I wanted to say “I am so fucking uncomfortable in my skin right now because if I let you in and I trust you with my heart, my children, and my life then I also hand you the ability to hurt me. I hand you the ability to crush my heart, my dreams and my whole world. Please, please, please don’t hurt me.”

“Be careful with that, don’t drop it” he said.

The gravity of what he was saying and what I was doing really hit me. He was trusting me to hold his heart and I was responsible for keeping his heart safe.

In that moment, feeling completely safe I was able to fully process what I had experienced. Once my body knew that it was safe I had the freedom to explore the experience and begin to rationalize and understand it.

I lay down on my driveway, it is a space where I go when I need to ground myself. I took a deep breath in and with the exhale I told myself that I was safe and had the tools to openly and honestly determine if I was rejecting this statement because it wasn’t true or because it was but I didn't want it to be true.

I could rationalize it and say that this individual holds the keys to something that I want and if they believe what they were told they would have resistance to me. Then, the other side of the story is that everything happens for a reason and if these keys were going to be blocked, I trust that it is for my highest good.

As I watched her, I thought, I wasn’t the one who put you there. I didn’t do anything to you, why are you so angry at me? Why are you spitting and squealing at me as if I somehow created the situation in which you are living? Why is your anger directed at me?

Suddenly, without warning the lioness lunged with a fierceness that made me physically jump. In a split second she acted from a place of protection. It was natural. It was an instinct. She wasn’t sorry. She wasn’t shameful. She wasn’t stressed about the way others viewed her. She was acting from one of the most natural places that there is. This place of deep essential knowledge.

I meant it, wholeheartedly. I have never really understood that thought pattern. I see a lot of people do this. They will ruin their Sunday because Monday is coming. They will ruin their last day of their vacation because it is ending soon. I just can’t wrap my brain around it. I want to squeeze all of the fun out of my time.

“You see, my story is an important one. I want to share it with the world. I want to be open and vulnerable. I know that sharing it will help other people, both those who can relate and those who have never been in my shoes.”

The words hit me like a freight train. Everything inside of my body shifted and rejected the sensations that were coming through. There are so many soft sides to me. I spend my day with one foot on both sides of the veil. I spend my day with one foot in intense and one foot in nurturing.