Terrain of Togetherness

As I sit down to right this blog about couples relationships in parenting, I discover an icky sensation in my body, a murkiness digging at my chest, the thought revealing itself, “I have to be the professional and give readers some good advice.  It could be an opportunity to show-off NVC and how when you bring it into your relationship you could live happily ever together.”  What a swift write-up that would be!

I had this sense rise up like a high tide surge, of being out of my depth, like “who the heck do you think you are, offering advice about relationships!  Yours isn’t exactly a box of cherries.”

A loving internal cue, “forget everyone else for a moment’ (with all do respect Mr/Mrs Reader) “what do you want for yourself in writing this blog Jess?’”

I want to go on a journey of exploration.  I want to take a pickaxe, and some water and smash hard ground, searching for treasures that’ll tell me secrets of my soul.  I want to be honest and real, I want to share my discoveries as they emerge, raw and covered in rock segments, I want to be courageous, open-minded, open-hearted and to go with determination and grace toward and over my edges, to take hold of whatever awaits me from beneath.

And if any uncovered gems contribute in any meaningful way to you dear Mr/Mrs Reader, then that’ll be a dazzling celebration for the part of me that holds the vibration to contribute.

Phewf that feels lighter, I think I just threw a few rocks out of my backpack.

It was funny – not ha ha funny, or weird funny, more like a ‘that was interesting, there’s gonna be some lessons for me in that’ kinda funny – when my partner and I were out for dinner the other week.  We marveled at how this year in June will mark the milestone of 10 years of togetherness.  10 years!  After shaking our head in what I’m guessing was a cocktail of amazement, disbelief, celebration, and possible mourning for ‘things lost’, he said, “10 years in, and it’s like we’re only just getting to know eachother now.”

“Huum”, we both said, after That Statement landed.   A bucket load milli-second of all sorts opened up in me; amusement, concern, desire to understand, to find meaning… just a tease, a teeny tiny taste into some unknown territory, just as swiftly removed from my reach when something happened with one (or was it both?) of the girls which required parental attention.

I’ve taken space to ponder it since though.  What DOES it mean?  That when we had our first baby seven years ago we didn’t know eachother?  That when we made those big life decisions, to homebirth, to vaccinate our children or not, to homeschool, to buy a house, to move to a different place, to sell our house, to get a dog, to stay together when we almost almost almost broke up?  To choose eachother every single day?  Did we not know eachother then?

The parts of me that I knew, experienced what they perceived as knowing parts of him.  What happens though, when those parts of me that I knew, or thought I did, get moved aside, pushed across in one exhale of the Universe like a great rolling boulder, to reveal a newer, fresher, deeper, rawer part – did that part know any of his parts?  Do they meet anyway, without our consent, or do we consciously connect those parts and let them begin the knowing process all over again?  How can we know someone else, when the more we get to know ourselves, the more we realise how much is in there and that it’s probably going to be a lifelong journey meeting the rest, if we ever achieve that?

When he said that, a knowing in me spoke, in that mili-second opening, from within that rocky crevice.

“What you are beginning to know in eachother, is the LIFE that sparks you from within; the place where Life meets Life.

Yes!

The life in me sees and meets the life in you.  We become we.

Those moments are like bombs, blasting open the hard, rocky turfs that cover our hearts, protecting us from the pain, more pain, more pain, more pain.  Blast it open!  Feel it!  Fucking feel it!!!!!!!!  Let it knock you down.  Blow you to the ground.  Bruised, scathed and cut.  Let it shudder your bones.

THEN.  When you pull yourself off the ground, raw and bloodied, will you see.  Look in his eyes and see.  You will meet yourself there.  You will know him.  You will know yourself.  Because you come from the same place.  And you both carry it with you.

Don’t let the boulders roll back into place.  Stay open.  Vulnerable.  Courageous.  When a crack appears in the surface, go INTO it.  Together or alone.  The life you find in there will be an expression of the same life within your WE.  Return there.  Home.  Over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

The way I know how?  Empathy and radical honesty as self-expression.  The way he knows how?  I don’t know.  It doesn’t matter (in the way I used to think it did).

Whatever it is, let the life within you both; your desires, your dreams, your motivations, your intentions, your beautiful, precious Needs, guide you home to togetherness.

That was something very different to what I was intending to write.  Releasing the should and the wanting to please or be something, I got to ride the wave of life that came up.  Ooooooshhhhhhh my body is open and pulsing.  This is what I want in my relationship.  And I know, to be able to reside more frequently in this We-space, I celebrate EVERY time we are there.