Today I am struck by how incredibly potent it is to live in close relationship with others.
In this case, I’m talking about my intimate partner.
After 9 months of working away with only short trips home, he is now home full time…and we’re in lockdown.
Yesterday was an emotional day with both highs and lows, exciting conversations, creative breakthroughs and deep intimacy, as well as clumsy conversations, hurt feelings, tears and awkward reconnection…
I woke this morning struck by the power of this intimate, up close and personal, access all areas sharing of my life, with this man.
I see so much more of myself through the way his very presence reflects me back to myself.
I see how his enthusiasm encourages me and gives me energy, how I tend to interpret situations, how I react, the times when I speak harshly…
Through our relational dance, I see myself in a way that is impossible on my own.
Over the course of just one day he ‘held the bucket’ while I poured out my heart and mind regarding a project, listened, discussed and together we saw new directions and possibilities.
I saw through his eyes the Goddess who emerges in our most intimate loving.
I also saw the very tender human moments when I find it hard to express my needs, the wounded places in me where I am easily hurt, the intensity of my body’s reactions when I am triggered into old fight, flight or freeze patterns, and the courage of my heart to reach out and reconnect in the midst of aching vulnerability…
The contrast with the months of living mostly alone, in a comparative void of reflection, could not be clearer.
Oh, what a magical mirror dance!
I am filled with gratitude for the incredible intimacy and potency of this dance, for the immediacy, the rawness and the realness of a deeply shared life.
How much of myself can I truly bear to see? This is both the challenge and the precious opportunity of intimate relationship.