It has been very hard to write since my relationship ended. It has felt like all the undoing was undoing all my parts. Some of them I felt like I had to hold on to for myself so I had something left. I could feel parts of me starting to drag on the ground, getting muddy and I kept stepping on them. So I pulled all the parts in and sat down with them for a while.

The relationship ending part is just sad. It hurts and it is sad. But for me, it is the right thing. I am in no place to be able to give myself in love to another person. Like I heard recently from motivational speaker Lisa Nichols, you can’t love and give to someone from your cup. You need to love them and give to them from your saucer, from the love of you that is overflowing. You have so much love and acceptance for yourself, that the extra is what you offer to others. And that extra is complete, and beautiful, and shiny with glitter, and just exactly enough.

Well, I haven’t been living that kind of love story with myself…ever. I’ve had a few micro moments that I’ve been able to self-advocate and self-assert, and self-love. But those are fleeting, because seconds/moments/hours later I’m busily worrying about how to take care of everyone else. I’ve spent a lifetime worrying about other people’s choices and lives so much that I didn’t do the real work of concerning myself with MINE. It doesn’t mean I’m a sociopath if I think about my needs first. It means that I am being my true self, the way God intended, and then that love is ready to give back to the world. This is my life’s lesson, I’m pretty sure. I used to think it was about learning to accept unconditional love from others.

NO. It’s about accepting unconditional love from myself. And from God. That’s it. That’s the path. Sure, it sounds a bit like I’m talking about nirvana, but I don’t think so. I think we can all have moments on this earth that feel like complete peace and joy and connectedness. Even if those moments are fleeting and last only a breath. Then with intention, we move on to the next breath. And eventually there is a longer string of bliss happening in our own hearts.

Another part of this lesson in self-love is the working toward an actual deep understanding of self. 

The honest embarassing truth-I have spent decades in therapy. It is highly possible to spend all that time, money and energy in therapy just doing surface work. Doing “fake therapy.” It’s like washing the windows on a house that has a decrepit roof or foundation. Sure…take care of the windows. But if you don’t patch the roof or make sure the foundation is holding up the house, things are going to start caving in. I worried about other people and how to deal with other people in therapy for a long time. Then I got a new therapist that was able to turn my thinking back toward me a little, and cracks appeared. I did some actual real work. Then my therapist retired unexpectedly due to health reasons. And I went 9 months without one. But during that time, I listened to podcasts about entrepreneurship, and that turns out to be the place where I learned most of this–or when it all finally clicked.

I drove to Bend yesterday to get my astrological chart read again. Last year, at this same time in the year, my reader blew my mind with her insightful interpretation of the transits in my chart, and she had some stories that connected her interpretation to ancient literature and archetypes and astrology and tarot. All of it simply stunned me. Some things she said were so spot on, it was like she had Cliff Notes for the story of me. I suppose in a way, she did.

Bend is dry and cold and snow and ice are everywhere. The altitude and dry cold are so perfectly perfect and it makes me feel like I’m in Montana, but I only had to drive 2 hours from Brownsville.

The reading was personal, so I’m not going to divulge much here. Other than the Moon was in Scorpio when I was born, which influences how I feel and how deeply sensitive I am. #thismakessomuchsense I may be born under the sun sign Virgo, but hearing more about that Scorpio stuff in me helps me understand myself so much.

I literally have feelings tattooed onto my body, and more to come. This stuff is what my life is going to be about, apparently. Learning to understand my intense emotions…and loving myself. And knowing that there is nothing wrong with me for being so sensitive and intense. It is in my chart, in my guts, in my outward and inward personality. I am sensitive and intense. If I say that I love something…I REALLY DO. If I say I hate something…I REALLY DO. (I rarely hate anything…so when it happens, it’s especially real.)

I am intuitive and manifest what is necessary and needed for myself. When I know something is right, it usually is. When I know something is wrong, it usually is.

And when I say it’s time…for me…it’s really time.

Namaste.