Love with No Road Map

I've always been a strong believer in love. In fact, I feel certain the most powerful energy is made up of the stuff of love, rippling through galaxies and stars, reaching us in waves and fleeting moments in this flickering lifetime.

The thing is, I've never thought of myself as good at it. I've had so many experiences in this life — and before — that are traumatic or loaded with betrayal, lies, and that murky lens of what seems like love.

How do we know what love is if we've never been handed a road map for the journey? Instead we've only been handed pain, heartbreak, toxic harm, tears, screams, and fear.

I'll admit, I've felt what that wild, feral, and magical love is. What to do with it is another thing entirely. How to respond to it, how to navigate your own lens scrubbed raw with trauma and abuse. My long-held question is whether that is healthy love — you know, the one that sends a wave of sensation through your body, like a heightened charge of electricity moving through the watery makeup of all that you are. What does that message actually convey? It wasn't until my early forties that I came to the conclusion that that sensation could truly be a red flag. That maybe it was my nervous system screaming at me not to repeat the same old pattern. This realization left me lost. Suddenly faced with all my previous choices and how brutal they turned out to be.

When my first child was born, I learned exactly how brutal this can become. How that fleeting, lighthearted feeling — the one that makes you feel excitedly seen — was very toxic indeed. I was left lying on the uneven wood floor, face swollen with tears, barely seeing clearly, nauseous in the sharp reality of my very untrustworthy inner navigator when it comes to love and relationships. All at once I understood that what I had been listening to was taking me to very dangerous places, and now I had this sweet little baby with me. More than any other time, swimming in my own pain, I simultaneously knew that was the last time I'd walk down that road.

In the many years that have passed since, I've spent time observing myself — from past relationships to current ripples as I continued on the journey. It only became clearer that I didn't trust myself when it came to love, to choosing someone safe. Turns out I had no idea what safe actually was, so how could I ever recognize it?

I finally recognized safety when I began my training in craniosacral therapy. I was working with a horse named Joe. Under the guidance of a well-trained horse whisperer, I stepped toward Joe with curiosity. I had no idea what to expect from my session with him, but with guidance alongside me I was confident enough to step right into his space. He did seemingly nothing — he remained still, standing on all four legs, relaxed and not looking at me. I began to sob loudly. It just burst out of me and I was shocked, but I had no choice but to let it move through me. My guide was observing deeply and knew well before I did what was happening. You see, Joe was the lead horse. He was the most regulated animal I've ever stood near. He knew how to conserve his energy for real threat. He knew he was safe, and it was his job to hold that safety for the rest of the herd — which apparently included me. By standing in his presence, that safety wrapped itself fully around me, and in it, I let go. With support, I realized I was experiencing safety for the first time in my life — hence the big somatic release from within. Joe is no longer with us, but he is forever threaded through my soul for teaching me something so essential.

Even still, translating Joe's teachings into my human relationships remained so challenging. People are so much more complex and disturbing, wounded and lost.

I've had such rare flickers of what maybe this experience of love should feel like. So rare, so precious — I can only think of one. The only reason I feel I could be right about it is because of what others observed in me afterward; otherwise I might have missed it altogether. So subtle, so gentle, like a breeze — and completely unexpected. It was just a conversation. A supportive one, I suppose, in that type of setting anyway. I was sharing a traumatic experience I'd had not too long before, and I remember being surprised by how truly listened-to I felt. The response surprised me as well. I've been so used to defensiveness, an inability to hold space, emotional immaturity — and other things. I felt a quick shift into steadfast understanding, with zero turbulence. Just stillness. Something in me changed, but I couldn't quite name it, and it was time to carry on with my day. When I returned to my friends, they all smiled at me. I looked up confused, and they asked where I'd gone for my massage or treatment. Still confused, I said I'd done no such thing — just a conversation. One of them smiled bigger and said, "You feel so different. Light and alive." I unloaded groceries onto the counter, completely puzzled.

