How's Your Heart?
And other deeply pondered things.
I have been really, really into astrology as of late. Deep diving into Human Design. I have been enjoying skimming my daily readings on The Pattern and Costar and running the charts of close friends, collaborators, and new acquaintances. Last year I dated a science-driven person. Someone who’s connection to spirituality came through substances and music festivals. This challenged me to evaluate the beliefs I have been holding all of my life and expand exploring more of another perspective, for exploration sake. Through this I uncovered that my spiritual practices, beliefs, and values were more than just traditions but deeply rooted expansions of who I am. That my openness is genuinely rooted in the trust that exists within me in the greater parts of the unknown.
I decided in April to create space for myself after being activated, disregulated, and triggered from the last few connections I had romantically and sexually. To pause and reset the ways I was not only sharing my body-mind-heart-soul with others, but also the ways in which I was allowing the needs, expectations, and asks of others to navigate me. I felt embarrassed, ashamed, disappointed, and judgmental that this was a place I had navigated to (once again).
And I think these feelings are fair. Not only from the simplicity of the imperfections of not having it all together in relationships and relating with others. But also from the lens of living up to societal expectations of perfectionism that no one really ever meets.
I’ve been learning and reflecting on what I have experiences in association with the depths and layers of the heart. About love and what it is to live a life in a world that has glorified lust and curated stories of relationships and relating that don’t really seem to exist for anyone I know. I discovered limerence and how it likes to show up disguised as chemistry. And have been dissecting how chemistry is actually a mirror that someone else holds reflecting the most beautiful parts of the person right in front of them.
2019, inside the Self Study Lab
In my time returning home to myself this summer, I discovered truths I at least in parts have always known but forgot as I explored in ways I hadn’t before. I was reminded that I truly live my life for love. And that loving is brave in a world where people would rather curate and play games than come face-to-face with their fears, insecurities, and vulnerabilities. I uncovered the ways I need. How I wanted things I didn’t think I did. And found truths for my connection to intimacy as not just something I like to have with romantic partners, but is in fact the greatest and richest part of how I exist, express, connect, create, and love.
I thought I would spend the summer recording and sharing thoughts and stories through the podcast, but realized pretty quickly that when I said I needed to take space, that it meant in every way so I could clear my head. I discovered that instead of producing more for the sake of production that I needed to create space to ask myself and the people closest to me - and now I am also asking you:
How is your heart?
Like, really. Not just at the surface. But deeply, truly, most vulnerably.
How is your heart? What is it holding?
I asked this to a man I went on a date a few weeks ago. I said, “What do you want?” and put my hand on his chest. It was too much for him - in that moment, and a few weeks later. To be challenged with facing the honesty of the longings that existed within himself.
And this is the thing that I am seeing we all too often run from with the same inertia that we run towards lust. So we confuse our own existence and the engagements of anyone who comes near us. We let our blood pulse open and close the cages that contain our heart inside our chests.
In my space with and within myself this summer I uncovered how beautifully-ugly I truly am and can become. And how much I value this about myself even though seeing, feeling, and admitting it is really fucking hard. I learned that most people are not lovers. Nor do they really want to do the work with themselves to truly reach liberation in the body or within love. And this is simply an observation, not a judgement, knowing that the commitment to change is not for the faint of heart.
But I also was reminded that the space that is near me is one that beckons the ones who long for more. The ones who ache for substance and who have grown tired and dissatisfied with the ways in which so much of life feels muted, dull, and numb. That the ones who see, feel, and dream are also the ones who see love as an act of service and art. Who may not do it “the right way” according to science, but who have never been afraid to try and break their own heart over and over again feeling deeply along the way.
The space that I hold is a place that often feels like refuge for the ones who know the language of heartbreak, shame, pain, grief, and loneliness written in many names. And it has seemed to be a container for those who hold a type of resiliency that only comes when you refuse to accept mediocre expression in connection and love.
A reward for the space I created from service and within myself this summer was a return of my creative energy, a reopening of my guarded heart, and a courage to form sentences in ways that have always made me feel at home with sharing myself with the world. I found bravery to use my voice to expand healing in my relationships and to confront the parts of myself that have been still clinging to hurting myself when life gets overwhelming or hard. It returned me to the practice of daily pouring into the parts of myself that were hurting and centering the things that I believed in with all of myself. It shaped a steadiness that held me in deepening the ways I exist in my body and within this deepened the ways I let my body keep me accountable to the truths of my heart.
I’m currently counting down the days to the opening of the BODIES Exhibition next month. And as I dig through the archives of my work from 2019 to present day, I am tapping into the energy of holding - and pondering - the understandings and layers of daily questioning my work through the lens of the heart.
take what lands, release the rest. with love.