Gwynn Raimondi, MA, LMFTA

Breaking open

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To live this life. To live it with wholeness and gratitude and trust. In the pain and the glory. In the mess and the grace. In the sacred and the desperation. This is the stuff of which real superheros are born. ~Jeanette LeBlanc

We are here to love hard and true. Here to give ourselves over to the rush and bliss of it all. Here to offer our patchwork hearts over and over again. Here to feel and fall and hurt and bleed. Here to say yes and to choose wholeness and to break anyway and to do it all again. ~Jeanette LeBlanc

Here you are.
Still standing. Fierce with the reality of love and loss. Wearing the truth of our hearts on your tattered sleeves. And yes, this one very nearly took you out. And yes, there were days when the darkness was heavy and the climb out of that rabbit hole required you to mine your depths for strength you didn’t even know you had.

But here you are.
Broken open by hope. Cracked wide by loss. Full of longing and grief and the burn of that phoenix fire. Warrior painted with ashes. Embers from the blaze still clinging to your newborn skin, leaving you forever marked with scars of rebirth.

And just look at you. Heart broken but still beating. Arms empty but still open. Face raised to the sky and giving thanks for the light, even when it hurts your eyes.

My god, you are beautiful. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

In preparing, I ran upon an old ACT UP handbook. It reminded me of the ways the “masters tools” are used break movements. Using power over to suppress us.

To shame us
To make us invisible
To mute our voices and our message
To kill our trust

These tools of the master are used to break one’s spirit, to disempower, to confuse, to divide, to immobilize. These tactics are another assault on our humanity.

They will not work.
We must love our people more than they hate us.
Movement work is about healing, building engaging and transforming. ~Desiree Lynn Adaway

Love. Relating. Having hope, even in and after devastating heartbreak.

I’ve been writing a lot over on IG the last couple weeks. It has been in part processing some grief around a specific relationship. It has been in part confirming my truth in how we need to relate to each other, in all our relationships.

The other day I watched this IGTV by Jeanette LeBlanc. I sobbed. And sobbed. And sobbed some more.

When my marriage was crumbling, and even shortly after it ended, I didn’t believe I would ever love again. I didn’t believe I could ever open myself to that kind of heartbreak again. I didn’t even know if I was capable of loving again, not in the ways that I had loved my ex-husband.

I kept my walls up. My armor was on secure and tight. Once I decided I wanted to have sex with another person, I had partnered sex, but there was no intimacy. I wouldn’t allow it. There was no sleeping over. There was no sharing of my life and there was no listening to them talk about their’s.

I wasn’t ready for and frankly, I didn’t want to have, a Relationship (with a Capital R). I didn’t want to “catch feelings.” I didn’t want to be vulnerable. I didn’t want to risk having my heart shattered again.

And I didn’t meet anyone who changed my mind.

Until I did.

It is ironic to look back at the very beginning of this relationship. We texted for a week and I wasn’t overly interested, though in text we seemed like a good match. I almost canceled our first date. But then I wanted to get out and we had plans, so I went.

And I met him.

As soon as I laid my eyes on him I knew, I knew, that he would break my heart. I knew, from that first night, he would break me open in ways I didn’t want to be broken open, in ways I wasn’t ready to be broken open.

But are we ever really ready to be broken open? I don’t think so.

I knew he and I were probably not going to last forever. I had (and still have) lost all faith in happily ever after and ’til death do us part. I didn’t want a white picket fence anymore (ironically, he actually has a white picket fence at his house). I didn’t want to be tied down with expectations and promises, mine or anyone else’s. So I knew, at some point we would come to an end, because all things come to an end at some point, and when that day came, my heart would shatter.

I wrote this the other day on IG ::

Sometimes we meet people who have profound impacts on our lives and our Self. Just by being them they create space for us to unearth some lost pieces of who we are. They show us what it is to be loved and adored. They teach us what freedom is. We may want these people to be in our lives forever but that may not be how it works out. They may only be with us for a short while & yet their impact is massive & our hearts shatter when they leave.

Hearts are meant to shatter I believe. And then to be put back together. We are meant to love & lose that love. Nothing is forever.

And sometimes relationships come back & start again. There are those in my life who I can literally go a decade without talking to & when we see each other it is as if no time has passed.

There are people who light us up regardless of time or distance.

We can’t “keep” these people though. People are not for keeping. People are for loving, for caring for, for experiencing life with. In whatever time allows us to have with them.

