How Do I LOVE? Part 1.

I posed this simple question to my blog crush Stars Like Grains of Sands in my Pocket :Tell me about how you love? Tell me about how you love deeply? I asked this based upon a post he did on the guiding principles of his life... Rules to Live by it was impressive and moving.  He is a righteous, disciplined brother who I have come to know a great deal about over the years. Aside from hosting deep and intense fantasies about him moving to Connecticut and being the greatest love of my life.  I like the way he thinks and his approach to things. He is quite methodical. Keep in mind he is quite expressive so you gotta keep reading the whole post to get the divinity of his wisdom. Anyway I was profoundly struck by the absence of love or what I projected love to be... there was no mention of anything connecting him to another human being in the present... lots of past reflections of love gone awry. How could a man who is so completely filled with great compassion, sensuousness  and a willingness to be someones significant other if only they would act right not mention of anything like that? I couldn't understand that and wanted some explanation (I do not deserve any explanation mind you) and invited him to provide me one. He did. Tell me about how you love. I appreciate how you live, tell me how do you love deeply
Always deeply thought provoking... I wasn't quite satisfied... I know I was projecting my own shit here... but I couldn't let it go and he is so graceful and accommodating to me. I was trying to get him to answer the question for me.... about me.... I wanted him to have an answer for my life. He came back to me with another post and this is where I got it! Expansion on How I love.

In the midst of his sharing... I see it... it leaps out at me as if it was waiting for me. "Love is about surrender and acceptance" it was like something deep in me remembered this to be true. And just like that he answered my longing to know with a statement that pushes me to ask... Have I or can I surrender to love and accept love? Gasp! I have blogged about this before and I am going to go back through this blog and see.

Marry Me Mark Johnson. Seriously. I could use a Wisdom warrior in my life.

So now I am taking all this to prayer. How do I love?

Indeed. Love List needs a revisit.... less list and more action. We shall see.

Go Bold Or Go Home

I feel bold. I like feeling bold. I can no longer live the lesser story, nor can I let anyone try to force me to the lesser story of my life.

Bold. Going beyond my comfort level... which is for me code for lazy.  I don't want comfortable if it means I settle, I don't try. I am not trying to reach some elusive notion of success. I want to do what I want to do because I want to do them. I want to push myself to my highest self.

I want to be in love and stay in love all the time. I want to laugh and drink wine and enjoy good food.  I want to support causes that speak to my heart and soul. I want to be surrounded by fresh cut flowers. I am tired of being afraid.

I am chasing a bold life, because I am running out of time and living in fear of anything saps the life out of me.

No one gets to hold me hostage with their mess. I can't carry extra baggage of any kind. Come to me with a willingness to unpack or keep moving on. Come to me willing to travel light or keep on moving. I don't have a map, just God's call on my life and the stars and the moon to guide me.

This boldness is not new. Dormant. Hidden. Tucked away. And throw in some shame for good measure....shame is at the heart of not living a bold life.  Who are you to live so boldly? I mean you gotta hang your head and wear sack cloth and never smile or taste the sweetness of joy again. That's the weight of shame. I prefer the boldness of the day. I prefer to laugh out loud and smile and love love love deeply.

Loving deeply is the foundation for a bold life. To touch in love is the real revolution.  To go beyond my fears and reach out with open arms and open heart, naked and unashamed is my personal journey.

A bold life I seek. A bold life I shall live. Go bold or go home.  And if you go home, you can always try again. Life is all about chances. Today I'm taking a chance on going bold. I'm not talking crazy or throwing caution to the wind. It is for me declaring love every moment. And letting declarations of love find me... wrap around me.

In Between. Part 2.

It's not about standing in the gap waiting. In Between meant the quiet space of here and there....a place to hide. I used to think in between was lost space and time... waiting, always waiting for something to happen.

The In Between has just become for me a real opportunity for a kind of preparation... a catching of my breath as my dreams come into focus. It is that grace time to breathe in and breathe out. Letting go of loss and preparing to receive new gifts.  And oh those gifts are so grand... even in their simplicity.

The In Between used to mean licking my wounds and muddling through despair until the sun shined again. It used to mean curling up deeper under my covers awaiting another day of dreariness. I just didn't know how to undue the blues and so I just accepted the time and space. Wishing and hoping that it would quickly pass and I could start again.

Now, I am choosing complete honesty... that's the road. Truth... walking in truth as I know it to be. I am not talking truth telling to or for other people.  It is truth telling to me myself...asking real questions and answering with a real sense of fully knowing what I want for my life.

I'm standing in the fork in the road. I can see where I have tried to answer my life without discovering the questions first. I wanted answers that encompassed all the needs of everything and everyone I am responsible for, but I never really asked myself what I truly want... I always thought that what was needed was what I wanted. And what was needed always came, but what I wanted was deemed frivolous and to focus on my wants was a fool's misstep because everybody knows needs are more important than wants.

