someone else.

    It was me who realized it wasn’t a one time situation.

    That a part of me had awoken, and I didn’t know how to put it back to sleep.

    It was me who started dating.

    Me who had sex with someone who wasn’t my husband.

    Me who had an overnight.

    Me who took all the steps first.

    So I don’t deserve to have feelings about him dating too.

    I shouldn’t get permission to set boundaries around pacing and crossing thresholds.

    I’m fine! I kept saying.

    To my husband.

    To myself.

    Then it happened.

    He kissed someone else for the first time.

    And the reality of it hit me like a train going full force.

    In my brain, I felt fine.

    In my heart I felt fine.

    But my nervous system freaked the FUCK out.

    It took two whole days for it to stop ringing the danger alarms and telling me that I was not safe, this was not safe.

    I felt ready to call the whole thing.

    I don’t know if I can do this, I thought.

    Is this what you’ve been holding this whole time? I asked him.

    Yeah pretty much, he said.

    And then he shared how appalling it was for him to realize what I’d been holding all this time.

    Going out, connecting with someone new, taking steps with them…

    All the while feeling so guilty, like I’m cheating on him.

    Then coming home, and having so much of my own experience to process, yet having to hold a tender and supportive space for his feelings and reactions.

    Is this what it’s been like for you?He asked.

    Yeah pretty much I answered.

    We thought since we’d been through all of this with me, as I deepened on this path, that we’d be all set when/if he decided to start that journey too.

    Turns out, my process doesn’t just translate to his.

    Actually, we have to start from scratch all over again.

    We were both in awe of each other, of the space we’d each been holding these past months.

    And bewildered at the idea of now holding more.

    His path opening meant we now each had to oscillate between these two roles: the supporter and the experiencer.

    We’d done so much work in this one dynamic, had built a whole framework for processing and navigating it.

    Yet my process looked and looks very different than his.

    And we are our own people.

    What he needed from me as I took steps with others may not equate to what I need from him as he takes those same steps.

    Oof.

    That was a hard pill to swallow.

    It made me realize I still hold so much guilt and shame and self-loathing around the beginning of this journey.

    There is a part of me that still feels like it’s all my fault.

    Like I ruined our beautiful monogamous marriage with my mid-life poly awakening.

    Like I was selfish and greedy for needing anything more than the treasure that is our partnership.

    I thought I’d let those beliefs go, but surprise!

    They’ve hung around, and lingered just beneath the surface.

    My husband is trying so hard.

    To give me permission.

    To counter all these internal beliefs that tell me I’ve done something wrong.

    To create space for me to have all my feelings about this, the compersion and the fear, the excitement and the grief, the delight and the guilt.

    But it’s just so difficult to receive that permission, to internalize that I am worthy of being held in those complexities.

    I was raised by a wounded mother.

    From a very young age I was taught that:

    1) My body, men, and sexuality in general were not safe, under any circumstances.

    2) My feelings were too much, and not allowed to be expressed.

    3) I was selfish and unworthy of receiving love.

    4) Nothing I could do – and I mean nothing – would ever be enough to convince my mom that I loved her.

    5) If my mom was upset, and she often was, it was always my fault and my job to apologize – even if I didn’t know what I was apologizing for.

    I’ve been in therapy for over two decades now, and done so much healing work around these beliefs.

    I’ve moved through them in many beautiful, profound, and transformative ways.

    Yet the pathways they formed in my brain are still there, always primed and ready for new material to latch onto.

    Hungry for fresh evidence that those old messages are still true, and I am the unworthy, selfish, inadequate human I grew up believing myself to be.

    Unbeknownst to my conscious brain, they have grabbed onto this poly experience with full force.

    Working under the surface to convince me that this is a selfish choice I’m making at the expense of my husband’s heart and wellbeing.

    That I’m indebted to him, for rising to this new level of relationship with me and allowing me to explore this part of myself.

    That I owe him.

    And if I owe him, how could I ask for anything in return?

    As my awareness around these beliefs grows, I’m realizing just how deep they go.

    How my mother’s voice still echos in my head, even after all those therapy sessions, even after all the healing I’ve worked so hard to find.

    I thought I was done.

    I’m realizing I likely will never be.

    Even now that I’m conscious of how they have become entangled in this ENM journey, it’s taking so much effort and energy to reframe them.

    My husband has to push and probe and pull it all out of me – my true feelings, my triggers, my needs.

    Has to constantly be verbalizing explicit permission to not just be “fine”.

    As I let it all surface – slowly, tenderly, with the self love I’ve worked so hard to cultivate…

    All I can think is wow, what a fucking catalyst for growth this expansion is.

