Healing through Relationships
Relationships change you.
They are the crucible through which our lives transform.
They encourage you to grow with more love and support.
Infused with courage they stretch you to the point of loving yourself even more completely.
Our relationships are the deepest form of healing.
Every relationship stretches you further into who you are here to become.
If you open to the process your relationships will mark a transformational path of catalytic change.
But first, let’s rewind about 15 years ago…
When I was living a double life.
During the day I was doing the work I loved to do and living a life that fulfilled a deep sense of purpose.
At night, outside of work, I was desperately seeking, questioning and silently suffering through the endless drama of less than satisfying relationships.
I felt as though I was destined to be happy in only one of these areas. Not both.
Unless I had a clear role to help someone else I generally felt baffled in relationship.
Though a healthy, loving, romantic partnership was something I deeply longed for, it was always the area of my life that felt most riddled with challenges.
I ended up thinking that either there must be something wrong with me or the people I am choosing to be with.
For a long time I put all my energy into what I knew was my strength - my work.
Little did I know that the dynamics I struggled with in my personal life would eventually begin to show in the area of my professional work too.
I couldn’t escape the lessons of self-love life was asking me to learn.
Having close personal relationships felt harder for me to access. It was much easier to identify with my purpose and the needs of others through my work than it was to feel my own real personal longings and needs.
The split seems obvious to me now, but at the time I was really in the dark about why my relationships were not working out.
In hindsight I see now how over identifying with my work resulted in a splitting off from my true personal needs and therefore created the dissatisfaction I felt in my personal relationships.
The hard at work mode gave me fuel, a strong identity, and a very clear sense of direction and purpose. In essence it was a shelter I had built for myself internally.
The pursuit of my work conveniently camouflaged the defenses I had around revealing my more real personal flawed imperfect vulnerable self.
Put simply I constantly felt I had to prove my own worth.
And working hard became the solution.
As I cultivated myself professionally, new skill sets would emerge and I learned to work with different people in different ways.
Yet, the fulfillment I felt in my work didn’t translate to my personal life. This gap between my personal life and professional pursuits felt vast.
This split eventually led to a series of relationships that taught me the value of difficult relationships. This period of loss in my life opened me to the opportunity of working on some of the most intimate ways I had forgotten my Self.
It took precious time of peeling back the layers underneath the dissatisfaction to see how conveniently my identity was wrapped up inside an idealized image.
An independent woman who serves her spiritual calling and is self-sufficient enough to avoid needing anyone.
Through the aftermath of my“failed” relationships I was able to witness how removed from my feelings I had become and started learning how to truly let go of what no longer supported me.
I learned how to stay present with myself. To love myself. To accept and value myself. To advocate for my needs.
Through learning how to love myself I got in touch with and embodied my intention for a loving, caring partnership.
Without taking an honest look at how I valued and loved myself I couldn’t actually go after what I wanted.
What I have noticed is that when we don’t give ourselves permission to go after the thing we really want it usually shows us where we don’t feel worthy of it. This is where the deeper healing work is destined to go.
As Dr. Shakti Malan says: “You are the soul mate you are seeking.”
In a lot of ways this is what I learned. How the relationships you pursue will always reveal more about what you need to learn and love about yourself.
The love we seek outwardly will only go as far as we are willing to lean in to loving who we are as we are.
I am deeply honored by the work of relationships that shows up in my coaching work with women today.
I am deeply honored by the women who seek to heal the split within. Who are working to repair what was been trespassed. Who meet the resistance with more patience, fierceness and compassion. Who are bringing the intentions of the soul back into true alignment with the body-mind-self for deeper experiences of love.
When we bring awareness and self-acceptance to this process and learn more about how we are, what our triggers and blind spots are, we can start to build new embodied pathways of connection.
Connection is how we heal.
Connection is a pathway we build through embodied awareness.
There is nothing you cannot overcome when someone shows their love for you. As you are held, as you are deeply seen, you are loved.
When you can start to see the path of radical self-love as the one that moves through relationship you open the possibility to heal the deepest unmet wounds.
There is nothing like the staying power of love.
It is a subtle presence that never leaves you. It is the radical acceptance that is loving you even when you cannot love yourself. Love reveals everything that it is not and teaches you through what has been lost how to find yourself again.
When what we don’t love about ourselves can surface and be met without judgement we will learn the art of going deeper into love.
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I am delighted to announce that this month in the Meditation Space we will be opening the practice to the role our inner world plays in navigating the ups and downs of relationships.
This class series is for you if you are looking to heal from the past, call in a new relationship or if you are already partnered and looking for ways to better understand your needs/desires in relationship.
YOU CAN ACCESS DETAILS & RSVP HERE.
It would be a pleasure to welcome you.
With love,
Andrea
Have questions?