Spiritual Healing Saved My Life. Now, it IS my Life.

When I was 20 years old, I found myself in my first love relationship. It all started out like the romance movies I watched as a kid. We were “lost in love.” I remember thinking how lucky we were because obviously nobody else had ever felt this way before. We wrote letters, and bought little gifts, and made love with great passion. I was certain it would never end.

But as time went by, I started feeling emptier and emptier inside. I was afraid to tell my truth, and I was suffering from apocalyptic ideas of the relationship ending and me being left on the side of the road abandoned and lost. I felt horribly insecure in ways I had never experienced. I was jealous when he would talk to someone else, certain they were a better choice for him than me. Truthfully, I was obsessed. I hate even writing that word, but it was true. I was plagued with codependency. But I just figured this was love. It was what all the millions of love songs sang about – love hurts! … You complete me … Without you I’m nothing.

I pretended like everything was ok, but inside I was suffering. I stopped speaking my truth and I became a people-pleaser. I felt more and more empty and lonely. I was unfulfilled but kept pushing those thoughts and feelings down. The more I tried to be whatever he wanted so he would say in love with me … the more unattractive I became. Who wants someone who is weak, afraid, and unable to stand on their own feet?  Eventually, we drifted apart and the day I so deeply feared arrived. We broke up. I was devastated for a week or two, but then something happened. I started to breathe more deeply. I started to come back to myself.

I moved into a dank, small basement apartment in Chicago. It was horrible but it was what I could afford on my own. And then one night something amazing happened. I was sitting in my bedroom journaling and this energy washed over me. I looked around the room at the dollar-store milk crates that held my books and stuff that I thought was so special, the shitty bed with the cheap covers, and clothes throw all over the room and I thought, “This is mine … this is my room. These are my books. Those are my clothes. This cheap crap is all mine … and for the first time in a long time, I feel free.” It was amazing. Honestly, it was a spiritual moment because I felt like myself. I was in my own body. I was alive!

I wish I could tell you I went skipping happily into my own power and eternal joy … not yet. It took me a few more rounds of dating different guys, and ultimately getting into the marriage I’m currently in, to discover that the relationship problems I was experiencing didn’t have anything to do with “him”. It could have been anyone. The broken relationship patterns lied dormant until someone came along. Then they awoke and took over.

As crazy as this sounds, the revelation that the problem was in me was great news, because I could do something about that.  I could do the work necessary to solve it. I dove in!  Therapy, 12-steps, workshops, spiritual counseling, lots of prayer and non-stop forgiveness, some ayahuasca and plant medicine thrown in there, and most importantly, I found within A Course In Miracles the pathway from “special” relationships, which are fixed in fear, control, ego, and ultimately hatred – to “holy” relationships, which are anchored in Spirit’s unconditional love, joy, and freedom.