What Crucible is Being Asked of You In Order for Your Dreams to Come True:

On Transformation, Love, and Becoming.

What if calling in love, or one’s beloved, or soul mate is not about calling in love? 

What if it is not about filling so much with love for the self that you overflow with love and only then can be met in the deep love you yearn for? 

What if calling in love is not that, but instead it is a question…

What transformation is necessary for me to be available for the type of love I yearn for?

This is not “How I must change or fix myself for love.” This is recognizing that the person who is the “partner” you, is not necessarily the you you are looking at now in the mirror.  This you, the one who is not partnered is one version of you.  And what if there is a requirement in order to meet the Beloved…that you cross a threshold and must leave some of this old you behind.

In other words, what if it comes down to releasing outdated patterns and behaviors and personas that do not have the spiritual and emotional maturity or capacity of the person, the partner you, you are becoming?

The same thing could apply to the bestselling author you, the abundant you, the confident you, and any version of “you” that you yearn to become.

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I was thinking about this yesterday, pouring hot water over a chai tea bag, how much I had changed, and how much was required to mature, or integrate, or transform within me in order to become a partner to someone. 

(I could say the same thing about the rite of passage from broke artist to abundant artist and teacher and author who makes a great living with no debt. That required a lot of letting go! That shift happened around 2018 for me.)

Anytime we move from one phase or identity to another there is loss. There is grief. There is a lot of saying goodbye. It’s not all roses and sunshine to receive love or success or abundance. It always requires a crucible of letting go, and the pain associated with that MUST be felt.

I’ll keep using the example of partnership since that has been the latest for me. Even though it has been nearly three years I have been with my partner, the journey of loss, and maturation, and transformation has been ongoing during this time. But you could truly apply this principle to any time you call in a desire, or vision, or make a dream come true, and have to prepare and transform to receive it.

Before stepping into partnership, my life was me-centric.  I could talk about myself and my work for hours, write about myself constantly on the internet, immerse myself in my own spiritual studies and travels, and I was in love with my existence.  And there is nothing wrong with that. I loved my life that didn’t involve devotion to another.  I led myself. I made all decisions. It was amazing.  And yet, I still yearned for partnership.  To know a space of devotion, to mend an internal wound of aloneness, to set off on a new adventure, to be led and held by another.

Now I pose that perhaps I didn’t “call in the one” perhaps I simply decided to put down the behaviors and ideas and emotional patterns that were not a match to partnership, asking myself to transform over time, into a me that could be a match to another, and that sacrifice and letting go ushered me right up to my Beloved.

I think about the internal battles I had with my own freedom, freedom to post whatever I want, go where I wanted to go….and there was a princess and a queen, a maiden to mother shift, having a deep struggle within me for a while.  It was real. And it didn’t go away when I met him, the transformation continued for the first year and a half of our relationship.

I think about the women I hear wanting to enter a new phase, be it receiving love or abundance, and I pose: perhaps it is asking yourself…what behaviors and ideas and personas and habits am I clinging to that cannot mix with that which I deeply desire?

For me it was: what princess and maiden emblems am I still flaunting accidentally that are keeping me stuck?

This is not to be self-judgment.  Just a tender honest assessment.

This can apply to any new persona we want to become, any new version of the self.

But regardless for this shift to occur in me from single to partnered, just like the shift from victim to victor, or broke to abundant, it required me to lay down aspects of my being I had long identified with and was attached to.

I could not manifest or call in my desire without FIRST being brutally honest about what in my life, behaviors, and energy was not a match to it.

I did much sleeves-rolled-up-hands-in-dirt work to receive the love I yearned for. At times my desire was eclipsed by my sexy flashy wild and free side, longing to always be seen, longing to be sexy, self. She was not the “partner” me and she attracted other shiny objects as she valued herself shiny.

For me, the transformation and crucible were what was being asked of me in order to be with a deep and present man who wasn’t caught by the flashy sexy popular bits of me, but by the deep and wise and rooted ones, equally sexy, hot as hell, but just not flashy in the same way.  I could feel when the princess and maiden came in and flaunted in a way that abandoned my heart, or my woman, or my wisdom.  Or when my “flashy” overshadowed my depth and wisdom.

Each woman will know within herself if and if and when there is a call to transformation in order to receive a desire she yearns for.  For me I held on tight for a while, not wanting my sexuality to shift, not wanting how I share my body to shift, not wanting how I talked about myself and my life to shift.  But then I knew it must.  There was no escaping it.  It was what my soul was asking for.  Not to put those things down, but to redefine my relationship to them.  To redefine needing to show my sexy all the time, to needing to tell all my wild stories all the time, to needing to be edgy and wild…and a process began, of transforming from princess to queen, maiden to woman.  And the maiden squirmed and thrashed, again and again, and I held her with love.  I asked for her patience and trust.

For my story I knew it was necessary in order to meet the love I knew I was destined for.

For you it may be necessary in order to have the career, or the family, or the art, or simply because your soul path is calling for the change.

Our over culture will push us again and again into clinging to our youth, our girlhood, being adult girls terrified of our hips widening, or lines of wisdom to appear on our faces, to clinging to our victimhood, our “not enough ness.” And all this keeps us from what we truly desire. And this is an avoidance of our power, our strength, our inner goddess. 

The Goddess who beckons us and says: “In order to know me, you must become me.  In order to become me, you must leave behind who you once were, traverse the dark forest of the unknown, and know that I will meet you there.”

And so, the brave do. 

For all the other late bloomers, or women who fucking love their wild woman sexy maiden self so hard, or their sweet, sweet girlishness, or whatever old version of you is still clinging…I see you.  You don’t have to sacrifice her. You don’t have to kill her off. But she is asking to be integrated.

Something new wants to be centered.

I am offering a hand outstretched to you.  Along with many others. Take your time.  We will be here when you are ready.

A Poem from my own heart broken open journey missing my sweet wild maiden:

I mourn the loss of my maiden freedom in waves.

Many days I relish my newfound ground and stability.

Freedom from caring what everyone thinks,

Not doing life alone anymore,

But some days I grieve, grieve, grieve the loss of the time when no one knew where I was.

When I stayed out late, and leaned my head against the open cab window going over the Williamsburg bridge…

When I lived for making art, and making art only!

When there was a burning yearning in my heart for a love only my soul knew to be true…

And that burning drew me towards wild adventures all over the globe…

And what then when the burn is gone?

When love holds you…

And the highs and  lows become solid ground you can rely on…

Here, I rejoice.

And here, I also mourn.

Some Free Writing for your own Journey:

What is my next big dream or desire?

What in my current reality doesn’t fit with that dream?

What habits and behaviors or values or beliefs do I need to let go of in order to meet that dream?

What places or people or community would not fit with that new dream?

What space is needed in my life to call in that desire, vision, or big dream?

What new version of me is asking to be centered now in order to meet this desire?

xx Alexandra

*Part of an ongoing series of writing on shifting identities, roles, inner archetypes, transformation, and becoming a woman. Image by Alex Herstik. One of my fave maiden selves from 2017.