Duckfish works really hard. Like really really hard. He spends time away in different cities at least every second week and when he’s at home he usually doesn’t get home until 8pm or later.  He’s super busy and super important.

Actually, I don’t care about understand what he does. It’s something to do with saving hostages at the French Embassy. I think he’s a MI5 agent which means he can’t talk about it (he actually works in IT but a spy sounds so much sexier).

In the last three weeks I’ve barely seen him and when he’s home he’s got his head shoved in his laptop. And we all know how men can only do one thing at a time don’t we?

So on Wednesday night we talked about it. I told him I was feeling neglected. He came to the conclusion that his job was incompatible with a relationship (and the reason his marriage failed).

A stalemate? A death knell for our relationship? Should I get out now to prevent future heartache?

Not at all.

There are two things going on here

First, men believe that when women have a problem, it’s their job to solve it. They delight in fixing up our issues and finding solutions to our challenges. They love it. And when they can’t find a solution they don’t know what to do.

I reminded Duckfish that’s not how it works for women. Most of the time we just want to be heard and understood. All I wanted was for him to be aware of how I was feeling so he could appreciate that I get a bit grumpy when I’m left on my own for too long. I told him I didn’t need him to change jobs or really do anything except understand that sometimes I found it difficult.

Second, I needed to speak out loud the crazy thoughts in my head. Most of my statements started with “I know this is irrational but …”  I exposed my innermost thoughts to him, my secrets and my fears. Saying them out loud made them lose their grip and their sting.

And here’s what happened

Yesterday was Australia Day and a Public Holiday. Duckfish and I spent the day together sleeping in, having breakfast, making love, watching the pathetic events on the harbour, napping, eating dinner on the terrace and watching movies. It was glorious.

On one level Duckfish was responding to my request for attention by spending the day with me, but on a deeper level he wanted to be with me because I had trusted him with my doubts and fears. The very act of exposing my vulnerability made me attractive and lovable. Confessing what might be seen as weakness reminded him why he loves me so much. Inhabiting my emotional feminine essence sparked his male desire for me.

In my old life, with my old partner, I could never be so open or vulnerable. The word “needy” still makes me feel nauseous.

I have needs but I’m not needy. Sometimes those needs don’t get met and I have a right to ask for them. I also know that it won’t always be perfect and we’ll need to compromise.

Speaking my truth set in motion a chain of events I didn’t expect. Expressing my resentment and disappointment meant I could let it go.

What could saying what you need make happen for you?

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I am completely in love with my boyfriend.

My heart flutters when I think of him, my breath comes faster when he touches me and when he holds me all the tension in my body drains away. He’s all the things I longed for in a man.

Our love is pure, overwhelming and endless.

Except when it isn’t.

I don’t feel the rush of love and passion all the time. Sometimes the world (including him) pisses me off. I just want to be left alone. Sometimes I can’t tap into the good feeling of love.

But I still love him. I might not feel it, but I know it’s there. Constant, steadfast and waiting to flood me with pleasure and joy sometime in the future. I have faith in our love.

The self-love movement tells us when we love ourselves we feel good about ourselves. We like what we see in the mirror, we stop beating ourselves up and we take great care of ourselves all the time.

I’m here to tell you that’s a lie.

You won’t feel good about yourself all the time. Some days you will feel fat. Some days you will say and do things you aren’t proud of. Some days you will wallow on the couch eating chocolate biscuits and watching The Bachelor. Some days you will feel like a bitch that no-one would possibly want to be around.

Does that mean you don’t love yourself any more? Is self-love dependent on how you feel?

Loving yourself means believing in yourself. It’s knowing in your heart you are doing the best you can. It’s accepting that you have good days and bad days. It’s a matter of faith.

Respect…Acceptance…Integrity…

Assertiveness…Purpose…Consciousness…

Much better words for self-love.

You can demonstrate all those values even if you’re not feeling good about yourself. You can watch TV in your pyjamas with integrity. You can feel fat with acceptance. You can be conscious that you are irritating yourself.

Loving yourself doesn’t always mean that you’ll feel good about yourself. Some days the love will feel like it’s dwindled or disappeared.

But you know it hasn’t. It’s waiting to come back and flood you with joy, peace and pleasure. Have faith. True love can survive anything if you want it and you make it your highest purpose.

Love is an intention, a commitment and a leap of faith. 

Have the courage to believe in it even when you can’t feel it.

Notice when it feels like it’s gone and enjoy every moment when it returns.

Because it will. Have faith.

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I have a secret surprise. I’m so excited and I’m not very good at keeping secrets.

It’s so delicious I’m bursting.

My most favourite famous person ever has agreed for me to interview her for my humble little blog. I’m almost peeing my pants.