“All we have to see, is I don’t belong to you and you don’t belong to me.” ~George Michael

I am in a time of grief. It is true. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I left the door open for the future, and who knows what will happen in a week, a month, a year, a decade. And also, in these moments now I need to accept the ending of what was.

This hurts like hell. My chest literally aches. I cry at the drop of a hat.

I’m not miserable though. I wouldn’t change any of this, because knowing him allowed me the space to get so much of myself back, including my knowing that I am meant to love, and to love deep and hard, without apologies or fear. I am more me for having known him, even if it was for the briefest moment of time.

I will eventually move through this grief. It is true. While time alone doesn’t heal all (or any) wounds, it does help to dull the pain, and in addition I am processing the hell out of this year and our time together and what it has all meant to and for me.

Here’s a thing though, our love, our wide open hearts, our vulnerability, our authenticity, aren’t only meant for romantic love. They are meant for friends. For (chosen) family. For colleagues. For comrades. For our grocery clerk. For total strangers.

We need to bring love, our whole broken open selves, into all our spaces. Most especially into those spaces that are about bringing systemic change, about tearing down the status quo, about ending oppression and authoritarianism and marginalization.

The world needs our wide open hearts. The world needs us to be willing to risk having our hearts shattered, over and over. By lovers, friends, family, and strangers. With every shattering, the world needs us to choose to put our hearts back together and then to enter the world with them wide open once again.

This doesn’t mean walking through the world without boundaries (we all desperately need those). It doesn’t mean being a martyr or allowing people to cause us harm in the name of Love. It doesn’t mean we are passive.

We can be warriors with open hearts. I would argue the only way to be a warrior is with an open heart. With the strength and bravery and willingness to move through the fear and let people in and to hold space for others to let us in too.

In order to be in the world with our hearts open, and able to hold space for others with open hearts, we have to do our own work. Our own internal work. Of healing old wounds. Of processing old traumas. Of becoming self aware, self reflective. Of creating the pause before we react to situations out of anger or frustration or hurt. Of getting to the roots of the ways we have internalized oppressive and authoritarian behaviors and attitudes. Of getting to the roots of our own black holes of abandonment, neglect, not feeling worthy or deserving or wanted.

We need to do this work so we are not only able to allow ourselves to be broken open, but also so we can be in the spaces with others who are breaking open themselves. We need to do this so we don’t continue to carry and utilize the master’s tools. We need to do this so we can break harmful inter-generational patterns and cycles. We need to do this so we can create a world where love, not fear, is abundant and the motivation for all our actions.

We need to do this work for the sake of our most intimate relationships, for the sake of our least intimate relationships, for the sake of our Self, our humanity, our real purpose in life.

Which is to love. Each other. Our Self. Our world.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly(ish) newsletter on November 17, 2019. It has been edited and revised for publication here. To receive my most recent essays along with stream of conscious writing prompts, self-regulation exercises, and more, you can subscribe right here.

The importance of grief work in our trauma processing

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Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you. ~John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

I’ve been thinking a lot about grief.  How grief can be present at the same time as excitement and anticipation.  How in our culture we don’t have ways of grieving that are helpful.  How we try to put a time limit on our grief. How we, in my profession, often don’t include grief work in our trauma work with clients.

Here’s some things.  There are no time limits on our grief.  Ever.  And grief work is a vital part of our trauma work.

A vital part.  An essential part.  A necessary part.  A required part.

Those of us living with trauma in our bodies have had horrible things happen to us, done to us.  For those of us who experienced trauma in our childhood, those events literally shaped our brains and the ways we are able to see and be in the world.  These childhood experiences also impacted our physical health, specifically our nervous systems and autoimmune systems.  Those events have life long impacts.

It is hard for me to imagine who I would be if all the trauma I experienced as a child hadn’t occurred. If I have been raised in a household where the ACEs score was under 4.  If I had never been touched inappropriately.  I would be a totally different person, of that I am sure.  

It is heartbreaking to know all the damage that was done, and to know that we have survived (and some of us are learning to thrive) DESPITE all those experiences.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could simply be thriving?  If we didn’t have to learn how to do that.  

Yes. Yes it would.

What happened to us as children is not our fault.  Those events took so much away from us.  Some of which will never be recovered, and some of which may be.  Because of those childhood events, we have, as part of the trauma, experienced great loss.  Loss of innocence.  Loss of trust.  Loss of resilience.  Loss of “normal” neuropathways. Loss of an ability to relate and connect to others in a healthy way.  Loss of feeling comfortable in our own skin.   Loss of a sense of safeness. Sometimes even loss of hope.

