The Psychedelic Renaissance is here. More and more people are seeking healing from these medicines. Integration practices are essential for long term change and stability.
Holidays- WHY ARE THEY SO HARD.
The word conjures mixed feelings of nostalgia, sadness, joy, excitement, and a lump in my throat.
In a chaotic world, the routine of the holidays can be a special anchor of connection- the anchor of Grandma’s mashed potatoes, the way we always put that greenery just so, the special plates we always use, even Uncle Joe’s snarky commentary at the dinner table is secretly loved because it is HIM and we would rather be in a room with all of our people than not with them.
Still podcasting! In my next two episodes, I interview a friend and colleague from a long time ago- we both attended seminary together and mostly kept in touch through social media until recently when she started sharing more of her story and I reached out because I felt it was important for people to hear. Michelle is gifted intellectually and has advanced degrees in education and theology- and is passionate about supporting the growth of students and organizations through narrative.
More and more I’m interacting with people who are actively working on moving away from evangelicalism and trying to make sense of their deep faith and spirituality “outside” of evangelicalism’s boundaries- which- if you understand the “in vs. out” paradigm, can be pretty terrifying.
It has been on my heart to share more of my own “unchurching” and the discovery of a faith that is far grander than I could have ever imagined. I also want to share conversations that I have with friends and colleagues about their journeys, too, in an effort to let people know who are questioning their faith and their involvement in evangelicalism that they are not alone. That growth doesn’t mean you are abandoning others. That growth doesn’t mean you are losing your faith. That growth can mean leaving the church to find more of Jesus.
In this episode, Michelle and I dive right into the deep end of faith in a discussion about her experience with Exodus Ministries- how and why she joined- how and why she left- and how she is hoping to support churches in transitioning towards becoming inclusive and affirming. She courageously shares her very intimate journey of faith, sexuality, and healing.
To hear our conversation, please visit my podcast page: Podcast
When we say, “free Britney,” we really mean, “free us.”
She represents the feminine principle- and our country, instead of defending her, contributed to her ultimate insanity. And this is America’s insanity: that we continuously kill the female instead of protecting her.
I vividly remember when Britney Spears came on the scene. I was 16, just like her, when she was sexily dancing down the hallways of her high school. When her videos were aired on MTV, my neighbor and I would imitate her moves, attempting to begin owning our Power, just like she did. We did this in secret, however, as both of our mothers did not approve of us watching MTV.
On the one hand, I wanted to be just like her—fully owning her space and her blossoming womanhood. It was innocent and yet, yet! She was blatantly being “sexy”—something that my fundamentalist purity culture would not allow girls to be. And on the other hand, I felt guilty for wanting to be like her. Sadly, I intuited, quite accurately, that being like her was not safe if I wanted to be approved of by the people I loved the most.
It was during my adolescence that my own split really deepened: there was the part of me that everyone saw and that could come to church youth group, i.e. the good girl who played by the rules, didn’t ask too many questions, and the girl who played along with purity culture, agreeing that waiting until marriage for sex was the route I was taking. But there was this other part of me, split off from conscious awareness: the sexy part, the part of me that seethed with anger at the constraints I felt, the part of me that felt she would come undone like a wild animal at any moment. The part of me with dreams, desires, feelings and LIFE.
It has taken me my all of my adult life, years of psychotherapy, embodiment practices, the mentoring of beautiful, strong women, and the encouragement of evolved men to be able to integrate my sexuality into my identity.
And most women I know report the same struggle.
Always caught between the desire to be sexual, sexy, beautiful—maybe even naughty—and also liked, respected, and good.
Most women I know feel like they have to choose.
And then their husbands ask me in marriage counseling why their wife doesn’t see herself as beautiful. Why she doesn’t want to wear lingerie. Why she doesn’t want sex. Why she scrutinizes what she eats, why she can’t orgasm, why she isn’t even interested in him or her own pleasure.
Notwithstanding other relationship factors, one of the reasons for women’s sexual dysfunctions is the broader system every American couple lives in, puts women in a tricky catch 22- the sexual double standard that female bodies find themselves in: that being sexy is not safe. And it doesn’t magically go away when she is in a loving and committed relationship. In order to heal the split, she must learn to ignore the shaming voices both inside and outside of her if she is to fully own her body, her desire, and her sexuality.