    How it unearths the deepest desires and also the deepest wounds in us.

    How it asks us to look at our belief systems and emotional frameworks and cultural norms, like nothing else I’ve ever been through.

    This journey of ENM can be difficult and deeply demanding at times, but I wouldn’t go back.

    God, Spirit, Universe – keep it all coming.

    The learning.

    The untangling.

    The raw humanity.

    The epic beauty.

    The profound deconstruction and reworking of all I thought I knew.

    I’m here for it all.

    Bring it.

  • Lineage

    This journey I’m on started with two women.

    My mom, who died.

    And in her death, freed me from the trauma and fear I’d carried on her behalf my whole life.

    And my ex, who was resurrected.

    My first love, my high school sweetheart.

    We reconnected after mom passed, and fell hard and fast all over again.

    But it was hard.

    Too hard.

    You’re married, she said.

    She’d always be wanting more, and I’d always be going home to someone else.

    I understood, but it broke my heart.

    If I’m being honest I’m still in love with her.

    So much so that I can’t talk to her or be friends without it hurting.

    So we went our separate ways.

    And I started dating.

    I thought it would be women.

    I thought maybe I needed to explore my bisexuality more.

    I thought I’d be more comfortable in that dynamic.

    But interestingly, it hasn’t.

    It’s been men.

    The women I like, don’t seem to like me.

    Maybe I’m too straight looking?

    Maybe it’s that I’m married to a man?

    Maybe they just aren’t into non-monogamy?

    Whatever the reason, women and I aren’t happening right now.

    But some of these men…

    Wow.

    The last time I was single I was 22.

    The men, more accurately boys, that were available to me felt so stunted and not emotionally safe.

    Reopening this door now, two decades later, has been surprising and rather taken my breath away.

    All these years I’ve been married and monogamous, those boys have been growing and evolving and maturing.

    Not all of them.

    I’m definitely coming across boys masquerading as men too…

    But some of them have surprised me at every turn.

    These beautiful, emotionally intelligent, communicative, honorable men.

    Every belief my mother taught me about them is being challenged, reframed, and transformed through these connections.

    I find myself healing in ways I never knew I needed to.

    Shifting generational patterns and healing the sexual trauma of my maternal lineage, as naturally as breathing air in and out.

    It’s just, happening.

    And I’m realizing yes, I’m healing, growing, evolving in my sexuality for me.

    But also, I’m doing it for them.

    All the women who came before me.

    All the women who will come after me.

    The ones who never felt safe to heal those wounds themselves.

    The ones who were shown that this world was not made to safely hold a woman’s embodied sexual development.

    The ones who were abused and assaulted and then utterly silenced in that trauma.

    The ones who carried that pain to their graves and along the way completely dissociated from their own bodies.

    My reclamation of this part of me is so much bigger than my one little life.

    It stretches backwards and forwards through time and space.

    I hear their whispers in my ears as I stand in my power and inhabit my body in a way they never could.

    Thank you, they exhale softly.

    Thank you.

  • Boys

    I keep waffling.

    Back and forth between hopeful and hopeless.

    I’m loving all the ways I’m connecting with One and Two, I really am.

    But I feel ready for more.

    A big part of my journey into the poly realm is the realization that my heart is huge.

    It has capacity to hold love in a way that few others do.

    And I just want to share that love.

    Freely, openly, in a way that is healing and transformative for the world around me.

    Only problem is, I’m finding there are few people who are able to receive that love.

    I keep thinking I’ve found them, the ones who can hold it, welcome it, let it in.

    I keep connecting with someone new, and they offer me clues and crumbs that seem promising to their capacity.

    They seem like mature, emotionally intelligent and available men.

    They send me long messages about the old wounds their ENM journey is surfacing, and all the ways they are working through those wounds.

    They send me long voice notes expressing their deep care and reverence for navigating the process of connecting with other’s hearts and bodies.

    They respond to my shares about my life with attention and curiosity and affirmation.

    They say they are open and receptive to however our connection unfolds, and seem excited to explore what that looks like together.

    They invite more intimacy, more sharing, more vulnerability from me.

    And then, every time, there comes a moment when it’s revealed.

    They are not who they presented themselves to be.

    They are not men, they are boys.

    I’m just looking for light, fun, sexy connections, they say.

    I’m just wanting to make sure you’re not overly committing your emotions to this, they say.

    I’m just really busy right now, they say as they slowly retreat backwards towards the metaphorical door of our conversation.

    Sometimes it’s something I’ve said, something that aligns with the presence we’ve been cultivating with one another.

