Next month, Tracy and I will celebrate our tenth anniversary as a couple. It feels significant. Ten years. It feels like a shift, and it has me thinking about what I've learned and how we've both grown.

Lately, I've felt my heart relaxing into an openness that is both tender and strong. It feels delicious.

Earlier in my life I participated in a long term relationship that was emotionally and psychologically abusive. Conventional spiritual wisdom would say that relationship was my greatest teacher and indeed, I'm grateful for the lessons I learned there, but it is actually my relationship with Tracy that I consider to be my greatest spiritual teacher.

It is with Tracy that I have learned how to truly love another person; how to be in partnership; how to be vulnerable and honest and generous; how to keep a romantic sexual loving partnership alive, rather than letting it turn into friendship or "roommates." 

None of that came easily or without missteps or even without a few sweeping disasters, but it came because ultimately, we are in agreement about why we are together and how we wish to be in one another's lives.  

It came because we are patient.

It took us a while to learn how to leave our baggage at the door.

It took us a while to know how to be completely honest with one another in the way that love requires.

I asked Tracy about his thoughts on this, on us, on heart expansion -

Tracy: You can read fifty books about how to cut a board in two, but you won't know anything about it until you actually hold a saw in your hands, feel it kick back, feel it cut through the wood. Love it like that. It's not a theory. 

Me: You have to walk the talk.

Tracy: Exactly.

Exactly. 

You learn how to love by loving. You learn how to be in relationship by being in one. Things are going to happen and not all of them will be pleasant but when you know what you believe and you live from that place, amazing things happen, too. Loving another person is the love of God. It's the same thing. We are light spreading light. It is the reflection of universal love we see in one another's eyes. When we allow that, we allow the experiences we're looking for which may very well look quite different than we think they will.

Me: So if you learn how to be in a relationship by being in a relationship, what do you do if you're single? How do you attract love?

Tracy: By being a loving person. You just do it without the relationship.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

If you desire love, you live love. To invite love in, you live love. To be the lover you want to be with the lover you want to be with, you live in love. All the time. With your co-workers, with the strangers you encounter, with your family, with yourself. 

I had just moved back to Kentucky from New York. I was living alone in a house over which I had complete control. The colors on the walls were colors I had chosen. Every thing in every room belonged to me. I ate what I wanted to, when I wanted to. I watched what I wanted to watch on TV. I went to bed when I wanted to and stayed up as late as I wanted to.  I'd recently lost a lot of weight - weight that I'd put on as protection, so I bought trendy, sexy clothes and wore the hell out them. I was still righting myself after years of wrong direction, but I was coming into focus.

I kept a journal (my spirit notebook) and on the cover, I taped a photograph of myself. It was a self-portrait I'd snapped in the kitchen of my final New York apartment. I liked the way I looked in that photograph, so I put it on the cover of my journal. Everyday when I sat down to write, I sat down with that picture. I looked at it and engaged with love. I didn't consciously think, I love myself, but I looked at the picture everyday, and liked what I saw - which was a new and welcomed change.

One day, I called my old friend Tracy, to let him know that I was settled in, back in town. I wanted to see him because I liked him, because I liked spending time with him, because in the years I'd been away, I'd missed him. He came over to hang out and when he got out of his car in front of my house and we walked toward one another, when we hugged hello, I understood that something had changed. I was attracted to him. He was attracted to me. There was chemistry.

So our friendship became romance. Consciously. Organically.

I threw myself a birthday party. I invited Tracy. He was working, printing photographs for an upcoming show, and couldn't come until late. Most of the other guests had gone. We stood in the kitchen of my house - my bright yellow kitchen with the apples hanging in baskets and the little white bookshelf filled with vintage cookbooks - and kissed for the first time. It was something brand new. It felt like the very beginning.

In six days, I will celebrate my 43rd birthday. It has me thinking about where I've been and what I've learned. 

Of the things people ask me about in intuitive guidance sessions, relationships come up more than any other. It's so much a  part of who we are and what we're doing here. We want to live in love - every one of us - we want the companionship, the passion, the support, the adventure of a partner. For that reason, the seasonal oracle card readings for February speak to relationships. And for that reason, I've decided to write this month about mine. With Tracy's blessing, of course, I'm sharing what I've learned so far from the relationships of my past and from the relationship I'm in.

I've learned some things about fear, grace, forgiveness, jealousy. I've learned some things about love. I invite you to share with me here, too. Let's sit together with our hearts open. Let's talk about what it is to be here - in relationship to one another.

If what you read here resonates with you, please share it. Share my posts on facebook or twitter, or recommend my facebook page to your friends. Every time you do, let me know and you'll be entered into the drawing for the big birthday giveaway. Be sure to join me for the live event on February 25.