It wasn't until later that I realized I'd had a brief experience with something that gave me life force instead of the usual drain. I'm still puzzled by how simple it seemed and yet how powerful it was for my entire being. My light came back. I sat in that gratitude and continue to. I learned a lot from that. Still learning, still making so many mistakes, for my highest good — and for my kids too, which hits harder. But nevertheless, these are my hardest lessons. How to love. How to receive it. How to know what's safe and what isn't.

It teaches me the most about my own self-worth, about how I see my own value. Nobody is perfect, people make mistakes all the time — but harm is not a mistake. Harm takes so much longer to heal, if ever.

I'll be the first to admit all the dysfunction that was handed to me, that I've grappled with my entire life. I've made so many messes of myself, and in doing so I've truly harmed myself. Maybe that's not my fault, but at some point you've got to make a choice to love yourself — or you may never leave that same old road. The one where, as a beloved therapist once told me, you'll fall into that same pothole and bleed every time you choose it. He was right, and I've never forgotten that.

Younger Diana invited the harm and harmed the love trying to reach her. That was such a painful thing to become aware of. The few people who tried to love me — I was a complete asshole to. I hope for their forgiveness someday, somewhere in the threads of this place. Forgiving myself is the bigger hope though, because that too is loving myself — even with some of my more difficult flaws. Accepting myself has been the biggest hill to climb. I'm getting there, learning to love myself more and more, step by step. And unfortunately, that wakes you up further — to your needs, to your dealbreakers. Also painful work.

I'm still making mistakes in my navigation toward love. Still harming myself to some degree — away from the danger at the surface, yet still feeling the sharp edges of subtler forms of harm, emotional and otherwise.

When I despair of ever getting through this endless pulling back of layers to find that flicker of light, I lean into the garden. The potent medicinals and those divine florals. Full of sensuality, love, and healing energy, they speak to me frequently — wrapping me in those once-experienced flickers of being so tenderly loved and desired. They lift my soul up from the dirt of the earth and help me absorb the warmth trying to reach my skin.

One thing I know for sure at this moment is that we all deserve so much more. Relationships matter in the lessons, and if we don't turn toward the light in those lessons, how will we ever evolve? They help us reach forgiveness faster, releasing the charge of shame and self-sabotage.

Beyond my inherited intuitive gifts and all that I strive to offer the world, I've always been an artist. Artists feel everything. They experience things so deeply, and their methods of expression are crucial to the health of their soul. So I feel love so deeply and so willingly. It's always such a mess — ill-timed and painful. But that doesn't mean it isn't beautiful in some way.

Beautiful and so tragic, wrapped in all the lessons of a lifetime.

To Joe: thank you for taking me to safety. Finally.
To the man who also likes listening to Tara Brach: thank you for always listening, and for giving me space to find my light again. Grateful for the lessons of your presence.
To the people who tried to love me: I see you.
To my deeply harmful choices: thank you for showing me where the wound is.

Cheers to my little internal mess.
It's all mine, in all my humanity.

Scarred by heartbreak and loneliness, longing and grief — I have no idea where my weird and dusty compass to love will lead me. I give it my all until I can no longer. I explore it all until I can't. I am so much more gentle than I ever was, yet quite ferocious about what I'm learning I actually deserve. It's a dirty path. But I'm in it.

For now I'll be half covered in dark earth, listening to the whispers of the medicinal plants, absorbing the love and desire from the roses and wild florals that feed my fire. I will always know that true love can be found in the garden you've built with your own hands, pain, and sweat.

XO

Diana

Inspired by the recently released film and its incredibly artistic expression of a tragic love story — Wuthering Heights, directed by Emerald Fennell — and something one of its lead actors, Jacob Elordi, expressed in discussion of the film: "Don't yearn. Say everything you need to say to the people you love. Tell them you love them. Grab them and kiss them."