And yet I wanted. I want so very much. What I want chases me in my daydreams and in my sleep... the late nights are filled with fantasies and dreams. How can I shoo-shoo those away? I did. I was wrong. As I find myself  discovering this new definition of In Between, I am drawn to a different road. Yes indeed Zora, some years ask questions and some years answer...  I do believe this year I am doing both.

In Between. Part 1

Lately my dreams have been about lovers of the past and lovers of the future. Neither which are rooted in the here and now.

The other day as I was sitting and listening to my ex-husband invite me to a party with him and his current wife (who I like very much) It all felt surreal... like I'm in some hellish Woody Allen movie where everyone is talking and talking and talking and I am shrinking and shrinking and shrinking.

I acknowledge my loneliness. I neither run from it or wallow in it.  It is a current fact... my current situation.  I am accustomed to it.  I just spent three-plus years in a go-nowhere relationship that made me feel like I was trapped on a deserted island.

The peacefulness of being alone (alone as in not in a sexual relationship) is lovely. The moments where sadness washes over me, I let it and I daydream and I move on. I am done trying to force myself into anything. Being alone is not a curse or crime... it is a state of being. I am realizing that the focus isn't so much what I don't have, but taking inventory of what I do have by way of interests and freedom to do and go as I like.  Running over the past situations have been illuminating... I clearly see where I just wanted more than what was there to have.

Someone will come and fight for me. Someone will think the sun rises and sets on my smile. Someone will come with their financial life in good shape. Someone will come thinking that all these curves lead to profound ecstasy! And that to change anything at all would be blasphemous and abomination to God... unless I want to change something by my own desire and the one that seeks me becomes my greatest and loudest cheer leader.

I've been seeking and preparing all wrong... even with a Love List revisited in hand. I don't mind wrestling with this yet again. And I don't mind falling down as long as I get back up. So down the rabbit hole I've gone seeking, looking, hoping. It's OK. I've learned so much... truly.

So I think now the lesson moving forward will be from a different level. I get this "going back for more where there is only less." foolishness. I don't need another refresher... another soul breaking lesson.

The dreams, I suspect are telling me I am in between. Yes, in between in a great many areas of my life. How odd? How profound. So the call is now to pick a road and go down it.

A call to explore the In between. yes. I think that is the thing to do.

Inkwell Epiphanies: Martha's Vineyard Expanded My Groove

A week on Martha's Vineyard... Oak Bluffs aka the The Inkwell was nothing short of miraculous. No burning bushes, or water into wine feats.  Just the ocean, beach, solid women-sister friends, my oldest daughter and lots and lots of champagne.

Sitting on the porch of our beach house I realized while gazing at the ocean... I was fluid, and could just ride the waves of sexual energy.  And just like that, I settled in and enjoyed this heightened sense of awareness. It started with allowing my sexual energy to just be. I just decided to enjoy that part of myself without having to do anything to soothe it, or stamp it out. I just let it engulf me and carry me.  What I found amazing was how more womanly I felt. I was conscious of all my movements from sitting to walking to dancing to the way I held a champagne flute. It was all sooooo sexual and erotic. I stayed in a state of arousal.  I am still there.

This is the state of being I want to be in... this heightened awareness of myself. It is about sex, but it isn't about sex.  I used to think that being horny was something you needed to solve... handle...deal with.  I believed that in order to resolve the horny-ness that I needed to have sex. This time, I just allowed the feelings to go further and I let my mind follow the feelings... I led with the feelings and not my mind. The mind will work out ways in which to just have sex.... but following the flow of my feelings helped to realize that having sex for the sake of the orgasm isn't the only ecstasy.

Now don't get it twisted... I want to have sex. A lot. A lot of sex. Now. Today, tomorrow and everyday thereafter, however the reality is, I can't at the moment. 1)I don't know anyone; 2)I'm not interested in casual one-night stand sex with a stranger, 3)I want love and sex to be in one package.

Horny-ness is becoming less and less about getting laid, and more about connecting to my body and my spiritual self. Erotic is the spiritual. Erotic is a higher level of being and connecting and experiencing my body and my world. I like this thinking, it takes the frenzy out of wanting to have sex.  The wanting can be a bit crazy and cause you to go back for more where there was only less.  For example hooking up with people you have left or broken ties with and finding yourself calling them, or conjuring them up for sex... trying to turn mess into bliss.  It didn't work then and it certainly won't work now. This is where I've been stuck, trying to rewrite history and failing miserably and painfully. Connecting to people from memory and past... I am not her... that woman that knew you then.  That's my deal to correct, not his.  I am done trying to see where and with whom I can have sex with... that's thirsty. I'm not thirsty anymore... or at least I am not drinking from the well of been-there-done-that.  I've decided to allow myself space to dwell in the sexual energy that I possess... That is divine.

Martha's Vineyard gave me the opportunity to explore myself without the interruptions of my everyday practical life. I wasn't on the mommy clock, I wasn't on the work clock, or any other clock.  It was about rest, relaxation and rejuvenation. A space opened up and I stepped into it with great delight and wonder. Martha's Vineyard expanded my groove and Yes! It feels good!


Photo: Me, Oaks Bluff, Martha's Vineyard, Summer 2014 #Inkwell2014