This catch-22 was PAINFULLY demonstrated in the “Framing Britney” documentary: From Ed McMahon asking a TEN year old Britney if she had a boyfriend, to being asked by interviewers if she was a virgin, from female politicians saying they wanted to shoot her because she was a “bad example.” I felt myself cringing for Britney with every inappropriate question or commentary. And not just cringing, I felt the wild wolf woman inside of me want to protect her.
That’s why the #freebritney movement caught on…because we could all identify with her struggle. Each woman sees herself in Britney.
And if the catch-22 weren’t enough to break Britney (or any woman down), let’s take a closer look at what happened when she became a mother:
The most relevant part of the story that I haven’t heard anyone speak about is the fact that the courts sided with Kevin Federline, her vampirish husband, and awarded him sole physical custody of her children. When they were BABIES. When she was quite possibly still BREASTFEEDING. Any woman on the planet will tell you that they would feel exactly like Britney did if you took her baby from her, even if the cause was “reasonable.” Taking a baby out of a woman’s arms is like trying to take a bear cub from a mama bear- she wants to kill you and will probably try. Every mother with babies knows this feeling.
Watching Britney’s story now as an adult woman, a psychotherapist , relationship teacher, and women’s embodiment practitioner, was absolutely horrifying. Here was a woman, who was obviously suffering from severe post partum depression, possibly psychosis, and we made it worse by laughing at her. The ultimate gas-lighting. Not only did we as a country make it worse, the men in her life destroyed her and we did nothing to protect her. The system failed her, and continues to do so. While it is completely reasonable to state that I don’t have all the details so I can’t say who should have been awarded custody, I have worked for many years in the intersection between addiction, mental health crises, and custody issues. In my experience, the courts are always moving towards reconciliation and a 50/50 split because the best case for children is that they spend equal time with both parents. It is rare, especially when the children are young, that the courts will not award time with the mother, especially infants. When one partner is granted sole custody, parental alienation can often be to blame; parental alienation is a particularly insidious form of mental and emotional abuse that is common in divorce cases. I had one client years ago whose ex-wife fabricated a story of domestic violence in order to acquire sole custody. My client, with my therapeutic assistance, was able to stand up for himself and requested a custody evaluator (usually an LMFT or LCSW) who evaluated the psychological status of both parents and awarded the father 50% custody. Naturally, his grief and depression symptoms evaporated once he had his children with him again; we are primates with attachment systems- we are not meant to be away from our children for long periods of time.
Let’s also not forget that having sole custody means a significant amount of child support being paid to that person. I am purely speculating that Mr. Federline’s rap career did not afford him the lifestyle he had become accustomed to while being married to Britney—but having sole physical custody of the two children would entitle him to a significant percentage of her earnings.
The moral of the story? Do not delight when others are struggling. Compassion rules the day, and address any pre-conceived/outdated/innacurate ideas you have about female sexuality especially. But also, as a country, we need to do more to support young parents. Parents with children under the age of 5 in their home have a very high rate of divorce and marital dissatisfaction. Why? Well lack of sleep alone makes anyone feel kind of nuts. 1 in 5 mothers can be diagnosed with post-partum depression, but most mothers will tell you that they feel pretty down. Fathers can be diagnosed with post-partum depression, too. The COVID-19 crisis has only exacerbated the pain parents were already feeling. If you are either childfree or beyond the child rearing years, reach out to your friends with young children- don’t ask them what you can do- just show up and offer to do SOMETHING. Get bossy about holding that young mothers’ baby so she can take a damn shower. Everyone, including baby, will benefit.
And this, this will be the honoring of the feminine.
#freebritney
Note: The picture in this post is a picture of me as a newly divorced young mommy. I would have gone psycho if someone tried to take that beautiful baby girl away from me.
I'm not going to pretend I know the unique constellation of your pain.
But I can speak to some truths that I do know:
These are dark times.
Anxious times.
Sad times.
Uncertain times.
Painful times.
Strange times.
The gloves.
The masks.
People avoiding you on the street.
The kids aren't in school.
Everything is closed.
You're not supposed to do anything but stay home.
My 96 year old grandfather can't even leave his room at his assisted living facility.
And if you do anything that someone else thinks you shouldn't (which, the rules seem to be changing by the moment), be prepared for a tsunami of social shaming.
Oh, and don't forget you're supposed to be taking this opportunity to level up.
As I walk around, whether outside or in my house I keep waiting to wake up from this nightmare.