We have experienced a lot of loss.

When we experience loss, grieving is a natural process.  Yet we don’t talk about the losses we experienced because of the trauma events in our lives.  We don’t acknowledge all those losses, let alone grieve them.  And this I believe is a disservice to ourselves, and our greater culture. 

How do we grieve these things we (perhaps) never had?  How do we grieve these losses that feel totally theoretical?

We slow down.  We acknowledge the losses.  The things we never had.  The things we wanted so desperately.  The things that will never be.  

We acknowledge the struggles.  The difficulties being in intimate relationships.  The challenges being present in our bodies.  The extra work we’ve had to do to try to break (generations old) cycles and patterns.

We allow the tears.  The anger.  The deep sadness.  

We allow ourselves to acknowledge and feel the unfairness and injustice of it all. 

We grieve.  In community. In ritual. In our own hearts and bodies.

I believe when grief is not a part of our trauma work, that we are missing a huge piece of the work.  Grieving what we have lost, what never was, and perhaps what never will be, is vital to our ability to move the trauma out of our bodies and systems and to learn to shift from simply surviving into a place of actually thriving.  

We need to acknowledge these losses and create space for our own grief process along with our trauma work.  This is part of building our own self-compassion.  This is truly part of our life long healing work.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on June 4, 2018. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

Relating with Complex Trauma & Resisting Group Think

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Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. ~Bell Hooks

I get so god damn lonely and sad and filled with regrets some days, but I’m learning to breathe deep through it and keep walking. I’m learning to make things nice for myself. Slowly building myself a home with things I like. Colors that calm me down, a plan to follow when things get dark, a few people I try to treat right. I don’t sometimes, but it’s my intent to do so. I’m learning.I’m learning to make things nice for myself. I’m learning to save myself.
I’m trying, as I always will. ~Charlotte Eriksson

Wildflower; pick up your pretty little head,
It will get easier, your dreams are not dead. ~Nikki Rowe

This year, and honestly for the past several years, I’ve been looking at the ways we all relate with each other. The ways I relate in my relationships. In my intimate, sexual relationships. In my intimate, non-sexual relationships. My relationships with my children. Family. The grocery store clerk. And of course with my Self.

I’ve been looking at the ways We relate to each other online too. The ways oppression and authoritarian behavior seeps out in social justice spaces. The ways we bully. the ways we disregard the humanity of the people on the other side of our screens. As well as the ways we support each other, the ways we come together in solidarity, the ways we show love and appreciation for others, their work in the world, and their general Being in the world.

I am fascinated, horrified, and inspired by the ways we all interact and relate with each other. There are moments of beauty and there are moments of pure ugliness. There are times when it seems we all rise above our own wounding and find ways to connect. There are times when our wounding and trauma gets the best of us and we cause more harm.

We are all human. We all cause harm to each other, intentionally and unintentionally. We all feel harmed at times, whether harm was actually inflicted or not.

This is what it is to relate with other people. It is messy and complex and painful and gorgeous and amazing.

For those of us who have complex trauma coursing through our being (and let me be clear, I really believe that is the majority of us humans), it can be even more tricky and complicated. We have all these personal wounds that are exacerbated by our culture. We don’t have role models for how to relate with people in loving and harmless ways.

And even the most self-aware of us have our blind spots. We all have places where our wounding seeps out, especially if we don’t process it, if we don’t have a place of support to do that extra work we need to do to unravel the harm caused us, so that we don’t continue to perpetuate harm. If we don’t have people who don’t have their own agenda and Opinions about what our lives should look like.

It can be all too easy to succumb to Group Think.

I do believe that we have a collective Consciousness as well as a collective Unconscious that we all draw upon. A deep collective knowing and memory. That is not what I’m talking about when I say Group Think.

Group Think can go against our own individual deeper knowing. It often stems from each individual’s own wounding and the tools we each developed to protect ourselves from that wounding. This can show up when a group of friends gives us advice that goes against what we know to be true for ourselves. Or when a group of people online, who don’t have all the information, decide to make judgments and attacks on an individual.

Group Think is relatively mindless, generally each person feels a sense of righteousness, and causes harm.

Resisting Group Think can sometimes be incredibly challenging. When everyone around you is telling you that your own perspective, your own experience, your own inner knowing, is all wrong we can start to doubt ourselves. We can start to question ourselves.

