Relationships as mirrors: Lessons in learning to be a reflection of love.
5 tenets to build connection and bridge the space between.
Love is the ultimate lesson. Life is our training ground. Throughout there’s an endless orbit of relationships to teach us more about ourselves. Our boundaries get pushed, hearts get broken, loss overwhelms - yet there are infinite possibilities for more love.
Gradually we can learn to discern when to soften barriers and dissolve into the tender spaces in between each other. This space between is where all relationships exist. In this playground, we can choose to be creative more than destructive. We can harmlessly forsake protection for connection.
These five inspirations bridge the tender space between.
Show up in Innocence
Vulnerability Heals
Hold on to Nothing
Playful Receptivity
Mirror what is Given
Show up in Innocence
Put down your baggage. Settle your hurt. Release your blame. Meet your relationships with innocence. We lose our wonder and open-heartedness, when we come to another person alive in our wounds. Over-come with the pain of the past, we aren’t able to be present for what is in front of us. Especially when we make someone new pay the price for old infractions.
Trust that you are stronger from your battle scars. That you’ve grown from any fractures beneath the surface like a blade of grass making it’s way through cracks in the concrete. Come in spirited with an ease and a purity. Allow everything to be new again.
Vulnerability Heals
The essence of love is in building connection. It’s a courage in ourselves to step from shadows into the light - to be seen and held in acceptance for everything we are. When we learn to love our darkness and imperfections, we realize these are the definitive intricacies that hold the uniqueness of who we are.
Intimacy is allowing someone in close enough to be a part of your healing. When you move to let the deeper parts of you reveal - - the pain, restless, and distrust find a vulnerability that dismantles walls.
Hold on to Nothing
In the maze of love, we get lost in expectations. We want certain outcomes and behaviors, when envisioning how a relationship will play out. In our minds we make demands and decisions without even the slightest bit of communication. Then, fall into grave disappointment as things don’t go our way. There is no room for emotional bargaining, tit for tat.
Instead of focusing on what you’re receiving, go into the giving. When what you are giving is without expectation, love becomes expansive. It grows and flows in your creativity. Hold on to nothing, release all expectations. Be unconditional.
Playful Receptivity
Relationships get sluggish. The heaviness of the world weighs us down making it hard to let go into spontaneity. With too many days of solemn responsibility, we distance ourselves from laughter. We start to believe - Fun is only something for Friday nights and vacations. Why do we love like that? When did we allow our joy to be so restricted and constricted by each inevitable stress?
When we communicate through a language of play, we are receptive in our relationship. Love becomes an infectious enjoyment that’s a remedy for any drudgery of days. Date. Flirt. Create chemistry. Get curious. Initiate freedom through love.
Mirror what is Given
To be in careful study of our relationships is to be invested in love. Respond to the other person in kind. Pay attention to how they extend their care. It is a signal of what they desire in return. We often show people how we’d like to be treated. It’s the golden rule. Tried and true since kindergarten.
If they give affection, return it. If they listen intently, give your undivided attention. When they pay you a compliment, tell them what you admire. Be generous with these love languages, relate and resonate.
We make a conscious choice in every experience to open or close. To expand or contract. To turn toward or away from. Rumi shares:
Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.
It’s like an exacting heartbeat that resuscitates our growth. In our armor, we build our defenses. With our commitment, we push to heal.
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