I was sitting on the floor sobbing hysterically in our little cabin in the woods. It was the night of my 34th birthday. My boyfriend had passed out hours before.
Through a psychedelic lens of LSD, tequila, and self loathing I asked myself, how could this happen again? I was a successful yoga teacher, traveling the world and working with extraordinary people.
And in an instant I had the answer. I chose this.
It was the same as every man I’d ever chosen. With all of them, I was so insecure and hungry for love I wasn't able to express who I was and what I wanted. I was terrified of being rejected, craving the attention of men to feel lovable and worthy.
Throughout the night, I saw all the reasons why I chose relationships that would never meet my needs. I saw how the battlefield of my parents’ relationship had shaped all my subsequent relationships, how the patterns of abuse and mental illness played out in my lineage, how my own experience with assault had sent me into a pit of shame and self blame as a teenager which still haunted me.
I saw how hard I had been on myself. My desire to be “perfect” left me with an incredibly harsh voice in my head and a destructive relationship with my body and food that had me weighing myself 30 times a day and measuring my “thigh gap.”
That night was a torrent of revelations, it was the night I committed to healing my past so I could create a new reality for the future. But I knew that was going to take making some big changes in my life.
A few months later I received an email from a sexuality teacher I admired and had followed for over 7 years promoting her sex, love and relationships coaching certification. As I read the email, a jolt of terror shot through me. I knew this was it.
I had already been self-studying sex, love and relationships for over 10 years. My desire to understand love and sexuality actually landed me in a spiritual sex cult 6 years prior. (A whole other story, wait for the book) I’ve always had a desire to understand and explore the complexities of love and intimacy.
I felt invitation in my bones, the electricity in my heart, I took a long hard look at myself in the mirror and said:
“Alright, you know this is what your’e meant to do. It’s going to be really fucking hard and edgy… and it’s exactly what you need.” Later that week I was accepted into the course.
When I reflect on the times in my life where I have been the most terrified, they are the times that my life has taken an extraordinary direction. They are the times I have grown in quantum leaps and bounds.
The opening call of the coaching certification warned us: After this program your life will not be the same. It’s going to take you into the ugliest, messiest, most vulnerable, most rejected parts of yourself in order to heal the past and step into an entirely new way of being.
I wanted a new way of being. I wanted to feel empowered, unstoppable, confident, radiant, magnetic, free.
And so, I got uncomfortably real with myself. I faced all the insecurity and self abandonment I’d chosen in sex, love and relationships.
I faced my sexual trauma, father wounds, mother wounds, perfectionism - and I looked at why I was still sourcing all my self-worth externally.
It brought up every pattern of self sabotage, coping and escape I’d leaned on. But I knew the only way out was through and backing out wasn’t an option.
The willingness to sit in the fire and trust the process is how we transform.
Fast forward to the morning circle at a 7 day tantric training with my boyfriend (yes, the same one passed out on my birthday)
“Who’s next?” one of the teachers asked, looking at me. I started shaking. My body stood up and walked into the center of the circle. I drew upon strength I didn’t know I possessed. Over the past 12 months I had held myself through some of the deepest healings of my life, now it was time to be free.
I started screaming, stomping, wailing, yelling “I kill the part of me that chose abuse, pain, suffering, I kill the part of me that stayed quiet and abandoned myself, that didn’t say no. I kill the part of me that still feels like she isn’t enough.” I mimicked picking up a sword and started stabbing myself in the heart. My eyes rolled into the back of my head and I collapsed on the floor as I felt these parts of me let go. The parts that had enabled me to be in such an unhealthy, codependent relationship.
Then my body moved towards my boyfriend. In him, I saw all my past relationships, all my people pleasing, self sacrificing and playing small. I took the sword and slayed every single cord that had ever connected us.
That day I learned how to choose myself.
It was a ritual that enabled me to create the business I have today.
I am a teacher, leader, sex & intimacy coach and a voice for sexual empowerment. I know how to validate myself and back myself as I continue to step up and evolve. I am in service to humanity’s liberation.