This isn’t wholly bad. Part of being self-aware and conscious is to question ourselves, to look deep and see if the comments, critiques, or advice of others do resonate with us, if there is some (or a lot of) truth in what they are saying. It is good to be reflective, to sit in the pause, to be curious.

And.

It is not good when others influence us in a way that causes us to go against what we know to be true of and for ourselves. It is not good when we start to think that what we experienced didn’t happen or didn’t matter, that our perspective is invalid, or that what we actually want isn’t what we (should) want.

We all lose our way in Group Think sometimes. We all are influenced by others in ways that cause us to forget who we are and want to be for a moment. This is part of being human and having a basic need for a sense of belonging.

And.

We can all do the work we need to break these cycles and patterns of losing our Self on the one side and of projecting our own wounding onto others on the other.

It is a practice to break these cycles. We’ll each fuck up. Hopefully when we do, we can make amends and repair. Which is a whole other practice in and of itself.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on November 10, 2019. It has been edited and revised for publication here. To receive my most recent essays you can subscribe here.

Adult Relationships & Priorities

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Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us. ~David Richo

Most people think of love as a feeling but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present. ~David Richo, How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

The older we get, the more difficult it is to find other people who can give us the love our parents denied us. But the body’s expectations do not slacken with age—quite the contrary! They are merely direct at others … The only way out of this dilemma is to become aware of these mechanisms and to identify the reality of our own childhood by counteracting the processes of repression and denial. In this way we can create in our own selves a person who can satisfy at least some of the needs that have been waiting for fulfillment since birth, if not earlier. Then we can give ourselves the attention, the respect, the understanding for our emotions, to sorely needed protection, and the unconditional love that our parents withheld from us. ~Alice Miller, The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting

Never expect.
Never assume.
Never demand.
Just let it be.
If it’s meant to be,
It will happen.
~unknown

In the northern hemisphere more than mid way through fall. Fall is my favorite time of year for many reasons, and one of them is it is my birthday season. This is both my season of New Year and the kick off to the traditional Holiday Season.

This time of year has me thinking about a lot of things. Reflecting back on my past year, and years. Considering what has been working for me and what hasn’t. Connecting to the person I want to be and seeing the work I need to do to grow into her.

I’ve been exploring my wants and examining if they are realistic and mature, or if they are problematic and will ultimately cause me harm.

I’ve been tending to what I call my black holes, my attachment wounds. Finding ways to fill them myself, ways to find connection within to my own love, compassion, and acceptance.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about adult relationships, both platonic and otherwise. I’ve been thinking about the ways I’ve looked towards others to fill these black holes of mine. I’ve been thinking about the way we are socialized about romantic relationships and how we are supposed to be the other person’s number one priority and they are supposed to be ours. I’ve been thinking about Hallmark and happily every after and til death do us part and fairy tales in general.

I’ve been thinking about what it means to love someone unconditionally. And how that unconditional love doesn’t automatically give them a permanent place in our lives. I’ve been thinking about unbreakable love and how some people will always have a home in hearts whether or not they have a home in lives.

I’ve been thinking about loving someone and not expecting anything in return. What it means to be in a relationship without expectations or demands or assumptions and still getting (reasonable) needs and wants met.

And just what is a reasonable want or need?

Alice Miller has written that we can never expect unconditional love from anyone who isn’t our parents. That if we didn’t receive that unconditional love from our parents, that we need to do the work of unconditionally loving ourselves. That it is no one else’s job to fill those needs within us. And also, these needs don’t just go away.

We really do need to do the work of filling our own black holes.

We need to acknowledge them first. My guess is most of us have attachment wounds from childhood. Whether we experienced abuse or neglect or if our parents simply didn’t see us or love us in the ways we needed when we were young.

These wounds affect the ways we interact with others, our friends, our lovers, our children. Unchecked these wounds create expectations within us of how others should treat us, how they should know things about us without us sharing them, how they should make us and our relationship with them A, or The, priority. Always.

When we have these expectations, we will inevitably be disappointed. Because we can’t ever be another person’s number one, primary priority 24/7. And I’ve come to believe, not only we can’t be, we absolutely shouldn’t be.

I follow a lot of poetry and relationships accounts on my secret/personal IG profile. I see post after post about how if a person doesn’t make you their number one in all cases every moment of every day then they aren’t worth your time. How if we aren’t showered with attention and promises to stick around no matter what then they aren’t worthy of us. How we need to be treated like queens and kings, put on pedestals, worshiped like gods and goddesses.

