August (thoughts on relationship and life beginning outside your comfort zone)
It's hard to believe its the end of August. It feels like summer has just started, the heat has just started sinking into my bones, I have just starting laying in the sun to dry. But already the air is too cold in the morning to venture out without a sweater and I can see the sunrise peaking over the trees when I get up in the morning.
After 3 years of being together and 8 and a bit months of being married, I finally feel like I'm in a spot where I enjoy our relationship. Not that I didn't enjoy other parts of it before but they all felt like they were just this illusion, like I was splashing in the shallow end of the pool. After so much pain and grief in our engagement season, getting married in a way that didn't feel right to me (it was the only way I could have comprehended then but looking back all the decisions I made were out of pain and not at all what I actually wanted), buying a house and renovating that house and sex coaching and wondering why it wasn't working and why it felt so hard and standing in the kitchen screaming at each other and saying countless times "I want a divorce" I feel like I'm finally at a place in my marriage where I can breathe, where there is space to be fully myself, fully known and fully loved. I feel like maybe I'll jinx it if I write about it, but I spent months wishing someone would write about it. Write about how hard marriage is (because they tell you its hard but they never really tell you how hard, or what makes it hard, or that at times the only thing more impossible to think of than staying is leaving) and what to do when it feels like you are suffocating in this decision that you made and when you think you did everything wrong. And I wanted someone to take me by the hand and tell me it gets better and that its not hard because i'm doing it wrong, its just hard for everybody.
I started asking my friends about their marriages. I listened to podcasts on marriage. In the Sophia sessions I worked hard to reclaim my idea of marriage and work at healing my marriage and the struggles I had with being a wife and being a woman and love and sex and being with another person.
I'm not saying I have it figured out now. But I know something now I didn't know when I said I do. Whether I stay married 60 years, or 2, I am worthy of marriage. I am worthy of good things. Who I am as a woman is ok and enough and beautiful and strong and sexy and magical. However this marriage ends up it is a success because it taught me this.
The last week especially has been one breakthrough followed by another. Honest conversations, crying during sex, exposing our hearts in ways we never did before, being vulnerable and trusting that we would be even more fully loved if we were fully known.
And let me tell you I was never fully loved before I allowed myself to be fully known.
This kind of flows into the second huge thing that has happened this month which is as soon as I committed to showing up and loving myself, things got in the way. That's how it always happens right? And I had to learn (am learning) how to respond instead of react. (Right now its a lot of reacting and freaking out for a few hours or days and then calming myself down and responding)
Little decisions made by people I love which remind me I don't have as much control as I think I do, or want to have in an idyllic world. Big moments when people show me that they are incapable in this moment from where they are in life being part of my tribe and respecting the new way of living I'm making for myself, where they show me they aren't FOR me for whatever reason. Tiny plot twists have gotten tangled up in my story and I have to remind myself to stay open and not get frustrated and shut down.
It takes time, then, for my to re-center myself, to remember to breathe, to remember that I can only control my own behavior and I need to release some things just because they are heavy and that I am connected to this source of light and love.
And this, August has shaped up to be a month of epic shifts. I quit my job in July without knowing my next step, just because I had this deep unrest in my entire body. Maybe it was that moment I decided I would rather be brave than comfortable. I didn't know what else was out there but I knew it had to be better than the comfortable but constricting feeling of staying in this place that was toxic and abusive and that I hated.
I've been thinking about what it means to live outside your comfort zone. Because even a few months ago I couldn't imagine life outside my 9-5 job and coming home and watching Netflix and maybe trying a few self care practices that only felt like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. And then I decided to show up.
And I've found life, and excitement, and passion. I said yes to yoga teacher training (a life long dream of mine) which led to finding my tribe which has led to signing up for Buti yoga teacher training (a practice that has changed my life) which has led to self confidence and self love. Which has led to spontaneous adventures and being more vocal about what I want and don't want and asking for the things I want and releasing that which isn't mine which is making me free. I ventured outside of my comfort zone and I found what its like to be beautifully, magically free.