    Yet somehow it’s suddenly too much.

    It always comes out of nowhere for me.

    Maybe I’m too trusting, too naive, too vulnerable too soon.

    But that’s me.

    I refuse to harden my heart and become cynical and mistrusting of people to begin with.

    These boys masquerading as men will not take my hope from me.

    My faith in the human heart remains.

    I will keep entering these connections with openness and transparency and authenticity.

    I will continue to believe they are out there.

    Men who can hold and receive intimacy not as a threat to their autonomy but as a gift freely given.

    Men who can sense intimacy building and see it as a chance for growth and opportunity and expansion.

    Men who can express their true emotions without fear that I’ll get too attached or too clingy.

    Men who can trust in this process of untangling mono normative dynamics and beliefs and frameworks.

    Men who have actually done the self work they proclaim so immediately, so assuredly.

    Some days I question whether they’re really out there.

    Do they even exist?

    Then I look at my husband.

    I see his warm loving eyes, feel his tender embrace, experience his deep capacity to hold all of me.

    And I know it’s possible.

    He’s one of a kind, that much is true.

    But his vulnerability and integrity and intelligence give me pause in those moments when I’m ready to give up.

    He reminds me it is doable, having a male body and also a tender and open heart.

    And I believe again.

    Maybe all of these experiences will give me pause when I hear a man explain how evolved he is.

    Maybe I will wait to believe him until he shows me with his actions that the words he speaks are true.

    Maybe I will hesitate a bit before I share too much of myself so quickly, letting some time pass so I can witness the container we’re creating is truly as safe as they’ve assured me.

    But I won’t give up.

    I won’t pretend I’m not the deeply feeling, deeply loving human that I am.

    I won’t settle for crumbs in return when I know I’ve offered the whole pie.

  • Discernment

    I wonder if I can really do this.

    Navigate all these new pieces all at once.

    Can I really hold tenderness and vulnerability within casualness and boundaries?

    Can I be a friend… with benefits?

    Can I hold my husband’s sweet sensitive heart and still keep growing in this way?

    I’m really not sure yet.

    Whether I truly have capacity for all of this growth happening inside me.

    One of my connections shared a book with me, and I’ve been reading it.

    The Ethical Slut.

    When it arrived in the mail I opened it to the middle.

    It was the first page of a chapter titled Abundance.

    It talked about starvation economies, and how we’ve been taught to believe that love is finite.

    As though there’s only so much to go around and we need to hold onto it with a white knuckled grip.

    That there is a scarcity mindset wrapped up in the monogamous framework we’re all cultured in.

    I didn’t read the whole chapter, but far enough to realize how deeply embedded these concepts are in me.

    The notion that my heart is limited in how it can hold love, and I have to share it as though it will run out at some point.

    I’m slowly untangling these beliefs inside myself, but they’re woven rather tightly into how I’ve always seen love and relationships and my own identity.

    I’m still really discerning whether I can feel safe and comfortable having physical intimacy with someone without deep, devoted emotional intimacy.

    Even if it’s not dependent on a monogamous covenant, I still find myself preferring to know and care for someone’s heart in a deep way and feel that reciprocated.

    I wonder if I can securely hold that depth in myself, even when it’s not met by a connection I’m sharing my body with.

    I wonder if I even want to.

    So far I’ve only crossed that threshold once with someone new, but as I continue to connect with others I find myself conflicted in my heart’s capacity and true desires.

    Such a part of this journey for me comes from my huge heart and yearning to share my abundance of love with more people.

    I’m just not sure yet if physical love alone is enough for me, when it means I have to withhold or restrain my emotions in tandem.

    I’ve always felt I needed both.

    Now I’m opening to curiosity, and maybe am needing to try it all out just to see.

    How will I really know my truth if I don’t inquire and experience all the different languages it can speak?

    How will I learn where I am if not through examining and discovering where I am not?

    Yet I know I need to tread carefully and slowly on this path.

    I know it might mean hurt feelings and missteps and trepidation.

    I know this heart of mine is tender in its nature, and as its guardian I need to explore without abandoning its protection.

    I know this is a calling of reverence and grace and above all…

    I must lead with love, for others yes, but first and foremost myself.

  • Ready

    I wonder how it will go.

    My first time with someone else in almost two decades.

    My first time showing my naked body to another person, besides my husband, in 18 years.

    My body has been through so much in that time.

    It’s grown a human.

    It’s given birth.

    It’s offered five years of breastfeeding.

    It’s grown so much.

    Fuller. Wider. Stronger.

    It has cellulite where it once was smooth.

    It has curves where it once was slender.