These are all such unrealistic expectations. Especially as we grow older and have more and more responsibilities. Kids. Work. Aging parents. Our own mental health.

It is true that we should be respected within all our relationships, both platonic and sexual relationships. We should be appreciated. We should never be abused, physically, psychologically, or emotionally (and we should never do any of that to another). Effort within each relationship should relatively equal, or at least over time effort is equal-ish.

And, we aren’t goddesses or gods or kings or queens. We are each beautifully flawed human beings who are seeking connection. We each have our own wounding that we try to navigate the world with. We each have our own trauma lens that we view our relationships and ourselves through.

We can never expect or rely on another person to make us feel whole. It is not anyone else’s job to help us process our traumas or heal our wounds. This is our job.

And we don’t have to do it alone. Having good friends who can hold space for us helps. Having lovers or romantic partners who are doing their own work and can be supportive while we do our own. But ultimately the work is our own to do with the help of a therapist, coach, priest/pastor, or other person who is actually knowledgeable about how to guide a person through this work.

We can’t be the center of another person’s world. I’ve come to the place of deciding I actually want to be my friends’ and lover’s third priority. First priority is themselves. Second priority is any children they have, and in the case of my platonic relationships, their partner(s)/spouse comes in here too. I want to be a relatively solid third, with the understanding that sometimes in life I can’t even be that – parents age, other friends need attention because they are in crisis, work/careers need to be prioritized for a while, life happens.

I can however expect that I am my number one priority. My mental and physical health. My happiness. My safeness. My own trauma processing and healing of my own attachment wounds.

This doesn’t mean that I am suddenly all cool and collected when it comes to my relationships. It means I am a work in progress. It means I am doing my work to be more aware of the ways my black holes show up in my relationships. It means that when a friend or lover disappoints me or doesn’t meet an expectation I have, that I slow down, allow space for the sadness, and dig deeper into what that disappointment is really triggering in me.

Being an adult in relationships can be challenging. It means being brutally honest with ourselves. It means being mindful of boundaries, our own and those of others. It means checking in with how the behaviors of others are affecting us and deciding moment to moment if we are triggered if it’s because of our own stuff or because the other person is being abusive in some way.

To be clear, abuse isn’t okay. Ever.

And not being another person’s number one priority is part of being in adult relationships. It is an opportunity for us to look within and start making ourselves our own first priority.

/../

This essay was originally published in my newsletter on September 29, 2019. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent writing you can subscribe here.

I want (a declaration)

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On February 1, 2019 I wrote the following :: “I am getting to discover what I actually want. Who I am. The kind of person I want to be with. Not forever and happily every after. Because that illusion is shattered. Rather for now and we’ll see where the days take us. I want to be with someone who feels as cozy as the idea of home and who pushes me outside my comfort zones in ways I never imagined. And I want to be the same for them. I want someone who has a whole life and identity outside of me and us. And I want the same for me. I’m learning not to compromise these things.“

Then, on February 14, 2019 I wrote: “Want :: feel like home; feel safe, at ease; be silly; honest; easy; sweet; gentle; tender; trust; amazing sex; physical; cuddly; funny.”

On February 15, 2019 I met a truly amazing person and could check all these things off.

I believe there is power in stating what we want in our lives. Not in a “manifesting” kind of way, more in a getting really clear on what we want in our lives so that we can learn to not settle or compromise when we don’t need to.

I created a revised list of wants in August and have been editing it over the last couple months. I have been holding this list relatively close. When I started I was going to limit my number of wants to 48 (as I’m turning 48 today) and then realized putting limits on our wants is kinda going against the point. So these wants flowed. Some are about the type of intimate partner/relationship I want. Some are about the friends I want; how I want to be with my kids; how I want to be in life in general. All of them are morphing and shifting and changing. And some of my wants are likely missing because I haven’t been able to fully articulate them yet.

And.

For the days leading up to my birthday, each day I posted a different image that lists some of these wants on my secret IG account. I did this for me, to help me get clear with myself. To explore the ideas of adult relationships and wanting and wounding and getting curious about how some of my wants may not necessarily be so great for me, and also some are.

To be clear I don’t want all these things from a single person. Rather, these are things I want in my life, somewhere, with someone. And sometimes that someone is me, myself and not someone outside of me.

Below is the list of wants, in its entirety. It is a love poem of sorts, to myself, to the world, and to you.