And I’m petrified.

I have no idea what to ask her.

So I came up with a plan.

Everyone who’s on my Insiders’ List will get the details of who she is this weekend  and the opportunity to pose a question to her. I’ll take the most interesting questions, weave them around my own muddied thoughts and come up with a brilliant interview (well that’s the plan).

I don’t want to do this in the comments because it will spoil the surprise but I do want to know the things you’ve always wanted to ask her.

Make sure you’re on the Insiders’ List so you don’t miss out. Did I mention I’m excited!

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I believe love changes everything.

I believe intimacy is the doorway to heaven.

I believe loving others transform our lives.

I believe looking outward is better than looking inward.

I believe giving brings the most joy.

I believe soul-mates will find each other.

I believe life is full of magic and miracles.

::

I believe the world needs more love, more joy, more peace, more compassion and more understanding.

I believe the world needs more feminine energy, more sex, more orgasms and more touch.

I believe the world needs more ideas and more excitement.

I believe the world needs more truth.

::

I know you are searching.

I know you already have everything you need and can find your own way.

I know you need to be seen, heard and known.

I know you believe in the good, have a pure heart and long for deeper connections.

I know you have been shut down, feel out-of-place and feel like you don’t belong in a masculine world.

::

I don’t believe in marriage, in guarantees or in forever.

I don’t believe we’re meant to struggle on our own.

I don’t believe emotions should always be controlled.

I don’t believe we need fixing.

I don’t believe we always need to feel good.

::

I know one word can make a difference.

I know life changes in an instant.

I know great risk brings great reward.

I know vulnerable doesn’t mean weak.

I know you are worth it.

And so am I.

::

What do you believe?

{based on an exercise by Tara Gentile}

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“Why would anyone listen to you?” said the voice in my head.

“There are so many people talking about the same shit who know much more than you,” it continued. “Honestly, you’re nothing special. You’ll probably fuck it up just like all the other things you’ve fucked up.”

I‘m struggling at the moment. I’m struggling writing a training course intended to inspire, motivate and enlighten the beautiful women who have put their trust in me.

I’m afraid.

I’m afraid I’m not good enough.

I’m afraid I don’t have anything to say.

I’m afraid I’ll make a mistake.

That voice in my head never goes away. It taunts me and torments me. Sometimes I wonder if I’m crazy …

Surely all the work I’ve done on myself should at least quieten that voice?

It hasn’t made any difference.

What if that voice was there for a reason? What if it didn’t mean what it said and meant something else?

Dreamy Dr Dike believes that the little voice inside your head is not your enemy. In fact, it’s normal and essential to have such a voice.

It’s there to mark the boundary of your comfort zone. Once you step outside of what’s safe and familiar that voice is there for your protection. It’s telling you that you’re about to venture into a potentially dangerous place and is warning you to take care so that you come back in one piece.

The voice in your head is not trying to stop you ~ it’s just trying to remind you to take care. It’s loudest when you leave behind what you have and set out towards what you dream of.

And the language it uses is brutal and harsh because we have tried to suppress it for so long. We call our inner voice a bitch, a monster, a monkey, a demon, or a dragon. We silence it. We fight it. We shut it down.

No wonder it needs to shout at us.

That voice turns up because you’re following your dreams. It’s a sign that you’re taking a risk.

Welcome it.

Embrace it as a dear friend.

Thank you for looking out for me. I know you have my best interests at heart. I’m heading into a scary place and you’ve got a right to let me know the very worst that could happen. So I’m listening. I’m paying attention.

But you know what? I’m going there all the same … (so there’s no point in shouting). Thank you my friend. You’re doing a great job!

Somehow that feels so much better.

Now I’d better get back to it!

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When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of Creation is completed inside us, the doors of our souls fly open and love steps forth to heal everything in sight. ~Michael Bridge

♥

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within. ~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

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Appreciation and self-love are the most important tools that you could ever nurture. Appreciation of others, and the appreciation of yourself is the closest vibrational match to your Source Energy of anything that we’ve ever witnessed anywhere in the Universe. ~Abraham

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All things splendid have been achieved by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance. ~Bruce Barton

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Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid. ~Albert Einstein

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Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. Whatever you are feeling, love yourself for feeling it. ~Thaddeus Golas

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Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything. You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets.  ~Clark Moustakas

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Be yourself. If you water yourself down to please people or to fit in or to not offend anyone, you lose the power, the passion, the freedom and the joy of being uniquely you. It’s much easier to love yourself when you are being yourself. ~Dan Coppersmith

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Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born. ~Dale E. Turner

♥

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If you liked this, please share a quote on Facebook, Twitter or Google+

I submitted this article to a magazine and then at the last minute I changed my mind about publishing it because the final edited version they wanted to run didn’t feel like my voice. Here it is in its original form.

