Surrender

'I call out his name, the name of my lover. In an embrace of passion, I call out his name again and again, till his name falls off the edge of my mind and all I can say is “oh my God.... my God.... my God” I find myself in prayer, calling out. In a moment my lover embodies the masculine divine, my God. I am making love with my God.... and then I surrender. I feel him penetrate me, I judder in the ecstasy of surrender and I feel him penetrate through me, up, piercing my heart, up, to my crown and I take all of him in me as I surrender even more. For a moment we are one within my consciousness before I remember we have two bodies and his is separate from mine. Melting out from a moment in total love into, I am love, into I am loved, I experience union and separation.'

I couldn't find the words to tell him of my experience as I felt the wetness of my body and the awe of my heart. Joy bubbled from me as my mouth spread into an uncontrollable smile. That night I had intense energy running through my body. I awoke in the night twice, feeling waves of immense heat moving through me. This strange magnetic flux resonated in my chest, through my arms and down through my legs. It was intense and I found I could handle it, that it felt good as long as I stayed in a state of surrender. I asked silently “what is this?” a reply came “life force energy”. I fell asleep and dreamt I was our skin and the space in between. I woke again some time before dawn, I watched the light of dawn change the colour of the curtains. When the sun rose I fell asleep slipping into a dream about connected vehicles.

I don't know if I'm in love with my lover or God (whom I see and feel in him). Or if I'm in love with myself or the divine within myself that I feel when in his presence. Maybe all of the above. I do know that I love him, deeply, and when around him I feel joy and bliss, peace.... even before we became lovers. It is as if he has been specially create for my pleasure and awakening. I wonder what he would experience if he surrendered in the same way to me.

Never have I loved a man with so much trust, even after inflicting hurt. So fluid and natural forgiveness flows from me in response to open communication and his ownership of his part in what ever happened. He owns his stuff, meets me where I am and I feel held. I have so much gratitude for all the experiences I have had with my beloved. It seems to me that each experience has laid its self out in a set order to enable the next experience to happen. Like an unfolding lotus each petal lays foundation and lends support to the next. I couldn't have experienced the intense pleasure I had on Monday morning a year ago or even in May, I would have just felt pain with all the intensity. I am shedding the fear within me and with it my resistance to him, to life, to love.

I see all the upset that has transpired over this last year as the stepping stones to my freedom. Now, I don't need pain to bring awareness. I can be aware and surrender into happiness, into love, into ecstasy. If everything I have experienced with my beloved in the month of August is all I'll ever have with him, just this month in joy; then it is enough and I am happy. I know more of what I'm capable of feeling and being in relation with my beloved, I am gaining understanding of all I can give to a man I love and all I can receive. I would adore continuing this exploration with this wonderful man.

There is a loyalty, to him, deep within my self that I can not fully comprehend. It defies any logic I try to ascribe to it. It seems it's this loyalty that plays to a fantasy of marriage and children with him and that is not what I want right now, it's just a fantasy. A fantasy which throws me into panic and I can feel the resistance and push against being with him. I slip into worry that I'll sabotage what goodness is there between us. Guilt, that I sincerely desire this with a man who is not my husband, while divorcing a man who used to be my husband.

Then I remember who I am and I know what ever happens is perfect. Whether it is with this man, who is my current beloved, or with another. I will be ready for an easy, fulfilling, committed relationship one day and it will be with someone who is able to be present with me and hold me and I him, like I have experienced with this man whom I so adore. Each time I've seen him this month the experience gets better and better. If this is the trend then we both have much to look forward to.

I am grateful to the tenses of these paragraphs for helping me to communicate this experience and all it means to me. How limited words are as a means to express the complexities and simplicities of the inner world, and I feel I have communicated it well today. Thank you for reading and sharing with me something so sacred and special. I was unsure if I wanted to share this, and chose to as this experience is some how less about sex and more about my relationship with God, the masculine.

Namaste.

Field of love

As July turned over into August I gathered myself, my things and my children, packed up the car and drove to 'The field of love. It's a 10 day intimacy, love, 5 rhythms dance, community camp. This was my second year going to this camp in Suffolk run by Tim Broughton. My experience was better this year, deeper and less intense. I felt able to come out of my protective shell and authentically show up more in a consistent day to day way.