For me, the masks are completely unnerving. They remove access to our ancient mammalian social safety notification: the smile. Plus, as a woman, when someone tells me I "have to cover up," I feel transported in time and place to the streets of Afghanistan during the rule of the Taliban. Or to my high school youth group where we had to "always be modest so we didn't tempt the boys." The mask is a particular sticking point for me because it feels like body control. The powerful men telling me what to do with my body.
My mask complaint is a bit of a tangent, but it shows how when we have a *big* reaction to anything, it is usually a portal to the uniqueness of our pain body: for me, being raised in fundamentalist religion makes the mask requirement *really* challenging to honor. It makes me angry and brings out my inner rebel.
Make no mistake: this situation is traumatic all on its own.
But how intensely this affects you is directly related to how much other unresolved pain you have.
When I was in grad school we did a class on grieving traditions in our culture: America has none and it shows.
Wearing all black is "emo." Wailing or keening is "out of control. "
We just suck at feelings in general.
My only piece of “advice” is this: try to open your heart to whatever it is that you are feeling. And then try to open your heart to what those around you are feeling.
Feel it.
Feel it.
Feel it.
We originally planned our wedding for 3/28/20. It's easy to see now why that date would have been a bust.
And then we intuitively changed course and planned a simple ceremony in 4 days right before Christmas last year.
In the feminine energy of receptiveness, I said "YES" to my man's leadership.
It feels so good to relax and trust.
Most women I work with individually or in a relationship have lived with the illusion that they can control others and/or circumstances.
A number of years ago I began living more by intuition, flow, and movement than by predetermined structures or plans. It is a highly feminine existence and because of that, I feel deeply satisfied and embodied.
Right now all of our predetermined structures are being removed.
I hear the goddess saying, "ok, so you haven't listened to my gentle whispers of rest, beauty and goodness and love..."
And we are forced to be still.
To breathe.
To not panic.
To relinquish all that we have thought made us safe.
To find a safety deep within our hearts.
To learn that all are indeed One.
To create beauty. To see beauty.
To nurture our bodies and minds.
Separateness is an illusion of the patriarchal and industrial Powers.
The feminine Way calls all beings to listen to feelings, to flow, to rest, and to creativity.
Be on the lookout for an affordable digital course from me on the "Feminine Way" as an alternative to the anxious "hustling" we've all been doing for far too long.
I'd be honored to be your teacher in this new world.
The story of Bluebeard released me from a toxic relationship.
In the classic book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, the tale of Bluebeard frees women from the lies of what Mame Gena calls the PWO (patriarchal world order). Here is my attempt at a brief synopsis:
It is the story of a woman who, against the guidance of her intuition, marries a man with a beard that is blue. There is “nothing wrong” with him except a feeling that she has inside of her body (well, and his beard is blue). He promises her a castle and a love she has only dreamt of. One day he says to his new wife “I’m leaving on a trip, here are the keys to all the rooms in the castle. You can go everywhere except this room.” She and her sisters fly around the castle opening all the doors- naturally they say to their youngest sister, “c’mon, let’s see what’s in the one room he said we couldn’t go in!” The new wife protests, briefly, but then agrees and opens the door. Inside, she discovers a room full of rotting corpses. And then the key starts bleeding. She tries to get it to stop as she doesn’t want her husband to see, but the key won’t stop no matter what she does. He comes home, sees the bleeding key, and says, “I’m throwing you in that room with all my other wives who wouldn’t listen to me!” She begs him for time to say goodbye and prepare for her death- and then plots her escape. She “calls to her brothers and sisters” who come to her aid and eventually kill Bluebeard, putting an end to his reign of death.
The tale of Bluebeard resonates deeply with most women: he represents the predator, the toxic masculine that wishes to kill (or possess) the healthy feminine instead of protect and love her.
Last night my fiance and I watched Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan on Amazon Prime. There was a scene that haunts me: a young wife running away in the middle of the night away with her two daughters with only the clothes on her back and all the jewelry she could pile on. She was the wife of the primary terrorist mastermind. Dark and evil men had begun entering her home and her instincts were alerted. The men began looking at her teenage daughter with hunger and domination. She walked into rooms with men plotting terrorist attacks.
She told her husband, “you’ve changed.” He said, “I’m doing this for you.” But she had already seen the corpses and the key was bleeding.
She plotted her escape. Not knowing if it was going to be okay, but her fate (and her childrens’ was even more certain if she stayed).
We’ve all been taught to be tame.
