Fearlessness of Death and a Life Lived Without Regrets
How long is a minute of presence? How long does it take to share love?
Self Portrait, 2020. I’ll be showing pieces of my visual work in the BODIES EXHIBITION, Sept 2024
This week has reminded me just how deeply my love runs. That the love I feel has less to do with what others outside of me do to show me love, but more so how I open myself up to the love that lives within me and share it with the world. Many people misinterpret intimacy. Because many people live transactionally. Many people reserve the best parts of themselves waiting for the perfect moment to open up their hearts. And too many moments pass thinking that there’s time for the next to come.
I don’t remember when it happened, but I remember coming into this knowing pretty early in my youth. I don’t know what gave me this understanding, but I know that this molded the ways in which I learned to lean into speaking my truths. I understood in ways I had never seen in anyone around me the importance of presence, time, intimacy and deep care.
I had a thought that surfaced within me - likely from hearing it from someone around me or on TV. “What if this is the last moment you get?” It could quite possibly be from seeing someone close to me lose someone close to them unexpectedly and moving through their pain and grief as if it were my own. It could be from a longing for a closeness with those who brought me into this world than they were ever able to give me.
Nonetheless, in that moment, I decided, even though it was scary - and the sensations that arose within my body could become so intense that I wanted to leave my body - I would be honest. And most honest in my love.
I have been in a cocoon of myself since this time last year. I resisted the entry, clinging to all that I had “become” and fearing letting it go. I fought the surrender and transition as if my life depended on it. Because in parts, I believed it did. My survival had been entangled with my identity. I let the stories creep in from the outside world that told me who I needed to be and what I had to do to become a version that wasn’t fully authentic to me. I felt myself running from the changes that were calling me to slow down and pushing towards holding onto things I no longer believed in to avoid the fear of rejection and being cut off from being able to survive in a world I created. That let capitalism control and define me.
We don’t speak often of the depths of darkness that we can only face alone. We hush the speak of grief, loss, death, suicidal ideations - even in our own minds. When there’s courage to confront the darkness that one can only known on their own and give them a voice - we rush it - so that we don’t have to confront our own mortality. So that we don’t have to face the fears of the failures or incompleteness that eats us up inside. We overshadow it with fist pumping, pill popping, and live-laugh-loves. We wear T-shirts that say “Good Vibes Only” to repel the full spectrum of live and love.
How long is a minute of presence? How long does it take to share love?
I love deeply. So deeply that I can feel it ache in my bones. And this isn’t exclusive to the ways I feel heartache - but it exists in the ways I feel pleasure, joy, and the expansiveness of unconditional love. I feel disappointment from the ways in which others don’t understand this kind of love. Sadness for the ways they feel numb. These words I don’t say with judgement, but more so from a place of isolation in the ways in which I FEEL. Not through my emotions, but the sensations in my body in everything I do. A lingering longing to find ways to articulate and translate this thing that is impossible to capture in a sentence or two.
I’ve been practicing reopening my heart. Letting it feel rather than forcing it to numb. The last couple of years really broke my heart. And not in the ways that people interpret or expect for it to. People default to thinking that when you speak of heartaches that it’s from disappointment of not getting the outcome you expected to. Yes, in parts, perhaps this is true. But for me, the aches that cause my heart to close come from an overflow of misunderstanding my intentions with intimacy, connection, pleasure + love. The aches that cause my heart grief are more often from the holding onto an excess of expressions and an inability to translate the love that it holds. The pain that causes my heart to close isn’t from the rejection of relationships or the impossibility of forever with another, but rather from the ways in which we meet others and block possibilities with fear of fluidity. The ways in which we cling to control with such a determination that we can’t see the attempts of love that are being extended to soften the hardness that protects the tenderness of our heart.
July reminded me of how I love. And how I want to be loved. It remind me that I need space to be in my solitude and I need to be present with those around me. And it reminded me that although everyone is deserving of the love my heart holds, that not everyone is ready for the mirror that deep love unfolds. That it is an ebb and flow to find the rhythm of love with others. And that loving is a choice. That choosing to love also means choosing patience, kindness, compassion, and a balance of selflessness and selfishness. That choosing to love is also choosing to be seen imperfectly. And choosing to allow yourself to be loved is choosing to be vulnerable in intimacy.
