Through the Heart.

"Do you want to get married again?"
His question was so innocent. The early stages of "getting to know another" when stepping out into the dating world again post-divorce, and with children.

I completely fumbled over my words.

I haven't mastered a good response for that question, despite it rolling in my head for nearly a decade now.

My thoughts flow more easily via pen and paper than they do when formulating a thought to speak.

I think my answer is, marriage is no longer a destination for me.
But if it is part of the path, of my journey, and it feels in alignment rather than the "next step" of a relationship, then yes.

There is a quote that you can only love someone as deeply as you have met yourself.

Conversely, someone can only love you to the depth that they have met themselves.

I have to tell you; I have gone deep.
Dug deep.
I have excavated every hurt I have both received and inflicted on others and rolled it around in my heart and soul. 

I have spent countless hours introspecting and looking at each experience through multiple lens to not only learn what was triggering me in life's moments up until now, but also how I may have been triggering in someone else.

I have sat looking in the mirror at my own reflection naked, afraid, vulnerable, begging the universe "how many more lessons in love do I have to learn?"

Sat until the tears that stained my cheek ran empty and my heart felt wide open.

Until I found the stillness inside of me.

Until the parts of me that once ached had been loved back to health.

Not by someone else, but by me.

In When the White Picket Fence is No Longer Enough, I write: "​When you are of a certain age and you find yourself looking for a partner and a love that is not derived around having children, having a family, building a house together, consolidating resources, it creates a strange dynamic. It is not a love built for the outcome but rather the journey. You realize you are looking for someone just for you—not to establish a legacy or generation to leave behind you. You’re not trying to create something that will compete with past loves or exes or even families who came before. You’re not looking to intertwine finances or debate the number of children and how they will be raised and what a family looks like. When you are looking for someone at this point in your life, it becomes incredibly personal in a very different way than when you were looking in your twenties."

I have found peace both within my own heart and my home.
That carries with it a price tag that no one can afford. I won't exchange my peace.

Too picky? I want too much. My expectations are too high.

Maybe.

Or maybe I just want something, believe in something, that others have long since given up on.
Or maybe even talked themselves out of by saying things like: "it's never going to happen."

Maybe the idea of juggling life, finances, schedules and the unexpected alone is too much.

Or it will cost too much to choose your own peace.

And that is okay, we all get to go about life our own way.

My heart hasn't turned black.
I don't have a zero-tolerance with relationships.
I don't want to grow old alone, forever.

I just have just come to the place where the peace I have found is greater than my need for partnership, even greater than my need for desire or passion.

I have tasted love that is so expansive, so unconditional, that defies all logic.

I am okay waiting to cross paths with the man who has sat with all of the versions of his younger self and healed them, loved them, honored them.

I don't need to get married, but I do need a love that runs deep. 

A man that doesn't just love my glow but honors the fires I have walked through to get here - because he has walked through his too.

Marriage? Okay, maybe.

But first - give me the man whose presence honors my peace and solitude.

The man whose own battles within give me the strength, courage and curiosity to grow even more.

Give me the man who finds me through the center of his heart.

I'll be waiting for him in the center of mine.

Read More