To marry someone because they checked the boxes, to take the job we hate, to go to PTA, to over-extend ourselves, to volunteer, to have 2.4 kids, have a perfect house perfect body don’t be too much of anything to do-do-do-do-do-OMG this shit is going to kill me. And it does. Women’s depression is 2-3 times what it is in men. Women are murdered by their significant others. Teenagers are killing themselves because it is just all too much. And mommies are drinking wine and taking xanax at the playground.
There comes a moment in every woman’s life where something clicks and she finally, defiantly, valiantly, says, “NO.” Or she ignores that moment and slowly but surely dies a slow death in allegiance to the patriarchal world that needs her to be a domestic ghost and pretend she likes it like that.
Today in my class at S factor (which is an unexplainable and miraculous movement practice that empowers and unleashes a woman’s power from deep within her bones), one of my siSters was sharing about a recent experience and described the grief she felt as “the grief of the tame woman.”
Chills ran up my entire body.
Because I know that grief.
You do too if you are quiet enough.
I was once that tame woman.
Until I wasn’t- and I had to grieve the wreckage and the losses and the complexes living as a tame woman had created.
The magic of S factor is that we tap into our wildness and when the wild woman is awakened most women are quite surprised at how “un-ladylike” she is.
Oh but she is GOOD. She channels her anger to defend her pups and her mate, she allows sadness to move through and deepen all of her connections, she lusts after her man with a desire that makes him feel like a King, and when she does serve and nurture it is with wholeness and congruence.
How are you tame? In what areas are you too domestic? When did you learn that your body was un-safe? When did you start turning your lights off? Where are you betraying yourself?
Come home to yourself. It is more safe than you even know.
I recently had someone reach out to me saying, “Brooke, Help! I’m really anxious and cannot stop snooping through my boyfriend’s phone to see if he’s cheating!”
Sister, put. That. Phone. Down.
If he actually is cheating, you won’t find it because there are all sorts of sneaky ways for someone to hide their behavior with technology that you can’t even imagine. It’s a dark world out there.
Does the male desire for sex trigger you? Make you squirm, angry, uncomfortable, frustrated, confused? Even full of rage? Esther Perel says, “it’s not that women don’t like sex, they just don’t like the sex they’re having.” I concur.
The following blog post is a journal entry from our last evening in Colorado, a trip we took earlier in the summer with myself, my man, our two girls, and the beloved family dog, Leroy.
June 24, 2019
We almost Lost LeRoy.
Eating Five Guys, delivered by Door Dash at a Hyatt House 1 mile from Denver International Airport. With my WildMan—the man brave enough to love me, a woman he can’t hide from. And the daughter I bore from my body, and the daughter who was given to me by the goddess to guide and love and fight for because I always said I wanted two daughters. And, we cannot forget, though shamefully we sometimes do, the family Australian shepherd who almost got lost in the wilderness of the Colorado Rocky Mountains today. For these four creatures I will fight with the ferociousness of a Wolf-Bitch for.
We are crazy, my Wild Man and I.
Crazy full of love and optimism.
And passion.
And a belief in people.
And the sense that every creature on this planet gets to grow.
Tonight is our last night in Colorado—a place I’ve been coming to for almost three years now, several times a year. And it is a magical land of pine trees, mountain lions, wild turkeys, snow, and tough people who believe in the magic of rocks and flowers and trees—likely descendants of the pagans.
But Colorado, will all of its magic, is FIERCE. And harsh. Completely unforgiving. Today we almost lost the family dog. About to take a dip in a mountain stream, Travis urgently asked, “Where’s Leroy?” We looked around and didn’t see him. We just trusted that he was always on our heels—because he always is. We dropped everything- Travis took one of the wilderness whistles that I insist we have and started down the trail and started calling for Leroy. I stayed with the girls and the other whistle and we started calling for him too. The girls started crying. Losing a dog in the wilderness for 20 minutes felt like an eternity. I couldn’t help but think, “we’re going to experience the Homeward Bound drama as a family and how do we tell a 5 and 7 year old that we will have to stop looking for him when the sun sets?”
We joined together on the trail again, still without the dog. Travis and I began to discuss our next moves, all while trying to stay calm but quickly decisive. Leroy came bounding up the trail, running towards us as though nothing happened. We all cried and hugged him and each other and felt RELIEF.