In rebellious solidarity and wanting, always. xoox grr

I want (a declaration)

I want passion. Red. Hot. Smoldering and bursts of flames.
I want deep belly laughs that won’t stop.
I want to write. About processing trauma. Poetry. A memoir. A love story.
I want touching. I want not being able to keep our hands off each other. I want personal space respected.
I want to paint. I want to freely express my Self. I want to move it out. I want to let it in.

I want snow magic and summer heat.
I want saltwater and salt air, rocks and sand.
I want narrow trails through dense, lush forests.
I want open, honest, consistent communication.

I want political compatibility with just enough difference to spark debates so deep we get turned on and can’t help but want to kiss each other ravenously.
I want out of body experiences. I want deep dives into our souls.
I want support. I want to be told to never doubt myself, to never sell myself short.

I want safeness and home and being pushed outside my comfort zone.
I want mystery and curiosity. I want well known and semi-predictable.
I want rainy days curled up in bed and sunny days stretching on the water.
I want the sweetness of protectiveness knowing they know I can take care of myself.

I want games of pool and smooth bourbon and pale ales. I want witty conversation and knowing looks.
I want to light up at the sight them as they light up at the sight of me.
I want good morning texts when I can’t have good morning kisses.
I want hand holding, our hands fitting each other’s perfectly.
I want to feel valued, understood, appreciated. I want to value, understand, and appreciate.

I want texting just because, without concern about bothering or boring each other.
I want forehead kisses and ass slaps.
I want rolling over in his sleep and wrapping his arms around me.
I want dinners in and dinners out. I want movies in bed and movies at the cinema. I want drinks at home and at the bar.

I want dog walks at twilight.
I want safeness and ease.
I want honesty and emotional intelligence.

I want sweet and tender, gentle and kind. I want softness as strength.
I want to trust and be trusted.
I want flowers for special occasions and just because.
I want to get lost in his eyes and while I’m there knowing how loved and wanted I am.

I want to feel accepted, in all my awkwardness and dorkiness.
I want to not always be in control or making all the decisions. I want equal effort.
I want to break cycles and patterns. I want to shift . I want to fill the black holes within myself so they can no longer devour me or anyone else.
I want snuggles and secret sharing and telling dumb jokes.
I want childish giggles and smirks and the thoughts that go with them.

I want to be alone together, each doing our own thing in the comfort of each other’s presence.
I want singing together in the car to my favorite bands.
I want road trips and adventures. I want quiet Sundays together at home.
I want to feel so overwhelmingly happy I have to sob.

I want dancing late at clubs with loud music and dancing slow in our living rooms in the middle of the day to no music at all.
I want sparks. I want electricity. I want fireworks.
I want quiet. I want peace. I want breath.

I want the Marvelverse and vampires and campy thrillers.
I want butterflies and giddy nervousness. I want ease and relaxation.
I want to tingle at the sound of his voice.
I want lots of amazing sex.

I want sunsets and moonrise and star gazing and warm fires under dark skies.
I want sunrise and burning fog and cool crisp air and seeing our breath.
I want freedom and space and closeness and intensity.
I want creativity and rawness.
I want growth. Mine. Theirs. Ours.

I want to be wholly seen and still be adored. I want to feel wanted, every part of me.
I want open, honest communication. I want shadows shared. I want to bask in each other’s sun.
I want to live life in the fullest ways I can. I want rest and naps and regeneration.
I want gentle and rough. I want smooth and scratchy.

I want unbreakable love and appropriate boundaries. I want clarity. I want emotional maturity.
I want to be held together when I feel I’m falling apart. I want to hold them together when they feel like they are falling apart.
I want separate lives. I want our lives to blend and grow together.

I want expansion and contraction. I want beyond the edge of the universe and cuddled close together on the couch.
I want playfulness and fun. I want seriousness and dedication.
I want to go out and stay in. I want to be social and have solitude.
I want connection beyond this realm, indescribable, outside of language and the deep knowing that goes with this.

I want to not take life so seriously, not take myself so seriously.
I want pleasure in every sense. I want financial stability and security.
I want the hard times that bring us together and help us grow.
I want open communication & expressing our needs and wants, without demands or expectations.
I want presence. I want being here now. I want self-awareness and doing our own work. I want repair when harm is unintentionally done. I want loving each other and our selves enough to encourage growth, change, and healing.

I want long term with no contracts or promises. Decades filled with single days waking up and choosing each other and ourselves over and over.
I want to feel more alive than I ever have before.
I want what I had. I want what I have. And I want more.

*I reserve the right to edit and revise as I want.*

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