    What will he think when he sees it?

    I’ve been so well loved and desired for so many years.

    I haven’t had to wonder how someone new might view this earthly container I inhabit.

    I think I’m ready.

    To share myself in this way.

    I think my husband is ready.

    But there are little fears still.

    What if it’s hard?

    What if taking this step, crossing this line, is so vulnerable I cry?

    Will this new connection be able to hold me in that?

    Will I be able to hold myself through that?

    And what if…

    It’s amazing.

    What if it’s not hard?

    What if it’s easy and natural and just flows through me?

    Is that ok too?

    Part of me can’t wait.

    To feel him up against me.

    His skin, his hands, his arms wrapped around me.

    This part feels excitement and giddiness and adrenaline.

    It just wants to lean in, to experience it all to the fullest.

    To dive into the deep end and trust I can swim to the surface.

    And part of me feels afraid, tender, anxious.

    This part wants to hold onto my monogamous identity with a white knuckled grip.

    I’ve always been so proud that I haven’t been with many people.

    That I never really dated.

    That I’d only ever loved two people.

    Like it made me a good girl.

    Made me sweet, innocent, pure.

    It’s always been so ingrained in me that these are the ideal qualities for a woman.

    That to have full agency of my sexuality and embody it fully would mean I was less somehow.

    Less lovable.

    Less honorable.

    Less sacred.

    If I shared my body with more people, then it would be less special and holy.

    That in this way, less is more.

    There’s grief around it for me.

    This deeply embedded belief system that is slowly untangling itself within me.

    Slowly, I’m awakening to the truth that my body and how I share it is mine and mine alone.

    It doesn’t belong to purity culture.

    It doesn’t belong to other people’s opinions.

    It doesn’t even belong to my husband.

    That my sexuality is sacred because of the reverence with which I hold it.

    That the choices I make are part of a beautiful tapestry, woven with different hearts and bodies yet still sanctified by my unique thread of love.

    Love for others but at its core, love for my self.

    I think I’m ready.

    Tonight.

    To weave that thread with another again.

    To merge my body with his for a moment in time.

    To share myself again in this way, and see who I am in that space now.

    To meet this new part of me for the first time, in this new realm.

    I’m nervous.

    I’m excited.

    I’m ready.

  • Home

    Did that really just happen?

    Did I go on a date with someone other than my husband?

    Did I really kiss him?

    Did I really like it?

    Yes.

    It did happen.

    And I did like it.

    The way he smelled.

    The way he sounded.

    The way he kept asking me how I was.

    If I felt safe.

    The way his eyes sparkled when he smiled.

    The way our conversation just flowed.

    No long pauses.

    No awkward moments.

    The way we talked about the hardest part of my life and also the plot of the book he’s reading.

    The way it felt like I’d known him for so much longer than a month.

    The way he seemed familiar to me, like an old friend.

    The way he tasted.

    The way his hands felt in mine.

    So soft.

    So strong.

    So gentle.

    I liked it all.

    How sacred it felt.

    This leap into the unknown we were both taking.

    Taking a chance on our hearts, sharing them with someone new.

    Unlocking a new piece of ourselves in this energetic container we were creating.

    It felt so sweet, so easy to fall into.

    Terrifying and liberating all at once.

    Like everything I’ve been so afraid would hurt me was actually meant to heal me.

    The only hard thing was driving home.

    Knowing I’d have to share it with my husband.

    Knowing it would hurt both of us to have that conversation.

    Yet when I came in to tell him I was back, tears of joy welled in my eyes.

    All I could think was how grateful I was to come back to him.

    How lucky I am that he was there waiting for me.

    How the only reason this part of me has felt safe enough to emerge, to become alive in me.

    Is because of the safety of his love.

    The way he has held my heart with reverence all these years, and healed the wounds I thought I’d carry forever.

    I fell into his arms, and told him these things.

    As he wiped my tears and shed his own, I knew I was home.

    With him.

    With myself.

  • Breathe

    Brand new.

    All of this.

    Tomorrow I have a first date.

    I’ve never done this, any of it.

    Dated.

    Met someone online.

    Before last summer, I’d only loved two people.

    Had only slept with a few others.

    I never realized it before, but I think I was proud of that.

    Only now, as I’m faced with letting go of that piece of my identity, has it registered for me.

    This sense that I was innocent or pure, the way I’ve been cultured to be the ideal for women.

    I’ve always felt like my sexuality could only be sacred if I kept it small and private, held in a monogamous container.

    As this new part of me grows inside, I’m having to question that belief.

    I was taught that this side of me was only safe if I held it close, and could bring me pain if I let it truly become alive.

