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REGISTRATION IS CLOSED

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"ALL AWAKENING TO LOVE IS SPIRTUAL AWAKENING." — bell hooks, All About Love

Many of us have been conditioned by the dominant culture to consider romantic coupledom as the key to love. We can feel deficient or even damaged if we are uncoupling, not-coupled, uncoupled or questioning our coupling.

I know.  It me.

Since I was a girl, I desperately longed for a romantic partner and I idealized coupledom. I had no mature models of marriage around me (literally not one) and no innate understanding of what makes a healthy couple. Yet, I decided (with the help of overdoses of mass media) that being coupled was the primary way to happiness. Finding a mate became a constant fixation. I projected most of my relational trauma and conditioning onto lovers and boyfriends. My abandonment patterns led me to fear being alone, even at the expense of abandoning parts of myself (or asking others to do the same).

I was devoted to the dominance of coupledom.

Couple-Dom (get it? 😛) – the imbalanced power we give to romantic relationships – can lead to abandonment of self & world. 

These patterns do not stop on their own.

 

Consciously, I know that being coupled is not necessary for my joy and well-being (often, it was a detriment). Unconsciously, I believed that staying coupled is more important than honesty or authenticity or freedom – that being uncoupled is and is to be undesirable. 

At one time, I would have classified uncoupling as an unwanted outcome of realtionship – as if the point of coupling is to stay together. Now, I am devoted to loving fully – STARTING with myself and then extending outwards – even and especially when that means uncoupling.

Although the hetero-normative hierarchy of one man/one woman oppresses us all, this is not necessarily about monogamy vs polyamory (also, because poly can be just as obsessed with privileging romantic relationships). This is also not about dismissing or denigrating romantic love – our longing for love is sacred.

This IS about how we start to examine these oppressive patterns within ourselves and how we begin to make our way back to love of self & world.

I am we.

Please note, although I will be providing information and context (including a brief history of how we came to be programmed with this human-centric and colonized version of love), I will not be "teaching" per se. I will share my personal experiences, frame some of the context & history of how we got here, and introduce a few perspectives that de-center couple-dom while encouraging a liberatory relationship to self, other (incl non-human life), and spirit. I will guide you in meditation (incl movement), reflection, journaling, and discussion. I’m imagining myself as your humble, vulnerable (possibly weepy 🥹) facilitator in this exploration. I hope you leave with sacred seeds to flourish in your many fields of connection.

I will only be offering this workshop this one time. There will be no breakout groups or one-on-one interaction. You can leave your camera off if you choose. A recording of the entire workshop will be provided to all who register. The recording (minus the Q&A) will be available for purchase in early 2023.

My hope is that this time together seeds and begins to water a beautiful practice that moves us from sorrow to sensitivity, from shame to sacredness, from striving to synchronicity...

Towards our very own hearts.

May we all know love beyond domination. 💗