And. I need to do more cardio. Living at sea level has made my lungs L-A-Z-Y. Which is great, but makes me feel weak when I come to places like the Rocky Mountains that require you not to put your guard down even for a moment.
Aside from the setting of “ I will tear your ass up and eat it for dinner,” let’s talk family dynamics: today, my cowboy wanted to do those Old Timey photo booths—you know—where you dress up like you’re in the 1870’s and take pictures in black and white and don’t smile? Well, the youngest was not having it. And it hurt because my Wild Man wanted to take a new family picture for the living room. Which carries extra weight and meaning because as a “blended” family, our search for family identity is more complex.
But my youngest, who hates being in the spotlight, was level 5 not having it. We couldn’t even bribe her with ice cream.
And so he did it only with “his” daughter because we are both always feeling the most terrible feeling I wouldn’t wish on any human being –which is that both of the children you love and pour into and would die for and feed and stress over and lose sleep over and chastise and kiss and guide and hug and spend your money on, always feel conflict over receiving all that love and we can all feel it.
And so naturally, on the last day of a wild trip, and after losing the dog, we lose it. We are normal in our dysfunction when we are hungry, tired and scared—but our grief as a family has many layers of loss that frequently changes the emotional landscape in ways that in my weak moments I imagine other families don’t cope with.
But maybe that’s the thing isn’t it? We all like to believe that our own personal grief and tragedy is worse than the next guys’. And we all know people that like to one up you on the pity meter, so let’s just square up and say that life is hard. And the flavor of hardness yours has depends on so many things outside of your control and many things within your control. But here’s what my kids learned today: you never, ever know how long you have with the creatures you claim to love. So enjoy every mili second you have. Even, and especially the hard moments.
Because the hard moments are when the burning hot fire burns away everything that isn’t gold.
Life= the fires of alchemy.
Alchemy.
And it’s all so complex isn’t it? This business of life and of loving. My prayer or thought or hope or however you conceptualize that abstract concept of our oneness is that you STOP today and ponder the wonder and the mystery of it all and allow yourself to fall in love with the beauty of your people—because they made you and continue to make you.
I don’t mean to scare you, but adolescent girls are not doing well these days. In the last five years, rates of depression, anxiety and eating disorders in this age group skyrocketed. It is a documented phenomenon and psychological researchers are doing their best to find the etiology. There are several hypotheses for why this is happening, chief among them is the way that adolescent girls use social media—i.e. for validation of their looks.
Before you condemn young girls for their vanity, understand that this is a perpetuation of a cultural problem that been in existence since at least the Industrial Revolution—namely, that the only purpose women and girls serve is to look pretty and make the house pretty. Although patriarchal norms have provided the foundation for this paradigm, it shifted into extremes in the late 1800’s when men went to work in the factories and women became the “angel of the home”—the place men came home to for rest. Men and women were no longer working side by side as they did during the agrarian period.
I live in Orange County, CA—where the wealthy still hold debutante balls for their 16 year old daughters. And where many of my young female clients share with me that their parents want them to marry well. Their parents are surprised to learn their daughters are struggling.
Working with eating disorders found me. Back in 2009 during the recession, I managed to find a paid position as a therapist—which was nothing short of a miracle at the time. But I had to be open to work that other therapists balked at: my job was to provide “meal support” to clients with severe eating disorders. To literally sit with them and eat.
Since then I have steadily worked with this particular diagnosis in various treatment settings and I have come to a few conclusions about how to prevent this diagnosis for those who are concerned. While we cannot change the culture, or bar them from smart phones, or hide them in a cave until their brain is finished developing, we can provide excellent insulation from the cultural weather by how we talk about food and our bodies at home. Here are a few tips:
1. Moms: NEVER, I mean NEVER EVER EVER talk about dieting, wanting to lose weight, or in general talk negatively about your body in front of your daughter. They are LISTENING.
2. Since you’re breaking the habit of talking about you not dieting, work on just not dieting or trying to lose weight. There are loads of research on how diets, fasts, juices, cleanses and all of these things don’t actually work in the long run. Also, it turns out that slightly overweight people live the longest anyway. They live longer than skinny people. I’m not kidding.
3. Have regular dinner time. I know it’s tough with everyone’s schedules, but try to prioritize meal time as a part of the family routine. It does not have to be fancy. We often sit down to a glamorous meal of macaroni and cheese and grocery store chicken. During dinner, try to connect about the day. Ask open-ended questions. Above all, do NOT FIGHT at the table. About anything. Do NOT bring up topics that you know are tense. For crying out loud, practice what you preach about patience and WAIT until AFTER dinner to bring up your kids’ D in algebra. Mealtime should be separate from big emotional issues.