    What if this was all wrong?

    What if pain can find me no matter what, and keeping my sexuality in a cage has been just as harmful?

    What if love doesn’t have to mean ownership, and the process of cultivating deep trust in that love is what actually brings true security.

    It’s hard.

    To let go of who I’ve always been, what I’ve always believed.

    But also, I feel lighter.

    Braver.

    Safer.

    Freer.

    More whole.

    More me.

    Like this part of me has been waiting a lifetime to be born.

    Just aching for me to be ready to allow it to breathe.

  • Witness

    I see you, young one.

    You, the newest part of me.

    Just born.

    Just stretching your limbs and breathing air into your lungs for the first time.

    I hear you, just finding your voice and marveling at the very sound of it.

    I know the rest of me is nervous, afraid even.

    I know the rest of me wants to keep you small and safe, to manage and control you.

    But I’m here, ready to witness who you are becoming in this world.

    I’m here, ready to let you grow and expand and thrive in all the ways you are needing.

    I’m here, ready to nurture your budding curiosity and desire for freedom.

    I’m here, ready to offer you spaciousness to be the wild and feral being that you are.

    I’m here, willing and able to hold room for you to make your own mistakes and find your own way.

    I’m not going to lock you up behind closed doors.

    I’m not going to keep you separate and caged from the rest of me.

    I promise, I will help you integrate and manifest fully within me.

    I see, really see, all the blessings and abundance you are bringing to all parts of my life.

    I understand that letting you breathe and become alive means all of me benefits and flourishes more.

    You are evolving, awakening from the darkness of slumber and mystery.

    You are unfolding right before my eyes, so beautiful and sparkling new.

    You are emerging, ready to be held and loved and tended to.

    I promise, I will do my best to walk with you and witness you on this journey we’re on together.

    I promise, I won’t turn away.

  • Alone

    Sometimes this process can feel so fragmented.

    This new part of me is growing so fast, and the rest of me just wants to slow down a bit.

    I want to allow my heart to grow and expand the way it’s needing to, yet at times it can feel like too much to hold all at once.

    So many pieces to carry, so many elements to juggle.

    I just want to press pause for a moment.

    To take a breath, and rest for a little while.

    But it doesn’t seem to work like that.

    New connections keep forming, even as old ones fall away.

    There is joy and desire and excitement in all that continues to surface in me.

    And also grief, loss, and reflection around the places and people I’m leaving behind.

    It gets so lonely sometimes, holding it all.

    I try to share about it with my friends, but most of them just can’t handle it.

    I know they’re trying.

    Trying to support me.

    Trying to love me.

    Trying to accept these changes in who I am becoming.

    Yet they can’t understand or relate, and it seems to trigger their own fears around relationships and monogamy.

    It feels out of their realm of capacity, and I don’t want to overwhelm or burden them with a subject that is simply too much for them to carry.

    Even my husband, my very best friend.

    I used to be able to share everything on my mind so freely and unfiltered.

    I would just process my thoughts out loud as they were forming, never needing to edit or tiptoe or proceed with caution.

    Now I need to be sensitive and mindful in how I share with him.

    It’s tender and triggering for him, understandably.

    Sharing about feelings for other people, it has to be handled with care and gentleness.

    I have to censor the thoughts I share now, sometimes dancing around my truth to create a soft landing as it enters his ears.

    I miss how it used to be, like an ache for which I cannot find relief.

    I miss him knowing every feeling and thought I’m having, our communication constant and open.

    It’s isolating, this new world I’ve entered.

    It’s a path not widely accepted or understood in this world.

    Even with this blog, I need to stay anonymous for now.

    There’s people in my life I don’t want to share this journey with.

    Family and friends that I just don’t feel safe knowing what I’m feeling and experiencing.

    I find myself feeling so depleted from the energy it takes to hold it all alone.

    I’m trying my best.

    To stay devoted and present to my current community, while also cultivating new connections that allow room for this new part of me to breathe and thrive.

    It’s such a balancing act.

    I feel like I’m straddling two very different worlds.

    Two distinctly detached versions of myself.

    Two parallel yet separate lives.

    Fragments of these opposing elements scattered all around me, longing to be re-membered and re-integrated.

    It takes so much intention to not spiral into shame and self doubt.

    To steer away from judging myself the way I fear I’m being judged by others.

    To focus on the beauty and growth and evolution happening in me, rather than the cultural narratives embedded in my psyche.

    I hope one day I can feel whole again.

    I hope one day I can feel held again.

    I hope one day I can feel seen and heard and witnessed truthfully, by the ones who love me most.