July held me to my own standards of love. Demanded that I confront my fears, insecurities, pain, and avoidance of pleasure that runs deep. It forced me to remember that I have a voice and to find it. To really create and hold boundaries. It reminded me that when you are filled with love you become luminescent. And the vibrancy of the light that you will shine will attract things that help you grow as equally as it will call in things that challenge you to dim your shine.
It gave me space to connect with new things, people, places, and parts of me that feel true to who I am in this moment and who I am becoming. It let my heart soften and open again, my mind find settling and silence, and my body to find sensation to speak it’s own language once again. I reconnected with and remembered what love is to me. And how I want to share my mind, time, heart, soul + body. I lingered in the liminal spaces that exist where grief meets love. I found words to speak the things I always feared to say. And I let my mind trust my heart for once in my life and lead the way. I took time to reconnect with my body for no other reason than because I wanted to feel peace in this home of mine. And I took time to release the stories - and the confirmations of my fears - that to be loved, I have to sacrifice parts of myself or conform to other people’s demands for how I should live my life.
There’s so much richness to unfold in the knowing of love. So much pleasure and pain dancing to the same song in their own unique ways. But what is it to take a moment to be present? What do we lose when we give the time to allowing space for love?
Love in relationships isn’t solely what we want to receive. But a mirroring of the longing that you discover another person desires and needs. It’s showing them who they are over and over again - the good, bad + ugly. It’s holding that mirror with gentle, tender, compassionate authority and allowing them to exist fully in their own chaos and glory without wavering. Love does not mean you have to repeat the same activities you once did in order for it to remain true. But it allows us to shapeshift in ourselves and alongside others in ways that feel authentic, true, and purposeful to the life were here to live.
To not fear death, I believe, comes from a place of not fearing being alive. And not fearing being alive comes from a knowing that there is a love that lives so deeply and vibrantly inside of you that you are committed to living this life. Not because it’s easy or perfect. Not because others validate or need you to. But because you’re curious, determined, destined to find ways to translate this impossible feeling that sits deep within you over and over again. The fearlessness in death comes from a fearlessness in love. It comes from a place of exploring vulnerability in intimacy over and over again. Curiously pouring heart into relationships, creativity, connection, sex, pleasure, and play. Choosing to release the pressures of life and settle in to presence in every moment you can.
I have always known this to be true, which is why it appears from the outside more effortless for me to do. But my struggles with love ebb and flow. They are often linked to the ways I feel fear in my creative expressions. And the ways in which I fixate on the relationships and frictions in my life that dim my glow. In the choosing to confront my fears, I found two things to be true. What I feared did happen. And what I didn’t image could is also happening. And now the pendulum is in a place to settle somewhere in the middle for a while so I can soak in the lessons that will become my new truths.
What will life be like if I allow it to be molded and guided by the love that my heart holds?
This is something I will continue to ponder out loud as there are so many thing I want to say, share, and contemplate with you. But for now I’ll leave you with a few things that have been transforming me through guiding me into depths of love that feel known and new.
Reading: Claim Your Power by Mastin Kipp and All About Love by bell hooks
Doing: Breathwork with Jake Ferree - Public class, 4PM Wednesdays at Sojourn Healing Collective
Moving: Finding pleasure in variety, play + challenging my body through ClassPass and accountability and pushing my edges with strength + mobility training with Ben Woods
Studying: I’ve been tuning inward and trying to hear the words my heart has to say. In this I have created spaciousness to understand in what directions we’re ready to grow and will begin some formal training and studying in the fall (more to come)
Listening to: Mel Robbins Podcast, Ram Dass, Insight Timer, and the Open App
Connecting, Exploring, Expressing, Creating: I’ve been distancing myself from social media and seeking out gathering for creativity. Dance through contact improv and ecstatic flow, writing messily, long coffee dates and contemplative conversations, defining my own version of urban gardening, creating space and spaces, mood boards, play in the park, open mic nights, and poetry readings.
Wishing you spaciousness in the day for what you need. If anything resonated, leave a comment or shoot me a DM here on Substack to continue the conversation. love.