Maitri. Loving-kindness.
It’s a practice that I have been learning more about and embracing over the past few weeks. And it’s something I’m turning to now, to help me accept something I am absolutely not loving about myself.
My Writing. My World.
I felt you all week.
Your pain. Your anguish. Your heartbreak. Your loneliness. Your desperation. Your hopelessness. Your disconnection. Your love. Your need.
I felt it all.
Because my heart is your heart. I feel what you feel. And as I am here for you, I also know that I need to hold you from within the boundaries that my giant empath heart needs.
Anyone else wake up with an emotional hangover this morning?
And maybe a weird pain in your left eye that you can’t quite figure out?
I felt like I was in a fog for the second half of the day yesterday — my morning’s work woes quickly forgotten in their irrelevance and sudden unimportance in light of what was going on in our country.
A few years ago, I wrote an article about the things I love about men. It was at the height of the #MeToo movement and as a collective, we were fired up. We women were all speaking our truths…as individuals and as a group of women who were raising our hands and saying, “Fuck…me too.”
“What do you do for fun?”
I hate this question. Because I have absolutely not had enough fun over the last few years.
Life has been heavy, and I carried a lot of the heaviness in my heart, letting it weigh me down. Perhaps more than I should have. Or perhaps I should have just learned to put it down every now and then, take breaks from the darkness, and remind myself more of the light that still remained in the world.
Her solitary heart.
She is bigger in her capacity to love than most other hearts she knows.
She can love those who hurt her. Especially those hearts, because she can feel their pain, pulsating through their battle-weary bodies.
She can love those who wish her ill. Because she knows it comes from a place of their own hurt and they are still doing only the best that they can in this moment. In every moment.
Please stay.
I know I’ve been focused on my everyday heartbreak, but suddenly it doesn’t matter anymore.
You are all that matters.
You are all I want.
I want you in my life.
I need you in my life.
I couldn’t bear to lose you now.
My dear sweet friends, Kristin and José, recently went on their annual vacation to Mexico with their two teenage daughters. They go to the same incredible resort every year and always come back with fun stories and the most beautiful pictures.
This year, one of those pictures stopped me in my tracks and made me a little weepy.
My heart has been questioning a lot lately.
Questioning what was real and what was just an illusion.
I’ve been divorced for almost two years and it makes me so sad that I question every single one of the 25 years of memories I shared with my ex-husband.
My love, I am not for the faint of heart.
I am not easy.
I want you to know this before you ever decide to knock on my door and ask to be invited in.
I desire — no, I require — a partner who will challenge me as much as I challenge them. And what a delicious challenge it will be. But know this…it will be a challenge.
Across the café table from you, I watch you with a nervousness I’ve not felt before. I opened the door and finally invited you in and now…now, I feel like I’m standing before you, naked and vulnerable.
Our beginning was slow and deliberate. And worth the anticipation.
Because now, I watch your eyes drink me in and I look away as they start to see through the armor, over the walls, and into my soft insides. I’m not one to look away usually, but your eyes are piercing and I am left feeling unprotected and more than a little shaky.
My heart is opening again.
I can feel it.
Even after a heavy-ish, wonky day.
One in which I was unsure and unsteady and unnerved.
But now…opening.
Even after these last few months.
Even after this last year.
And three years of darkness.
And a decade before that of processing and knowing and struggling and debating and denying and staying and slowly breaking through.
My heart, skipping precious beats all day.
Tapping in, I hold her and try to decipher her code.
Is she feeling the delicious anticipation of something new?
The lingering sadness that comes with letting go of the old?
Something more dark than I am ready to face again? Still.
Words. Have. Power.
We used to talk about that often. How powerful words are.
About how I try not to assign them too much power, because I know they mean more to me than most people. And because some words land differently with me than they do other people.
You were so, so careful to not make any promises from the very beginning. You just wanted to walk this journey together, for as long as we were supposed to. Just focusing on the present moment.