I took a long awaited spin outside my surrounds this past Friday. Welcomed indeed. Hopping gleefully into my ready jeep, eager to hit the road, I felt giddy with excitement to take a break from what has felt like a very, very long winter, fall, summer and spring of last year. In fact, I was astonished to realize that my last ‘out of town’ excursion was my trip to Bali last April. That is VERY unlike me. I love to travel and explore.
So, off I flew off to visit my dear pal not far away in North Carolina. Together we wax metaphysical while nibbling our favorite meal, (cheese and crackers, fresh strawberries, grapes and wine) and go deep and light and do a lot of laughing for sure. Together we explore new ways of living and being and thinking and evolving as we both have found winters of discontent in old cultural or societal models. Having just made some marital shifts, she and her husband have decided for now to live separately, taking turns living in a lovely high rise urban apartment four months on and four months off, each sharing their spacious Lake Norman home in rotation.
We all decided to meet for cocktails at her husband’s apartment and ‘hit the town’ together. A former football star, and business super star for sure, comfortable in the affluent neighborhood of ‘Normal-town’, he was excited to share with me some of the ‘ahas’ discovered through the latest shifts and turns within his marriage with my friend. He conceded that ‘not everyone is open to this kind of thinking, how supportive we are of one another and finding a deeper peace, whether we stay married or not’. He shared too how fun it is when they date or decide to spend the night together….he alluded to a different appreciation, knowing that regardless whether they stay married, ‘we’ve never related to one another with such honesty and support before’.
My heart swelled for them both in hearing this.
I loved to see them relate together as the energy had shifted. Visiting their home at other times, I felt the tension and also the love, but moreover the struggle of different worldviews. I could see an appreciation and openness that was not there before. And I always love to talk business with this highly intelligent man. Together they attested to not knowing whether they will reunite as man and wife and live together again, but a shift in how they might relate together as man and woman was profound. They clearly love one another, enough to want the other to have what they need to feel fulfilled and happy within their own skin.
I met my friend at one of my ‘expanding workshops’ as I call them. We became fast and ready friends and realized that we both grew up in the farmland of Pennsylvania, living just miles from one another. We went on to study energy healing with Dr. Fernand Poulin who I’ve mentioned often. Every 6 weeks we would come together, (and she would stay with me in Atlanta) to study for four intensive days with Fernand, testing our own skills of intuition and intention, learning to shift energy with positive intent.
I’ve seen my friend expand herself into new possibilities for herself over the last 4 years of knowing her. As a quiet and ‘behind the scenes’ kind of person, she is extremely intelligent, a former electrical engineer who managed teams of men 20 and 25 years her senior. She is also an artist, having dabbled in a number of varied interests and, she is a seeker much like myself. She reads voraciously and always has a spiritual conundrum for us to widdle about until the evening is late and our eyes droopy.
And, we have had our challenges too, in communication, feeling heard, sharing truths. I appreciate her willingness to go deeper with our friendship, weathering our own hardships together. I feel our bond has grown only deeper.
But this night, the three of us hit the town for martinis and appetizers, hopping from one lovely restaurant to the next, laughing and discussing the recent ‘dates’ of her husband, our male escort, the perils of on-line dating and the lessons learned. His transparency within his own situation, still married and in counseling with his beautiful wife, unsure whether reuniting was their best choice or not, I felt the sanity of such openness and exploration. I felt the desire for each person to find ‘home’ for themselves.
As the initiator of this shift, my friend encouraged his exploration. He on the other hand was less open to hearing of her adventures in dating, but nonetheless, his support was clear, certainly with her spiritual questing. I admired this man so much and told him so. I knew the world to which he was accustomed. He confessed that his reading of Eckhart Tolle’s ‘A New Earth’ was a huge eye opener, for sure. I recommend the book as well.
I am meeting more and more women who though they welcome a neat bond and intimate sharing with a partner, that they are less open to marriage or the expectation evident in so many relationships. The covet their freedom and the space to explore their own growth, many not finding the support for such growth within their marriages. I understand this. My wings felt clipped in my own marriage somehow and I could not navigate my own flight within its confines, sadly perhaps, but it is what it is.
I understand this need for expansion and welcome connections with people who might build fires around my ambitions and passions to fuel it forward, as I certainly know easily how to do that for others, including my friend.
As we played and nibbled on luscious fig and proscuitto topped foccacio with arugula, sipping on perhaps one too many pineapple martinis, leaning against one another with laughter, holding one anothers arms telling jokes and sharing stories, how lovely it felt to be in the presence of intelligent, open minded, heartful friends, both willing to test the waters on how to have more fulfilling relationships and lives.
I came home renewed, open and realizing my need to travel outside my city more often, to friends whose hearts are open, their communication clear and their minds, whirling with the positivism of possibility.
I feel the world shifting for me and am open to seeing who appears in the movie screen of my life. Man, woman, child, my next loving pet, it is all good, and all truly is well. And so, it is!
BB Webb