Opening up to love again & a few thoughts on forgiveness

This week, after recently considering an edit on one of the parts of my book that talks about the importance of forgiveness and apology in the process of creating trust and psychological safety, I found myself re-pondering love and what it really takes to get out of conditionality and openly heartedly love with the brightness of a supernova, without condition or apology?


One of the things that I often get asked about in recent times is why I’m not leaning into and trying harder when it comes to dating.  Sometimes that comes out like “I don’t get it, why the hell are you single?” And other times it comes out in what feels like a sort of backhanded compliment, aimed at my “Sagittarianess” ; “I love about you that you’ve made a life of just going after what you love and doing what you want, when you want.” It’s true, and yet I feel a bit unseen every time its come out of someones mouth. Because, in truth, I tend to love with my heart on my sleeve and I’ve rarely gone anywhere that the pursuit of love (personal, or professional, or both at the same time) and loving service wasn’t my primary agenda. And my goal was never just to follow that love for just it’s one hot minute. The questions on my mind were always very “Venue in Capricorn”, does this have the longevity to last a lifetime, because, if they can meet me back with equal intensity and interest, I will love them for an eternity and then some and I'll build it for as long as that. How do i best help them grow, meet their goals AND nurture the quality of this connection, for the long term? Funny, the matter is so close to home, i just wrote 69 000 words on the subject...and how we communicate in order to achieve that.


Experience too is a big part of why I don’t put much stock in Western Astrology as an absolute. Many of the allegedly compatible business loves of my life prior, who were a couple of Aries’, Virgos, a Taurian and an Aqaurian and Leo or two. And by all Western Astrological compatibility, we SHOULD have been able to smash it out of the park. And yet, on some level, each of those ended up being about the resolution of karmic patterns and got stuck in the depths of conditionality, on the way to everybody wanting the above goals... but also the realisation on both sides of needing it from something or someone else, or “more?” While some of the actual longest business AND romantic longest loves of my life, were all with watersigns eg Cancerians, Pisces and Scorpios. With whom I somehow felt met and matched back with an equal level of intensity and depth, along with a lot of healing on both sides. And yet other of my friends are none of those. Either my birth date is off, or so much for Western Astrology in my head. I'd rather look at the whole person than try and cage everyone i know in the confines of another archetypal box.


The honest answer to the initial questions, of why do I keep pulling back from dating, if you want me to be completely honest though, sounds a bit like this:

I know exactly what it is that I want. I’ve known for a long time what it is that I want. I very succinctly summed it up again recently for a dating app a week ago. And it reads a whole lot like being with someone who’s equal parts creative and entrepreneurial, who’s also super into making a positive impact, who loves and loves people with an equal depth and intensity, and will happily travel the world WITH me, being a BFF, wing person, partner in crime…sorry, fun, the pursuit of laughter, happiness and no doubt excellence, who loves with equal intensity and is a friend for life, who's in for both the moments on the bus, as well as the ones in the limousine.

BUT, in the sense of which Tony Robbins once spoke of building up and unleashing the best version of you, in order to be ready to meet and match that vision of love that it is that you want, if I'm to be truly honest, I still feeling like I’m growing to meet it. After the last few years, of going financially backwards, before again going forwards, if I was to meet that person right now, who’s more established and financially ahead of where I’m now at, overseas, or locally, and I had to meet and match them on effort of being able to just jump on a plane whenever and wherever I wanted to, to go meet them there, I can’t yet keep up, or match them on the quality of equality that exists within that partnership. And given that I’m otherwise content on my own 2 feet, kicking goals and living a life I really DO love, I really feel no desire or need, to just dive into any and every one hot minute of passion, or possibility, driven by the part of me that, like Val in Workin’ Mum on Mushrooms, on Mushrooms, might also well end up running around thinking she’s a reptile and dry-humping a tree coz “it's been a while.” You wanted a REAL answer? Well there is one that might not be great for PR, but will save some of us a thousand wasted hours on and off various dating apps. But that’s not the primary point of this blog.


The point is about what it takes to get back to a place of loving like an open-hearted supernova again, heart on your sleeve, without condition. I get it, I know after a certain point, it gets hard. I got an accidental email from one of those above people this week, and as I thought of them, and thought of how they once spoke of the way they experienced me with an open heart (and felt when I’d closed it in pain) and me them,  I imagined if I saw them in the street tomorrow, that I would give them the biggest of hugs, kiss them on the cheek with every bit of the love that I feel for them and I think they deserve, and tell them that I don’t know why it is that we can never seem to work our shit out, but i will love them with all my heart for an eternity and then some all the same.  Actually with many of my past loves I feel that way. A couple of other ones, I’m not quite there yet. I’m trying, I

’m owning my projections and confusions and missteps and value clashes as I see them. But I’m still caught in the shock and confusion of “what the hell even really was that?” and conditionality. With them, while I’d want to make a line straight for them, If I saw THEM on the street, I’d still get caught in “is it wanted?” “Are they going to acknowledge me first?” “F@#% this, I deserve better than this confusing headf#cking, grey-rocking bullsh*t!” and I KNOW I’d likely find myself speeding UP still in the opposite direction, unless they, or my higher self, give me a sign to respond otherwise. Not my finest moment of “unconditionality.” Or leading by example in living into the Stage 6 Aspirational Quintessent Phase I talk about in my book, of owning the truth heart-centred power in our voices, and in life at that. Or receiving the divine support and healing I’m calling in. I get it, it’s NOT easy, to NOT get caught in the “humanness” of it all.


And yet I think it is terribly needed to do whatever we need to, to heal enough, to be able to get back to the former street side example. Because the truth is, I WILL, regardless of whether it’s wanted or not, be grateful for the journey that we had together, for all the gifts that they imparted to me, and all the inspiration and insight that was imparted along the way, as well as for the growth, I WILL love them too, forever and for an eternity, for as long as I have known them and will know them as souls, through all directions of time and space. It would be a terrible loss to forget that. And I wish I COULD give them that hug, minus all the bullshit, given all of that.


On some level, for all of us, for all the great loves, personal and professional that came before, whether we can yet see it yet or not, I think this is largely true for all of us, actually. That we are all capable of loving and forgiving in similar fashion. But the question is, when we feel hurt, or like we or they, or both, messed it up, what will it take for each of us to get back to that place, of loving with open-hearted, heart-on-your-sleeve level unconditionality? To have made peace with and let go of what learnings came to be, no matter how intense they were, and to be able to lean back into the intensity of the love we once had for them and their happiness, continuing growth and success, without condition?


No one, and know great Guru is just going to hand it to us, and we’re not just going to magically wake up with it, after someone magically just gave us a magic pill, or waved a wand and took it away. Forgiveness, I think, is a choice we make, to reach for a higher place again, than the bottom of the hole we think we’d stumbled into.

To pursue the actions, that help us heal and lead us to higher thought processes about those people for which we have inner conflict and pain. That lead us back to the pursuit of the great love that still exists in the world, to love and to be open to be being met with equal intensity. But to get there, we also have to stop loving with such much condition and expectation of getting in the first place. It is the unmet expectation and constant score card keeping and checking, in which so much of the pain and disappointment lies. To love for the sake of loving. To take joy in other’s happiness and victories for the sake of loving seeing them happy. To feel love and fulfilment in the acts of giving and kindness. Those are great places to start, if one wants to get back to living with a fully open heart.


Until next time….

Nat xx