of these new friendships was such balm to my battered, bedraggled psyche! And, it seemed to me that the ways in which I met these new friends often spoke of Spirit/the Grandmothers having had a hand in it.

One of these new friends was a scientist/naturalist/artist that I met while meandering on my favorite canyon trail one twilight. I came upon her and her dog only moments after I’d become aware of feeling that I was really wanting some one to play with!

We walked together for a while that night, sharing stories about our connections to the wild places, to solitude and to the endless magic of Ojai. She was living and working in Los Angeles on weekdays. On weekends, she would come to replenish her soul in a little cottage that she was renting in the East End of Ojai. The cottage was just around the corner from where I was replenishing my own soul. We were both recovering from complicated long-term relationships that we had recently ended. We were both still connected to our former partners; both trying to sort out how to navigate the shift from relationship to friendship with these former lovers. We were both very consciously engaged with our spiritual journeys. The parallels in our lives at that moment were quite compelling.

We seemed quite naturally drawn to spending some time out on the trails together when she came to Ojai each weekend. As we hiked, we shared tales of hope and frustration. We reflected on the differing styles with which we were approaching our similar struggles. We were both trying to unravel our enmeshments with our former partners. Both trying to recover from our over involvement with working to "save" our partners from their unhappiness, their problem-filled lives. We readily became a "support group" of two for this major life transitioning time in which we both found and were finding ourselves.

We were both profoundly committed to our spiritual journeying, yet we had very different paths and very different ways of being on our paths. She was deeply committed to a Buddhist tradition, very formal in her practice and study. I, on the other hand, was committed to a much looser, more free form, intuitive approach to my spiritual evolution. I let myself be guided by the deep feminine energy that I found in the wild places, by the voice of Spirit/the Great Mother/the Grandmothers that spoke in my heart as I wandered in the mountains. These so very different approaches and their richness for each of us were, in the early days of our getting to know each other, a source of fascinating ongoing dialogue

It was a time in my journey that I was exploring the Field of the Sacred Feminine. With mind and body I found myself questioning what the true nature of female eroticism might be. I was captivated by imagining the possibilities of a feminine erotic nature that hadn’t been–for millennia–so totally co-opted and confined by male images of female sexuality. I was absorbed and fascinated by the vibrant erotic energy I felt in my connection with the natural world. The Great Mother was my teacher. I shed my clothes wherever I felt safe to be naked in the wild places. Sitting in the little waterfalls on the river. Cuddling with or napping cradled in trees. Curled into or wrapped around boulders. Letting the energy of the river, the trees, the boulders resonate in my body and being. Feeling the radiant erotic flow connecting me and the river, the trees, the boulders. Feeling the expanding openness of the erotic arousal, the dissolving of boundaries, my self melting into the all-that-is.

My sharing these experiences and experiments were a part of our ongoing dialogue about spirituality, relationship and life. And, after a bit, we explored playing together with erotic energy. It felt to me quite a safe and natural extension of our sharing. After all, we’d already been, for a while, exploring and playing with psychic energy and trying to send and receive images to each other over distance.

Erotic play and exploration wove in and out of another friendship that was deepening at the same time as Anita (not her real name) and I were exploring. I was open and clear in both friendships about my not being at all interested in creating a partnering/romantic relationship with anyone, probably ever again. I just wanted to explore and play on as many levels as were safely available with anyone with whom I was engaging. It seemed at the time that everyone understood and accepted where I was coming from.

Around this time, the owners of her cottage needed to reclaim that space for their own family. At the same time, one of the other two cottages on the property where I lived became vacant. Anita was delighted with the magical synchronicity and readily made the easy move. Her greater proximity felt, at the time, quite fine with me. Our separate commitments to our solitude, my openness about where I was vis-à-vis relationship and her Ojai presence being limited to weekends seemed to promise clear boundaries at a time when I was into being involved in several very nourishing and interesting new friendships.

Not long after her move, she gradually began spending more time in Ojai. She left her job in Los Angeles. She found another Ojai living space that provided her with reduced rent in exchange for care taking the property she’d live on. She found a job in a nearby community that was in her scientific field. As she spent more time in Ojai, she began meeting new people. She also met some of my friends and developed her own relationships with one or two of them.

After a bit, things started getting complicated. Several times she began making plans for us with my other friends, speaking as if we were a "couple." She seemed rather taken aback by my "sensitivity" to what she saw as something insignificant or merely semantic. I’d explain further. She’d appear to finally get what I was taking exception to. Then it would happen again! I’d be furious. She’d refer to me as her "girlfriend" and I’d call her on that. She’d always seem surprised by my objections to her proprietary language. I began to realize that she really DIDN'T hear that it wasn’t a matter of semantics for me.

She started becoming impatient with our erotic energy play, pushing verbally for what to me felt like just plain "sex". I was upset by and angry at her attitude and tried to re-clarify what I was available for. She seemed to understand. Then she, just back from a trip, actually became physically pushy about sexual touching. It felt totally abusive to me. I immediately left and went home, furious.

As I walked the quarter mile back to my own cottage I understood that dialogue was no longer even possible with this person. That something had radically shifted from where things had been earlier on in our sharing. That what was going on now was entirely unacceptable, toxic and, for me, not available to negotiation. I was done!