Which has improved my work life (next month i'll be starting yoga teacher training as well as a new job that's still doing what I love but with more flexibility) and my free time and my friendships and my spirituality and my marriage and my relationship with myself.
After 3 years of being together and 8 and a bit months of being married, I finally feel like I'm in a spot where I enjoy our relationship. Not that I didn't enjoy other parts of it before but they all felt like they were just this illusion, like I was splashing in the shallow end of the pool. After so much pain and grief in our engagement season, getting married in a way that didn't feel right to me (it was the only way I could have comprehended then but looking back all the decisions I made were out of pain and not at all what I actually wanted), buying a house and renovating that house and sex coaching and wondering why it wasn't working and why it felt so hard and standing in the kitchen screaming at each other and saying countless times "I want a divorce" I feel like I'm finally at a place in my marriage where I can breathe, where there is space to be fully myself, fully known and fully loved. I feel like maybe I'll jinx it if I write about it, but I spent months wishing someone would write about it. Write about how hard marriage is (because they tell you its hard but they never really tell you how hard, or what makes it hard, or that at times the only thing more impossible to think of than staying is leaving) and what to do when it feels like you are suffocating in this decision that you made and when you think you did everything wrong. And I wanted someone to take me by the hand and tell me it gets better and that its not hard because i'm doing it wrong, its just hard for everybody.
I started asking my friends about their marriages. I listened to podcasts on marriage. In the Sophia sessions I worked hard to reclaim my idea of marriage and work at healing my marriage and the struggles I had with being a wife and being a woman and love and sex and being with another person.
I'm not saying I have it figured out now. But I know something now I didn't know when I said I do. Whether I stay married 60 years, or 2, I am worthy of marriage. I am worthy of good things. Who I am as a woman is ok and enough and beautiful and strong and sexy and magical. However this marriage ends up it is a success because it taught me this.
The last week especially has been one breakthrough followed by another. Honest conversations, crying during sex, exposing our hearts in ways we never did before, being vulnerable and trusting that we would be even more fully loved if we were fully known.
And let me tell you I was never fully loved before I allowed myself to be fully known.
This kind of flows into the second huge thing that has happened this month which is as soon as I committed to showing up and loving myself, things got in the way. That's how it always happens right? And I had to learn (am learning) how to respond instead of react. (Right now its a lot of reacting and freaking out for a few hours or days and then calming myself down and responding)
Little decisions made by people I love which remind me I don't have as much control as I think I do, or want to have in an idyllic world. Big moments when people show me that they are incapable in this moment from where they are in life being part of my tribe and respecting the new way of living I'm making for myself, where they show me they aren't FOR me for whatever reason. Tiny plot twists have gotten tangled up in my story and I have to remind myself to stay open and not get frustrated and shut down.
It takes time, then, for my to re-center myself, to remember to breathe, to remember that I can only control my own behavior and I need to release some things just because they are heavy and that I am connected to this source of light and love.
And this, August has shaped up to be a month of epic shifts. I quit my job in July without knowing my next step, just because I had this deep unrest in my entire body. Maybe it was that moment I decided I would rather be brave than comfortable. I didn't know what else was out there but I knew it had to be better than the comfortable but constricting feeling of staying in this place that was toxic and abusive and that I hated.
I've been thinking about what it means to live outside your comfort zone. Because even a few months ago I couldn't imagine life outside my 9-5 job and coming home and watching Netflix and maybe trying a few self care practices that only felt like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet hole. And then I decided to show up.
And I've found life, and excitement, and passion. I said yes to yoga teacher training (a life long dream of mine) which led to finding my tribe which has led to signing up for Buti yoga teacher training (a practice that has changed my life) which has led to self confidence and self love. Which has led to spontaneous adventures and being more vocal about what I want and don't want and asking for the things I want and releasing that which isn't mine which is making me free. I ventured outside of my comfort zone and I found what its like to be beautifully, magically free.
Which has improved my work life (next month i'll be starting yoga teacher training as well as a new job that's still doing what I love but with more flexibility) and my free time and my friendships and my spirituality and my marriage and my relationship with myself.
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