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There was nothing that could have prepared me for what my husband did. I knew him for nineteen years, we were married for almost sixteen and yet I never had a clue he was so troubled.

Our separation was amiable. There was no fighting or finger pointing just a realization that we no longer belonged together. In March 2010 I moved out of the three bedroom home we shared into a tiny one bedroom flat just a couple of streets away. He knew I was seeing other people and he seemed perfectly fine with it. I was enjoying being a single girl again and internet dating was exciting and fun. Even though I was forty-five years old, I felt like a teenager again.

Before I met Duckfish, I went out with twelve other men. They were all charming gentlemen and made me feel attractive for the first time in years. I wasn’t looking for another relationship but once I met Duckfish I didn’t want to see anyone else. Within days of our first meeting we were a couple.

On a sunny Thursday morning in April 2010, just six weeks after I’d moved out and just ten days after meeting Duckfish, the unthinkable happened. My husband’s work called me concerned that they hadn’t seen him for three days. When I walked into the house we used to share that morning, I found him dead by his own hand. In one instant my entire world changed.

All of a sudden I wasn’t an independent career woman with a charmed life; I was a suicide widow. Duckfish hadn’t signed up for any of this and I thought that he should leave me to my grief, guilt and blame. I couldn’t imagine why any man would want to be with me in this state. I was at my worst and Duckfish was under no obligation to stay.

But he wouldn’t leave my side. He was there when the ambulance officers wheeled my husband’s body out into the ambulance. He was there when the police questioned me. He was there when I forgot to eat and I couldn’t sleep. And he held me when I sobbed and didn’t let me go until I could breathe again.

My friends were worried for me. They couldn’t understand how someone who was a stranger less than two weeks ago could stay in such an impossible situation. They were afraid that it would be too much for him and he would leave, breaking my heart even more. I knew they were right and I tried to push him away. I wanted to shut him out and cope the same way I had for sixteen years – on my own. But he wouldn’t let me.

“I would do all I could to help anyone this happened to,” he said. “You are my girlfriend; of course I’m going to stay with you.”

The difficult part was that I was happier with Duckfish than I had ever been in my whole life. It seemed that my life was full of intense pleasure and intense pain. I felt guilty for feeling joy when the worst thing imaginable had just happened.

Sometimes I think the love Duckfish and I have for each other was shaped by the experience we shared. My perspective was permanently changed the day I realised how quickly life can end. No longer did I worry about the trivia of day to day living but focused on making each moment count. There’s no time to wait for the ‘right’ time when you don’t know how much time you have left. Being honest about my true feelings and risking everything for love gave my life meaning. I wasn’t still in shock when I told Duckfish I loved him for the first time the same day my husband died, I was affirming life and love in the face of death.

Most of the time I feel like we were destined to be together and the circumstances were irrelevant. It is like we were searching for each other our whole lives and once we connected nothing could tear us apart. It is the most open and exposed I have ever been with a man. Once my heart was cracked open, it gave me a greater capacity to love.

Finding our way through the maze of a new relationship was made easier by that terrible day. There was no room for games, agendas or for following the rules set out by the experts who advise the step-by-step process to ensure relationship bliss. From that day on we both agreed that we wouldn’t plan for a future together, we would just live in the present moment. Knowing that right now is the only time we have means each kiss is treasured as the last, each word is burned into our memory and intimacy is precious and sacred. Nothing is taken for granted in a world that could end in an instant.

There is only one thing to hold on to when traumatic events blindside you – loving relationships are all that matter. Instead of carrying the guilt and the pain that result from the choices someone else makes, use that energy to fully embrace the life you have. Kiss your children tenderly, love your partner passionately and tell your parents what they mean to you. Deep authentic connection with our loved ones won’t stop the pain that will come when we eventually lose them (because all relationships have to end through death or through growth), but right here and now it will make being with them more wonderful and our memories more vivid.

Eight days ago Duckfish and I celebrated twenty-one months of being a couple and seventeen months of living together. In two days time I will celebrate surviving the twenty-one months since the suicide of my husband. I’m not celebrating his death, which I still mourn deeply, but I’m celebrating the fact that love can survive even in the face of terrible loss. My heart was shattered by death and has now been healed by being cradled in the hands of a man who taught me that pleasure and pain are all part of living this unpredictable thing called life.

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Getting dressed is the first step. A pair of stretchy legging with enough substance to hold me in. A sports bra that still fits and a singlet with built-in support. I have boobs now that need restraining.