Once home, feeling shaken and outraged, I wrote a letter telling her that I wasn’t any longer interested in relating with or talking with her. That it had become clear to me that she didn’t or couldn’t hear me in my own terms no matter how I tried to explain me to her. That I found her behavior unacceptable and abusive. That, given that this was my experience, I saw no point in attempting any further dialogue about my reasons for or my making of this decision. That I was absolutely and completely done with our sharing. I left the note in her mailbox in the middle of that night.

In the late morning of the next day, she arrived on my doorstep in a towering fury. Though I had nothing to say to her, I felt that, in all fairness, I needed to allow her the opportunity to respond to my letter. It also felt much safer to allow this than to refuse her the opportunity to have her say. So, I stood there holding one hand over my heart and one over my solar plexus to insulate myself from her rageful energy. I made sure, too, to stay far enough away from her so that my body was outside the range of her swirling energy field.

She stalked back and forth across my studio for quite some time ranting and raging at me, "reading my beads," telling me what a manipulative, malevolent, spiritually fraudulent, people-user I was. One of my most vivid memories from her diatribe was of her telling me how despicable I was because I "used people and when I was no longer getting what I needed from a relationship, I’d just callously crumple it up and throw the person away like a used candy wrapper!"

It wasn’t easy to listen to her litany of complaint, her condemnations of me. Yet, I felt no need to defend myself against her accusations. I could understand how she could come to see me those ways. I could even let her know that I could understand how she could come to see me in those ways.. And, I could allow her to have her own perceptions of me. Both when they differed from my own perceptions of me and when they totally resonated with the lambastings I’d been used to receiving from my own inner critical voice.

At some point her rage was spent and she left. I was exhausted by the experience of holding myself safe and centered in the middle of her storming and raging at me. Yet, I also felt an extraordinary exhilaration! There I stood, solid and centered in my own love and acceptance of myself even as I fully comprehended how enraging and reprehensible my way of being in the world was for her. I could see me through her furious eyes and not change how I saw and felt about myself.

It was a huge milestone in my life. I certainly felt sad for the fact that my being me had contributed to her feeling such pain. But I was clear in myself that I hadn’t intended to cause such pain. I was clear that I had tried my best–repeatedly and obviously unsuccessfully–to communicate both what was so for me and the depth of my commitment to taking the best care of myself no matter what. I was clear that there was no way that she would ever see me in my own terms, no matter how endlessly I might try to explain myself. I was clear (and most amazed!) that I could allow her–without argument–to have her own negative interpretations/perceptions of me forever more. And, I was ABSOLUTELY clear that her treatment of me was not any longer in any way acceptable to me.

Both before and after this milestone, I have had several experiences of needing to leave friendships or relationships that have stopped working for or stopped feeling right for me. What Anita accused me of is actually true about me: When a friendship or relationship no longer nourishes or grows me, I do leave it. Time already shared and the depth of that past sharing are not, for me, reason to stay or to continue in a connection that no longer feeds my soul.

Before this threshold experience with Anita, I would feel really badly, really critical about myself whenever I would come to that place of being done with someone, some friendship or some relationship. I often stayed longer than I really wanted to in order to avoid having to live with their and my own negative opinion about me, about the quality of my friendship or about the authenticity of my caring. I often felt really badly about the fact that the ease and joy I’ve always felt in my own solitary company has made connections usually less important to me than they seemed to be for most other people. Or, made connections more easily expendable for me when they ceased to offer me more than I could offer myself.

By the time I’d arrived at this experience with Anita I had clearly come to a deep and full acceptance of who and how I was/am in the world of relatedness with other(s). I had come to appreciate that it did not matter whether where I was/am has to do with my woundedness or my wholeness. I’d recognized and accepted that it just was and is what seems to be so about me. I also came to realize that even when I do "full disclosure" in the early days of developing a connection, people do not necessarily understand or get the full implications of what I tell them about myself. And, I came to understand that sometimes there is nothing for it but to allow others to have their own readings and opinions of me while I stay clear about how I see/feel about me.

I’ve learned to accept that some friendships, while they can be incredibly rich and intense at the start, may only be right/nourishing for a "season" of my journey. Others start in the same rich and intense way and continue through endless and varied transformations and seasons. There’s no knowing which are which at the start. I now have my own permission not to continue in any connection beyond the season(s) in which it grows me. No matter what the person may think of me for leaving the connection.

As we practice and learn to fiercely, protectively mother all of our little and big selves, we come to be unconditionally accepting and loving of our whole, imperfect, still evolving, not-always-shining selves. Since our own good opinion of and love for ourselves doesn’t any longer depend on how anyone else sees us, we become more willing and able to allow others to have their own visions/versions of ourselves. We become less susceptible to others negating views of ourselves. Keeping our own loving, good opinion of ourselves doesn’t require that we invalidate or argue away other’s less loving experience of us. But, we may certainly choose not to be close with people whose views of us are unloving, negative or very discrepant from our own.

Consider loving and accepting yourself no matter what anyone else thinks or says about you,

P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!

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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 handcolored bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.

If you'd like a deck of your very own to support you in your journey, click here to download Order Form.

Please feel free to e-mail me at rposin@hotmail.com. to share your reflections and responses to any or all of what you find here . I'd really like to hear what touches and nourishes you!