I will begin by saying that it was something I deeply desired. My mind was reeling and my body was walled off. Even though the walls were thick, tall and as old as my first breaths; they could not stop my soul from crying out yearning to feel and be loved. Sounds penetrated the chaos, hoping for a response. I guess that was my first step, hearing the cries, fearing how hard it was going to be and knowing that I had to move through the dark places that surrounded my heart to heal.
I have loved and been open to many in my life, but not those who I have the most to “loose” from, like my husband. I thought I was “protecting” my heart. That is what I had told myself for the last 37 years. Instead I had chosen when my heart could feed on love. I had chosen to with hold my heart to anyone who was to big of a risk. I had completely missed the essence of love.
My husband and I have been married for 8 years and have 2 beautiful young children. After the children were born so much inside me changed and as a result our relationship changed. How we viewed eachother changed. Our paths of compassion and communication began to separate. Resentments mounted and our connection began a slow deterioration – until only in crisis we were able to feel eachother. There came a day when I knew that we no longer were in love with eachother anymore. I did not need to ask him for verification of his feelings, I knew because I had been giving him nothing of myself or my heart to be in love with. So what was there to love?
I began to “drive” my life bus with a vengeance. I ran the household and everyone in it. I systematically and very efficiently began to control everything around me. My husband and I had become roommates and I was the landlord. This was no way to live.
I had known Susan for many years at this point and could think of no-one else who could help us. We made a decision to go see Susan for couples counseling. Our journey began when we left our children with loving Aunts and Uncles and got on a plane by ourselves. We met Susan the evening we flew in and began to reveal our story. Both my husband and I were ready to face the issues we carried with us. We wanted to see eachother for who we were and be in love again. We quickly turned ourselves over to the process and let things unfold. We both trusted Susan and the journey she was pointing us towards.
A few hours drive into the wilderness we found our perfect therapeutic environment for healing. Through conversations at our camp, Susan used her incredible intuition and set us out to discover our connections to ourselves and thus eachother. She would not only listen to what we said, but how we said it and what our body language was saying as well. So even if my head was “saying all the right things” Susan would know that my body and soul were not feeling the same way. This would enable me to work through so many “stuck” places inside me that I had totally dismissed as a problem. Susan’s ability to see through all the talk to the essence of a person was invaluable to me.
My husband was on his journey and I was on mine. With our stories behind us we were both free of the co-dependent hell for the first time in years. I could trust he was doing and saying what he needed and vise versa. Susan gave us a song to sing. In the quiet of the emotion we sang to eachother. We sang as if each other’s lives depended on it. We sang through our fears, anxieties, and pain. We sang until our faces glistened in the moonlight and our song became our own. We sang with one voice – one breath – we were connected.
I became his goddess and he my hero. We played music and explored the waters. Eagles soared and new lives within us began to flourish. Our stories became small and our connection to life big. Who are we? Why are we here? What is important? These questions began to fill us instead of the mind’s superfluous chatter we had become accustomed to.
Susan opened our new vision. She asked us what we would do if we had only 10 minutes left on this earth, right here, right now? What would matter? What would be important? She sent us off at a run for our lives, there was little time left and we had to discover what really mattered?
We ran to the quiet of a small stream. My husband and I sat back to back. Again we played music for eachother. We sat in silence thinking of what matters and wrote down our commitments to eachother. My hero was sitting at my back, my heart was so open and I yearned to be with him. We only had 10 minutes left I thought, what is most important, right here, right now?
Connection. I wanted to forever be connected to him. In the filtered light by the quiet mountain stream we made love with only 10 minutes left to our lives.
Totally connected.