I turned up with a large tent that required two people to put it up which challenged my hidden feelings of “I have to do it all myself” and “asking for help makes me weak”. Those feelings make being a single mother of two young children hard. So it seems fitting that I created a situation (right off the bat) which demanded me to ask for help. I turned up with all my resistance and the desire to let it go and began my process the moment my car found it's parking space. It took me a long time to get my tent up and I managed to avoid asking for help and only able to accept help that was offered. I observed myself in this initial dance of arriving in community from the land of boxed individuals.

Part of opening into my more authentic self was being really honest about wanting to be accepted, wanting to be liked. This feeling was most prevalent with those who I felt rejected by the year previous. So I chose to be in the circle (the place where we gathered to eat and speak in a smaller group) with a friend who is also a mother and the challenge for me was being triggered by seeing myself in her and staying present and loving her. I was successful in this and her, her husband and her child all touched me profoundly deep. I also found myself waiting for the arrival of another friend, a wood-be romance of the previous year. I was curious about what would happen, how it would be between us.

Those first days at the camp stirred up so much in me I wondered why I was there and I wanted to run. Run as fast as I could away. Pack up all my stuff and go back home. So instead of running away, I simply ran as fast as I could, pushing my body faster over the ground, through the fields through the woods to find myself, unintentionally, back where I started. Confused and feeling a bit lighter I ran the circuit again and again. The escapist energy in my body was exercised out and what was left was my raw emotions. I walk the circuit with a good friend and we spoke about how we felt. He listened to me and I listened to him. He inspired in me courage, understanding and honesty. That night I spoke with my wood-be beloved with courage, understanding and honesty which transformed my experience.

I fell in love with him, again, in a new way. It felt raw and vulnerable and joyful and gentle. I fell in love with myself in a way I never have before, truly accepting the parts of myself I had found weak or I disapproved of. I felt bliss in moments that I have often thrown away like waking in the morning a seeing him sleeping next me, watching the light and shadows dance on his skin. My heart was filled with joy and peace. I found myself so completely in each moment that every time a moment ended I thought to myself, “If this is it. If this is all that is. It is enough. I am happy.” Then the next moment came and the next, the fear that 'he would leave and this was the last moment' disappeared. I settled into the peace of him really being there, of choosing to stay, of choosing me and my children. Simultaneously, my fear of showing up disappeared and I found myself choosing to be present for myself, my children, for my friends, for him. By him being present and authentic with me, I found myself feeling safe, held and able to be present.

In the past I ran away from feelings as strong as I have, I ran away from the feelings and the men I felt them for. In fear that they could and would hurt me. So I loved a little safer, I took smaller risks. Now I'm not running away, I'm open and my welcome sign is on: bright, neon, flashing “WELCOME: please be gentle”. My heart has expanded bigger. I have found a new experience in my body, my heart, and my mind which is cautious with the tales of the past and yet surrenders to the peace that laps over me in waves of love. I feel so well loved.

By the end of the camp I was asking for help and at peace with those who said no and grateful to/ for those who said yes. My responsibility to my children began to transform from a burden into a treasure. My heart found the space to love deeply with courage and trust.... and surrender. I now feel able to be present in my life, and accept myself wholly which includes being honest about how I feel and taking each present moment as a gift. I still feel anxiety when I try to figure out what will happen in the future or wanting a construct to feel safe, then I remember my experience at the Field of Love and I settle into the perfect peace of where I am.

This Sacred Child

“ Whenever we move into the new and unknown with the trusting spirit of a child, innocent and open and vulnerable, even the smallest things of life can become the greatest adventures”.

I feel guilty for being beaten as a child. Every time My mother raised her hand and inflicted pain on my body I felt guilty for doing something wrong, for being something wrong. I felt guilty for causing her so much pain that the only thing she could do was hit me. I feel guilty for these words coming forth from my fingers with the intention of sharing with all of you. I feel guilty for not keeping the secret of my abuse.

