There is something about missing your man that opens up places in your heart. I know if you know me that I don’t need a man to survive in this world, I can take care of myself in most ways. I welcomed my love into my life after a period of being happy without a relationship, a long period of just finding who I was and what I wanted and how I wanted to rollout in the world. After being in a relationship for 17 years it was needed. People worried about my singleness, even questioned my sexuality … and there was I just enjoying the chance to go on dates and live a life as a single woman discovering myself and the world. I loved it . I didn’t need a man. 

 

 Something changed when I met M, he had a huge heart that he opened wide up to me and I honestly just fell in. No games, no messing, no holding myself back… it really just was easy and we held no need for each other. We both longed for an intimacy that we had never had before and a deeper connection on a soul and heart level. We wanted to work consciously at our relationship and we just wanted to free flow in the love, rather than naming and labelling and following relationship constructs that the rest of society follow. 

And here we are four years later still discovering the depth of this love, the pains of this love and the wounds that our union brings to the surface. We are open and loving each other enough to work through all that comes up, I even recognise my default to walk away when things get tough or I feel my armour trying to protect my heart and I stay and prise my heart open.

 

M has been away working and the land and house we took on which is a two person job; 12 chickens, a dog , three cats, two guinea pigs , a couple of acres of woodland, a river,  a large garden, vegetable  plots for growing food, herb garden and wild land plots for my herbal work. It is a  house that is nearly self-sufficient and demands labour and renovation. My animus is holding this space with all my might and at one point I felt I was really struggling to find all the hours in the day to tend to the land and work all the hours my writing and courses takes, care to my 15 year old sons needs as a Mother and love the animals enough so they could thrive as well as all the plant and vegetable life … I was holding a weight that needed the masculine by my side, and my feminine was being neglected.  Of course I could hold all this weight , of course I wouldn’t let it go under!  that’s just not who I am , it’s not what I am made of .. not at all. My will to power is far too strong for that … but the question that came to me as I struggled to lift huge logs that the arborist had left from a fallen tree.. was did I want to. With all my might I moved that log and I felt that animus rise in me and I roared. I am a 45 year old woman and I don’t want to do this anymore… and I felt her. I felt her differently inside of me, a space where I didn’t have to prove I could do this , a space where I could stop competing with myself and my animus and indeed the masculine. 

 

I missed him and wanted him home and all of me through the tears told him that , I waved my white flag and I told him ‘I can’t do this anymore’ even though I knew I could , even though I know what I am made of , something in me submitted.. to me , and it wasn’t about him. 

 

He is still away that hasn’t changed , and many things keep taking me back to this place. To the submission. Feeling the place of ‘perceived weakness’ I hold and really feeling the beauty like a 1950s film of the woman wanting her man, and I say wanting … not needing. I feel like Doris Day in Moonlight Bay where she takes of her ‘Tom boy’ clothes, powders her face , waves her hair, pinkens her cheeks and slips into that silk peach figure hugging dress. 

 

The way life throws these things at you, the way you get shown is no coincidence, and all synchronicity and so the lessons keep coming.  This weekend M was supposed to return home in the middle of the night and I woke to find his space next to me empty. I sent a message are you ok? Where are you ? and I had no reply, no message, no answer when I called. I felt the blood leave my body and my heart and throat close, I was panicking and my mind creating scenarios that where not helping me.  I went on for hours like this and at 5am I slipped out into the cool night , placed my feet on the cold wet grass and looked up at the stars. I prayed ‘ Please God, please let him be ok” and I felt the rapidness of my breath calm. I looked around me as the garden was flooded with the full moon light and the shadows of the stone circle around the Mother Mary create what looked like a moon dial and everything seemed to still.  I had moved those huge pieces of stone and quartz in the day back into their place as they had been moved for tree felling… and I watched my animus in the moon light move those stones through the eyes of my feminine. Silence, even the owls and the river frogs quieted. My heart was so big and so heavy in my chest it physically hurt, I placed my hands there and took deep breaths… breathing breathing, slowly, calming my whole nervous system and being in this space my garden was holding for me … 

I missed him, I wanted him back, I loved him deeply and intensely, I felt love like I have never felt it before .. I felt  love like a full rich space of receiving , but also love in a dark , cold , empty space …where it is missing. I was pulled and pushed in the two places as my head tried to work on what was going on with me… and it couldn’t and all I could do was feel. 

 

The night was long until I heard from him in the morning, to tell me he was ill with a fever and hadn’t made it home. I tidied the stories I had made in my head back into their worry box and I cried into my hands. As I wept I recognised my deep love for him once again and the space here that I no longer wanted to hold. I fell fully into my own feminine arms and admitted the deep loving , soft  feminine that wanted her man , that longed for him and yearned for him.  I told my animus I was ready for him to be filled with anger later , for my partner not communicating earlier and that I would hold the space for that in communication and express what I had been going through and where it had taken me instead. 

 

The whole day was an emotional day, so much moving in me, so much pain lifting, so many tears and so much softness and vulnerability. The Father wound ringing in my ears as I remember my session with my therapist and the question I had to answer about my father and the mandala I had to draw in relation to that question. This was the breaking I needed to answer that question, to heal this piece.  To feel the relationship I had held with the masculine in me and outside of me. For me to submit to the masculine in my feminine.

 

We are still apart and I am accepting that the space created between us is a healing space, a space where I can further drop into this deeper love for him, to feel where I am missing his big shoulders that hold me, the beat of his heart as I lay on his chest. His rough hands and big arms that lift logs with ease and move stones to meet the visions of his Love. 

 

I am eternally grateful to the healing work and the synchronicity of life that allows space and places to open for me to deepen inside of myself. 

 

May we all take the powerful steps of healing and learn to love more.