My Experience of Healing Through Love

Last week Tonic for Life Somatic Coaching & Events for Better Intimacy and I co-hosted a Polyamory Support and Discussion Circle at The Center for Healing and Integration, Sharonville. I wanted to take a moment and thank Rachel for the opportunity to be a part of this community-building project she has started! We had a really amazing turnout and spent a couple of hours talking about the struggles as well as the joys of ethical non-monogamy. There was a core theme that emerged throughout the evening, centered on love.

Love for others and love for self, and how important and intertwined the two things are. Where does the love we have for ourselves end and the love we share with others begin? I feel that they must coexist, and that finding a balance between the two is how we make the most out of love in our lives. Finding out how to love ourselves through our own perceived "brokenness" is only half the battle. We cannot fully and truly experience love until we experience how loving ourselves comes through in our relationships. I'm not just speaking about romantic love, although that seems to be the one most of us focus on. I am talking about all sorts of love and relationships, the relationships we have with our family, our friends, our pets, our neighbors, even things like the relationship with have with our emotions, nature, our community, and the larger collective of the world.

I believe that through loving others we experience what it is like to be loved ourselves. When we take a look at our patterns in relationships and see things we don't like, so many of us spiral into shame. This can cause us to determinedly NOT look at our patterns and behaviors within our relationships. Learning to sit with shame and wear it like a blanket, understand why it is there and what it is trying to help us with can create trust within our relationship with ourselves.

Shame doesn't feel good! So if I avoid looking at the things I'm doing that hurt myself or others I won't have to feel it. This was my pattern for years and years. I refused to take any accountability for my actions and behaviors within relationship, especially romantic relationships. I would project my behaviors onto others, blame them for the issues in the relationship and reject them before they could reject me. This became my strategy for dealing with shame.

And then I had my daughter and my entire world changed. Between being confronted with my unhealthy relationship with myself, the bottoming out of hormones that comes post partum, and the feeling that I was just going to repeat the patterns I had learned onto my daughter- I feel like I entered what some call "the dark night of the soul." Here i was with a beautiful newborn baby, a time that could have been so joyous in my life, and all I felt was pain. I was depressed, anxious, and lived with absolute certainty that I would be a terrible mother.

I was lucky, I had a great partner and wonderful friends who let me break. I was confronted with the worst parts of myself, but I was able to ask for help. I started therapy and antidepressants. I started going to a group meditation and learning about spirituality and energy. I started reading every self help book I could find. A few years later, my partner and I started couples therapy. I was able to go off the antidepressants. I spent nights in so much pain that I processed out of my body and energy field. I journaled. I talked to people about the struggles I was having. I started meditating. I did mirror work, somatic work, any work I could find that felt like it might help. And you know what, it did.

I got to know who I was and instead of letting shame spiral into running away, I started to accept myself. I started to love myself even when I made mistakes. I started to develop compassion for myself and see the bigger picture instead of being stuck in this small, contracted space of fear and shame. I expanded who I was and became more. I learned about codependency and the ways in which all of my relationships were suffering because of it. I had valleys and peaks, and I persevered.

I am not complete, perfect, or finished in discovering who I am. That, I feel, is the journey of life. I am ever changing, I am learning to swing with the pendulum of life. From the days where I need to work and put effort into showing up for myself and others in relationship, to the days where I need to rest and find the joy I have already cultivated within them.

I believe it is through love I was able to heal as a person. I was able to grow into who I am today. It is a balance of loving myself enough to be with myself through hard times and loving others enough to have difficult conversations, set boundaries and be uncomfortable with them. It is a balance of feeling and savoring joy and love, and allowing myself to be present with the happiness as well as the sorrow. Love gives us courage. Love gives us presence. Love gives us the energy and the ability to survive the difficult times.

Let love into your heart and your life and see what magic it can bring you.