I have written and re-written this blog countless times, skirting the emotional truth hiding behind the words. Trying to describe 'what happened' or tell a story, I have told the story of my abuse more times than I care to remember. Having to repeat it to the next case worker, the next therapist, the next teacher, the next friend and on and on into a numbing pool of words that had lost their meaning. It became a tale, like any other, that I could just tell and not have to feel any more. Now, here, I am endeavouring to be more honest, to write with intention and meaning. To use my words to convey to you the journey of who I am, in this body, with the hope of putting this story to bed by reuniting it with it's feeling and meaning.

Over the week leading up to a shadow session I booked with London Faerie I allowed pieces of myself that dissociated as a child to return to my body and become present. Slowly like a tide coming in, parts of me returned. The day before my session I hurt my finger. As pain rushed in to my hand and arm so too a great part of the child inside myself, lost in the corners of my subconscious, returned in the rush of pain. As the pain subsided I was filled with confusion. I didn't know where I was for 30 seconds.... as I became more and more present memories began to play in my mind and I felt the emotions of each event as if for the first time. Gently I showed myself my life over the last number of years and allowed myself to cry and laugh and feel.

A feeling of coming home radiated from my heart, raw and vulnerable I sat with myself, I held myself. I cried. The morning came of my shadow session and I found myself sitting in Faerie's lounge. Warmly greeted we spoke for a small while before beginning our session. Setting intentions for the session I acknowledged all I wished to let go of and all I wished to gain. Faerie and I connected and I let go in trust as much as I could, breathing into the courage that was rising up within me. We walked to the partitioned work area, where once I stepped across the threshold terror waited for me. I took a deep breath and walked into the nightmare of my childhood.

Age 7 my mom was brushing my hair and I was moving too much so she hit me hard with the brush and told me to stay still. I felt shock and pain as she brushed my hair harder.. to hard.. and it hurt. I moved again and again she hit me. I felt I was bad irredeemably and didn't know how to please her. As an adult I've felt like I hold 'myself the child' and sooth her as I unravel and heal the untruths I created.

Child protective serves took me and my siblings away from my mother a couple months after I turned 15. My Mom had kicked me out of the house then a month later punched me in the eye. I went into foster care and my younger brother and sister went to live with their father. It took many years and a lot of therapy and now my mom and I speak monthly and have a fairly good relationship. We have enjoyable conversations.... and I have to be in the right mental and emotional space to speak with her.

My father was only physically there at conception. He was not there for the pregnancy and he was not there for the birth or any of my childhood. I met him when I was 22. My mother was married briefly for a year when I was 5 years old and they fought so much us children were, to a great extent, ignored. After him there were no other men who lived with us.

Faerie lead me in and began brushing my hair, hard, too hard. Then he tied me up with rope...first around my heart then lead me blind folded around the room. It was as if he put on the costume of my mother, sounding like her, saying things the way she did, acting in the same emotionally spastic way she used to. I began to laugh nervously, it's something I've always done, as good girls smile even when scared. I was punished for laughing and reprimanded, both in the session and in my childhood. I was then tied to a massage table with rope and experienced the smothering love and brutality that was my existence till I was 15. More deeply I allowed up the terror of my youth, except this time I held myself in it. I stayed present and allowed it out of me. I found my lost voice which had been smothered silent. All the parts of me that dissociated came back and stayed, as an adult I could feel the fear and hold myself in it. In this experience I found out I am enough and I never have to experience that terror again, it's gone. I am free.

The session came to a close and I was untied till the last knots around my heart. I untied those knots. I felt the freedom flow in as I undid those pieces of rope, as though they had always been there suffocating my heart and I finally pushed them out and untied them. I got off the table and walked into another room with Faerie, where we had a wonderful and caring cuddle. It felt good to be in contact with him, and good to feel completely safe within myself.

I am all that I am. It has always been a sad story I've wished to hide, so I can seem perfect because I thought for a long time approval came from all of you. I so badly wanted your approval. The truth is I have scars both on the inside and on the outside. It's those scars that shape my path in this life and ultimately lead me to experience who I am that is not my mind, that is not my body, that is not my persona. It's my scars that have shown me that approval comes from within me, and I can give it to myself when ever I need it. It's my scars that have made me strong and guided me to be able to love as deeply and generously as I do. I am a courageous being who thrives by taking risks and Now have the ability to guild others to do the same, to step into their power.

If you're curious about London Faerie please look at his website