4. Talk to your daughter about her professional goals—what she wants to do when she grows up. Encourage her love of everything. Kids are born scientists, mathematicians, writers, artists, engineers and creators.
5. Talk about how bodies and beauty are subjective. Talk about how beautiful she is when she is DOING something. When women and girls focus on being an object, their anxiety about their looks increases. But when they are the SUBJECT, their anxiety vanishes because they are experiencing their body doing something that makes them feel good—like playing sports, doing a science experiment, playing tag, painting.
6. Have conversations about what they think about all this focus on the outside. Let them passionately tell you what they think. I love the energy of adolescence—if channeled properly, it can change the world.
7. Lastly, model the behavior you want to see in your daughter. She is watching. Change the way you see your body. Change the relationship you have to food. Begin to value your body for what it can do and how it can hold and how it changes and how it is constantly adapting.
You are worthy.
An answer to a question recently posed to me: how do I heal from being betrayed and lied to?
There is nothing quite like the pain of being betrayed. Or lied to. I think that is the heartbreak itself. When we have been betrayed we learn that our person did not put us or the relationship first--something else was--in your case that something else was drugs. And speaking of that, one thing to know about people who struggle with using drugs is that lying and blaming others are a part of the disease. They know that what they are doing is wrong and don’t want to take accountability for that so they will do almost anything to avoid feeling responsible. I recommend finding a local Al-Anon group or start reading about co-dependence. People who struggle with feeling worthy of love will attract people with addictions or otherwise “unavailable” people because they themselves don’t feel worthy of more— it reinforces the story they already believe about themselves. I suggest that you begin to challenge the belief that you are worth any less.
There are micro-betrayals that lead to the macro-betrayals.
I think of betrayal more broadly than “cheating.” It’s any time we don’t present our fullest Self to our partner and to the relationship. It’s anytime we say we’re “fine” when we actually aren’t. It’s anytime we ignore the urge to initiate sex when we’re feeling sexy, it’s anytime we withhold our affection, or the truth of our love. “Cheating” is the final step in a series of micro-betrayals. Beyonce asks Jay-Z in one of her songs, “You said you were fine, but you lied.” And that is the hurt—he didn’t tell her he was struggling.
All of us in our heart of hearts want to hold our partner—that is the essence of attachment and the science of connection. But so many of us have been conditioned to share our need to be held in dysfunctional ways, OR we don’t even acknowledge the need in the first place.
Whew. Now that's a million dollar question. But I'm going to help you answer it because I'm going to guide you towards your inner wisdom--that thing called intuition--which, if you can be brave enough to listen, will help you separate the wheat from the chafe.
First, I see a lot of people breaking up that don't need to break up. They are usually projecting all kinds of malarky from old relationships onto this new person and then breaking up with those ghosts. This is why you probably need therapy. Because you're breaking up with someone who isn't even real. You're likely delusional. Relational trauma will do that. It's an over-active fight/flight/freeze/fawn response. That's why getting calm is the number one relationship skill.
I read a lot of articles and Instagram-quotes about moving on from people who don't treat you like a queen. If you need to be treated like a king or a queen in order to feel loved, your love tank probably has a hole in it that no human being can ever fill. So keep searching for those loyal subjects and move on from them when they act human or imperfect or have the gall to have needs.
But. Maybe you're on the other side of that equation. Maybe you're the partner who keeps on trying to make your partner feel special, loved and valued--and it's just. never. enough. They act insensitive, cheat on you, aren't available, and generally aren't interested in adult conversations about emotions.
So how do you know when it's time to walk away and time to just hang in there and do your own work? I apologize, that's a bit of a trick question: because the answer is always in doing your own work FIRST.
When you do your own work, you won't actually have to do anything except speak how you feel.
An awesome partner will welcome you speaking your emotional truth because they are interested in knowing more of you. They want to be intimate. But a partner who isn't interested in a relationship will be unable to tolerate you doing anything but agreeing with them and/or doing what they want. They will also be unable to tolerate that they might have failed you in some way. They don't know how to live in their humanity.