I put on my socks and sneakers. I look in the mirror and ignore the judging voice that says I look so much bigger than the last time I wore these clothes.

The gym is small and quiet. A resort gym where only the most dedicated fitness enthusiasts leave their holiday pleasure to get in a workout. There’s a woman on the elliptical reading a book and a man lifting free weights.

I put on my gloves and survey the available equipment. The multi-exercise weight machine seems a good place to start. Lat pull-downs were always my favourite exercise so I start there. The weights only have numbers so I take a guess at what I can handle. My guess is correct.

My body responds quickly to the familiarity of the exercise. I tighten my core and grip the metal bar that is like every other bar in every other gym. My breath synchronises with the effort and the release.

Cable rows, bench press with just the bar and pec dec are all completed with the burn setting in on the last three reps. As I pause between sets I try not to think the thoughts that used to accompany every trip to the gym. I avoid the mirrors on the wall. It doesn’t matter how I look — it’s no longer the point.

I finish on the treadmill. A power walk on an incline seems a good place to start. I have no idea how far or how long I will stay on this machine. My breath gets faster and sweat breaks out on my face. I turn up the music and enjoy moving with the beat.

Here I think about what I’ve eaten that day. My mind starts to tell me the adjustments I should be making to ensure this workout ‘matters’. I push the thoughts away. This is not about losing weight. This is not about looking better. I’m here to improve my strength and endurance so I can enjoy kayaking, beach swimming and hiking with less effort and for longer. After seeing my dad struggle to walk in his seventies I’m determined to be physically fit for as long as I can. It’s time to invest in my body so it works for years to come.

The number of calories flashes at me from the console. There is no way this machine knows what I’m burning. But I no longer care. I walk for twenty-five minutes without tiring. I’m surprised that I’m still quite aerobically fit.

As I leave the gym and head back to my room I wonder — not if I can keep this up — but how I can keep from obsessing about exercise all over again. Going back to the gym feels like the first hit of nicotine after not smoking for months. It’s a drug that whispers that more is better, that working harder will transform my body, that cutting back on my food will give me the body I once had.

But the body I once had belongs to the life I once had. A life I never want to live again. I am a different person now. I can go to the gym just to get fit and strong and resist the urge to overdo it.

I know I can.

But it’s still there calling to me at the back of my mind …

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“I want to live an authentic life and honesty is one of my most important values,” she said, “but if I were to tell the truth I would hurt people and destroy lives.”

I wish our lives were simple. That there was black and white and nothing in between. But the reality is that our lives happen in the grayscale in between. When I got the email above it reminded me of my own experience.

Back at the beginning of 2010 I found myself emotionally entangled in a physical relationship with a man who wasn’t my husband. I was on a journey of spiritual transformation, I had declared my life’s purpose to be authenticity and here I was telling lies to everyone. I lied to my husband, I lied to my friends, and I lied in my blog posts. Even now I can’t reveal what really happened because it’s not just my story to tell. If I told the truth I would hurt people and destroy lives.

I even lied to Duckfish for a long time. I told him that this man and I hadn’t been intimate. It took me months to confess that I was an unfaithful wife. I worried that Duckfish would think I was morally corrupt and incapable of honouring my promises.

Absolute truthfulness is an ideal that can never be reached. I can’t tell my mother that her religious belief in a God that judges some worthy for heaven and others damned to hell is the polar opposite of what I believe. I can’t tell you the name of someone who claims she’s never had an eating disorder who I know has been treated for exercise bulimia. I can’t tell my friend that she let me down when I needed her the most. I can’t tell my father that I believe his illness is a result of not forgiving his own father.

So what keeps me from telling the truth? Why is authenticity dependent on the circumstances?

It’s because there is one principle even greater than honesty and truth ~ it is the principle of love.

Because ‘love’ is such an abstract concept with many interpretations it is easier to put it into a Prime Directive (like in Star Trek). The Prime Directive for an enlightened woman living in her feminine energy (a love ninja) is ~

First, do no harm.

If telling the truth would hurt someone and bring conflict into your life and theirs then keep your secrets. We all have secrets we keep between ourselves and the Universe in order to keep others free from harm.

The uneasiness comes when we find ourselves drowning in guilt from the mistakes we have made and the lies we have told to keep our secrets safe.

There is only one way to be free of this pain.

Tell this one truth and live in this authenticity ~

I’m an imperfect person who has made mistakes. I forgive myself for my shortcomings. The past can’t be changed and at the time I did my best. I’m letting this story go and living from a place of love and acceptance from now on. 

First, do no harm.

Don’t harm yourself by living in guilt.

Don’t harm others by hurting them.

Love is the Prime Directive and takes precedence over all other considerations.

Be love.