Love is an all powerful thing. It is not just a story book, romantic comedy, concept but is the fabric of all that is. It is light, energy, power, and the force within you. It is life and a way of life. With that, it is constant and unconditional, always available and accessible. It shifts and shows up in many shades and rarely looks like we think it should. I've never known this more than I have this year. Love shows up differently everywhere. You love your parents differently than you love your friends, than your children, than extended family, and differently than your lovers. Love has many different shapes and shades but at the center, at the core, the energy of love is the same. It is compassion and connection.
I was lucky enough to find one of my soul mates in this life. We met and instantly knew there was a soul connection that was undeniable. We both knew within a week that we would get married. We scared the crap out of most of our family members when we told them this less than a month into dating but there was a knowing that we both had that we were meant to experience life together. We of course thought it would be the story book romance and a life long happy marriage and while our marriage was filled with so much love, it did not end up being the forever we were convinced was our destiny.
One of the most eye opening things I have learned this year, is that nothing ever has to look one way, or the way you think it should look, most especially love. Marriage never looks one way, divorce never looks one way, love never looks one way, life never looks one way. There are infinite possibilities within relationship (to yourself and others). Each and every human is divinely unique so how could our experiences ever be one way or exactly the same. We share similar experiences in life as humans but we can never truly know what it is to BE another person. Therefor, there is truly no room for judgement and if nothing has to look one way, why not create it powerfully how you wish it to be?
Marriage is a contract of the heart, it is not a laundry list of "shoulds" deemed appropriate by society. It is one of the most intimate relationships we can experience and it has nothing to do with time, money, age, location, religion or any other circumstances. In our short marriage Dan and I experienced more depth, connection and love than many marriages of 30+ years. Marriage is a soul connection and a powerful choice to learn and grow from one another, love and support one another. From my experience, this commitment and heart contract does not need to end simply because the relationship shifts, it just takes on a different shade of love.
Through being in relationship with one another and choosing to communicate and work at it, we were able to come to a place of understanding, incredible love, compassion and respect for one another. Within that energy and that space, there was no fault, no "bad guy", no horrible "why". We saw only love. The thread that runs through it all. From there the gratitude just flowed like water. Gratitude for who we have been for one another, for how we have challenged one another, for the partnership, the memories, the tears and the friendship. In realizing that we were no longer meant to be married I simultaneously saw the purpose of every single moment of my life. That I chose all of it on a soul level in order to learn or remember all of the beautifully challenging lessons in my life. Through this ownership there was no room for blame, anger and resentment, only love. It's a miraculous and beautiful circle that we were so deeply aligned in choosing our marriage and also in choosing to end it.
Our souls were meant to come together to teach each other truly incredible and invaluable lessons, more lessons than I would have space to write here. The soul connection didn't lie, it just may not look like we thought it would. Dan healed a part of me that was always searching, searching for that person to make me whole, and allowed me to truly find myself, the person I was really looking for. I am the woman I am today in part because of him and his partnership and for that I am eternally grateful.
Love is not something you have or don't have. It is always there for you to choose. How you want to experience your life, depends on how you choose to access that love. We were able to create a loving, supportive, respectful partnership in the shifting and ending of our marriage because of the way we accessed that love. Because we chose it. Because we chose the loving acts of ownership and gratitude.
How can you choose love in service of how you really want to experience life? What possibilities are available outside of the way it "should look"? What magic can you create?
