This weekend Nick and I had a little getaway in Woodstock, NY in the cutest damn cottage I’ve ever seen.
We ate delicious food (I’m talking the best buffalo cauliflower tacos I’ve ever had and an impossible burger with kimchi that took my breath away), checked out the local shops and did a 5 mile hike that consisted of climbing straight up a mountain. It was SO wonderful.
On the last day of our little getaway we took advantage of the picturesque space with it’s creative wallpaper and perfect decorating and did a boudoir photo shoot.
Truth be told this is why I picked the spot. Last year we did the same thing and created some beautiful picture magic together and this year was no different.
Well that’s not entirely true it was a little different. Because I am different.
A lot can change in a year.
It feels like I went from desperately longing to deeply contented over this past year. An act I know could have only taken place because I spent a big part of last year being with myself more deeply than ever before.
Myself not through the eyes of someone else. Myself not in the way someone else makes me feel. But moments where I felt in communion and relationship with myself.
And this is where I am now. While I am in a beautiful ethically non-monogamous long term relationship our independence is such that it allows for me to take this kind of space and feel this kind of way about myself.
This is one thing I love about ethical non-monogamy. As my therapist recently spoke about and I couldn’t agree more, it’s about freedom and whether you are in a polyamorous relationship at the time is irrelevant. Because the premium is freedom.
Right now for me this looks like feeling the stability, love and joy my relationship with Nick provides and at the same time turning into myself even more deeply.
And because we’ve created a relationship where there is so much space to be with others this act of diving deep isn’t threatening to him or our relationship.
This isn’t to say that I don’t have moments of wanting to distract myself by moving outward. I still have them. Sometimes I can feel the pull that engaging with someone new provides with it’s juicy brain chemicals but I simply choose to move back to myself.
This brings me back to the boudoir shoot. I love that I am with a partner who can capture these pieces of me. It’s something I find so special.
And I had this moment last night when I was going through the hundreds of pictures from our shoot when I stumbled upon the one at the top of this page.
Actually the picture at the top of the page is just fraction of the full shot. You’ll have to go to my Instagram page to see the full deal.
This image stopped me. I don’t really know why. Something about my smile, my joy, the look of pleasure on my face. It caught me off guard.
I just sat and stared at it and as I did I felt deep love. For myself. It was the same feelings reserved for someone I’m in love with. I felt it all the way down to my core. Only this time it was for myself. Wow.
I’ve had brilliant moments of straight up opening my heart chakra and experiencing rich deep love but that has been more a connection with existence and nature.
This was different. This felt like falling in love with myself.
I told Nick about this and as I did I filled up with tears and he did the same exact thing. He could feel it. It was beautiful.
It is possible to actually be in love with ourselves. It is possible to see ourselves and feel ourselves and BE ourselves. All of this is possible.
We simply need to extricate ourselves from the imprisonment of our cultural conditioning, our trauma and the belief that we are not enough. Because we so are.
And while doing this isn’t always easy I do believe it is possible and I know it is worth it.