"Narcissists are very good at finding their 'victims' - the people who don't feel worthy enough of a healthy, happy relationship, and who will play second fiddle just for the sake of being in a relationship. When you've learned to truly love yourself, a narcissist simply cannot operate in your orbit. You will not be able to feed his or her need for adulation and acquiescence at all costs. And you will trust yourself to know when to walk away. That's why, for anyone struggling in a difficult relationship, the fastest path to answer the question, 'Should I stay or should I go?' is always to learn to love yourself. " --Gay Hendricks
That all being said, often, talking and talking and talking will actually drive a quality man away. When I say, "speak your truth," I mean open your posture and your heart space--and tell him what you ache for. Don't tell him what he's doing wrong, tell him how when he wraps his arms around you you feel like nothing in the world can harm you. When I was in graduate school we had a saying: “speak the truth in love,” that comes from the book of Ephesians. Before you speak, always, as much as you can, ask yourself, “am I going to say this truth in the spirit of love and growth? Or fear and destruction?” The tone you use has the potential to either increase the conflict or help you grow closer together.
Today I'm talking about SEX. What makes it good? Great? Best you've ever had?
We live in a culture that sells a lot of sex, but has zero clue about what makes it amazing. Toys, youth, and all manner of circus acts are believed to increase sexual satisfaction--and yet--those who depend on Cosmo's "tips and tricks" for a better life in the bedroom will inevitably be thirsty for more and be chronically dissatisfied. Techniques, props, and positions are mechanical and ultimately make people feel used and objectified (i.e. not sexy). Cosmo's way is McDonald's (thanks @jimgaffigan for the cultural critique).
The greatest sex of your life will require all of you to show up.
Great sex is an issue of integrity. If you want it, you have to own and integrate your desires, your senses, your sexiness, your heart and then share it with your partner. You aren't allowed to blame your partner for not reading your mind.
There's a scene in National Lampoon's Vacation where Chevy Chase ends up naked in the pool with Christie Brinkley. Naturally, his wife is angry with him. But the real reason she's angry with him is because she wanted to be the one having fun with him. (Ultimately, her owning her desire to go skinny dipping too, saves the day and their marriage).
The betrayal is so much more than sexual: it's that neither of them were honest and true with each other.
If both people keep showing up in the fullness of their desires, the bliss will be never-ending and will only increase with time. If you allow it, sex can be the vehicle through which each of you continues to grow in all areas of your life.
Heal yourself woman. Find your heart and dance towards your bliss. As you heal your feminine spirit, men around you will change: you will no longer have ANY tolerance for abuse, mis-treatment or boundary crossings--but the men who are craving a healthy relationship with the feminine will be drawn to you like honey.
In all of nature, the female of the species requires her mate to compete for her, to work for her, to show off for her—and then she coolly chooses the male who most suits her fancy and her delight....
Betsy Prioleau, says,” [seductresses] strike terror into the insecure male heart…yet paradoxically seductresses are often the best thing to happen to a man. Contrary to fable, they’re usually femme vitales who put air in a man’s tank, conferring growth, creativity, happiness, and authentic masculinity” (Seductresses: Women Who Ravished the World and their Lost Art of Love, p. 2). When a man courageously faces his fears of engulfment and embraces the seductress, he will discover his own kingship, warrior, lover and sage within himself.
Recovering the wild woman archetype is essential to healing from a painful divorce or break-up. But most have no idea who that figure is. She is hidden beneath the extremes of both the perfect good girl and the out of control bimbo. Neither way will heal you. But finding your wild nature will transform everything.
Last week, I shared with you ladies that the way to get what you want with your man is to change your approach—namely, to get down to the heart, your heart, and then share that instead of criticism. The male nervous system is sensitive to female fear because of our early years fighting lions in the wild.
But I also shared that some men will ridicule, reject, or otherwise become hostile even when you share your heart. The only way to find out if he is able to respond in a healthy way is to put your heart out on the line—knowing that you are strong enough to handle however he responds. Paradoxically, the woman who will have his heart forever is the one who knows she can walk away when her heart is not cherished or adored.
But about walking away: most of the time that just means walking away for the moment. Get yourself calm—self soothe—take a breather. Go for a walk. Good people are not always able to respond kindly—walking away for good should never be a decision that is made when you are in the middle of a fight/flight reaction. In another post I’ll share how to know when it’s over-over. Because there are definitely times when breaking up is simply a dramatic re-enactment of some earlier trauma that will inevitably repeat itself with the next person you meet. And other times when not breaking up is a re-enactment, too. Deep breaths my lovelies!