Celebrating 16 Years With My Beloved

 

Celebrating 16 Years With My Beloved

These images from over our 16 years together are reminders of the deep blessings, medicine, and gifts of love. 

This has not been an easy journey for me to truly undefend my heart and allow the vulnerability and trust, the lessons and accountability, the healing and courage, and the commitment to the deep work that an enduring and expansive love asks of us. And yet, this is the opportunity that I have experienced in connecting with a soulful partner committed to doing his own work and sharing this amazing path of shedding our delusions and releasing our old wounds and deep fears which so often inevitability emerge when we open our hearts deeply to another human being.

Today I am aware that I will be forever grateful for the profound blessings and synchronicity and grace which brought Ron and myself to the little coffee shop in Portland where we first met on November 11th, 2010. And what kids we were then at 59 and 62 and soon to be finding ourselves falling head over heals in love. 

And, of course, there were also bumps and setbacks and scary and painful places — and especially in our early days — which sent each of us off to therapy and other resources of support. As Jack Kornfield has written about, "first the ecstasy, then the laundry." So true!

Gratefully, there was also already much healing work that we had each done before we ever met. And there was more to do. Of course. It is often too easy to be triggered into acting in ways which unknowingly sabotage exactly that which we most yearn for — something which I have certainly done in my past. Life can be so humbling. And scary. And we are all human and it is not easy to be human and to keep our hearts open.

This is what our intimate relationships call us into — the courageous territory of further working with our old triggers and trauma, of assuming greater accountability and embodying deeper compassion, and of deepening and expanding the ongoing sacred journey of unburdening ourselves of our old wounds and learning how to undefend our hearts.

And Love is always the greatest medicine. 

I write this today with the deepest love and gratitude to my beloved husband. Over the years, Ron and I have sought and received the support we each needed to recognize and heal those sabotaging fearful old wounded places that served to obstruct true intimacy and an expansive and deepening love. And we never gave up when things got really scary and hard.

And through this sacred process, we have been empowered to bring the nourishment and the safe ground, the commitment and courage, the vulnerability and compassion, the courage and kindness, and the wisdom and abiding love needed to increasingly support ourselves and each other in growing into more and more of the wholeness and beauty of who we most truly are.

There is no greater gift that we humans can give to each other and ourselves. It takes courage to recognize and own and heal the old wounds and seek whatever support we need to do so. It takes deep commitment and courage to risk vulnerability and authenticity, to be honest and open-hearted, to trust and love another human being. And when we have found those who grace us in such profound ways on our human journeys, we have been blessed with life's greatest treasure.

And I will forevermore treasure my beloved Ron.  🙏💜 Molly