A friend came up to me this weekend at folk festival and met my partner East for the first time and said to me “you seem really happy. At least on social media, and you seem like an honest person.”
Honesty is a quality I value deeply so this hit me square in the gut because at the time, I was in a heavy contraction.
East and I were moving through some challenging fights and both of our wounds were on loud speaker. We were having a hard time “finding each other” as East beautifully highlighted.
Many of us don’t share when we are in contraction and even less so when it’s within a partnership. Fights in partnership can feel really isolating and scary and we think we have to struggle our way through it without help.
Maybe it’s conditioning, maybe it’s shame, maybe it’s fear of others knowing we are struggling and the judgement we perceive, but many of us don’t reach out for a lifeline in the moment of challenge within partnership.
An elder I recently became friends with told me about how when she and her husband were facing one of hardest moments in their marriage, another couple told them to come over, spend the night and they would support them through the contraction.
This has stayed with me. We say “it takes a village” about raising children and often when in fights with our partners that is exactly who is coming up to be supported, our inner child.
And having a person or persons outside of the partnership lovingly hold space without opinion and in service of the relationship is invaluable and a game changer.
We reached out to @jessicavignolle and she masterfully guided us to the heart and essence of the wounds and fears and helped us “find” each other again.
Powerful love brings powerful challenge, reflecting back the places within us that need the most care.
Speaking about challenges in partnership feels important. So that like many things we think we have to struggle alone in, we can get support and maybe save ourselves and/or others deeper pain.
This picture was taken at my best friend’s wedding last week. I wrote my toast a month ago and the message that came through now feels like my higher self giving me a message for this exact moment.
“Love is a magical mystery. There is something about it I don’t think we are supposed to understand. We just know that our body softens, our arms open, and another feels like home. It is vibration in our cells that draws us in to one another.
Partnership is a choice. A commitment to choose, to choose to breathe through the fights, to soften when it’s needed and to stand for each other when one falters. To show up in all of our humanness, in all of the different versions of who we become in a life and to let the magical mystery of love guide us. There is a part of choosing partnership that is a leap of faith and there is a part that is courageously choosing. “
