The other week a friend whose birthday it was had an unusual request. He asked us to design a ritual for him to ground into his intention of life for his upcoming year. Using pillows as props, everyone got together to give him the experience of pushing through the pillowy birth canal. Afterwards, aside from how sweet it was to see a grown man through the unconditionally loving eyes as one would see a new born, he shared an insight. He shared that he had to push pretty hard to get through our line of pillows. Being blindfolded, he had no idea when he would get to the end. “Being born is work”, he said. “If you want to get the other side, you really have to want it and to work for it.” Being alive is like that too.

It’s natural to want to skip through the hard parts of life and get to the other side....

​For years I wrote letters of longing to my beloved. I would write him that I yearned for his touch, the feel of his breath on my neck, the warmth and safety I felt in his arms. I would write letters in which my heart ached to feel him. “I miss you. Where are you?” I would plead. “I want to laugh with you again.” At times it was excruciating to not know if I would feel his heart again. If I would live out the rest of my days alone, in the desolate void of his absence.

These letters were never written to a man. Although often I would think of a man my heart was yearning for as I wrote them, they were to “The Beloved” within and in all things. They were to my beloved somewhere out there in the flesh in male form, and also to the joy and bliss that lived inside me, lost to my awareness in that sad time.

In “Dear Lover” David Deida writes, “Deep heart yearning is not a problem to be solved, but a divine pull to open as devotional surrender...” He implores us women to “...trust open as love’s ache.”