Radical Relating: An Initiation To Love
Dear people,
while we are writing this Newsletter, the birds are singing by the window. This is the last week at the Lagoa house, and we will soon move to another house, as we said in last week's Newsletter.
Every place in this house, which sheltered us for more than a month, has memories of us. Crying, screaming, the smell of food being cooked, laughter, sharing, discoveries. The floor in the house is made of wood, so it's impossible to walk without anyone hearing you. We're together almost all the time, and discovering what it means to radically relate.
We have been 4 women in the house for almost two weeks: Vera is in Kenya doing an initiation together with Jaqueline and soon they will return home with Lisa Ommert and Kathrin Jehle also joining us in a few days.
What the four of us (Danielle, Sónia, Lisa and Anna) experienced this week, as we radically related to each other, was the tearing down of the walls that protect us from love.
The most difficult thing about an intimate relationship can be loving and being loved. Many of the survival strategies you created to protect your heart, you learned from a very early age. Maybe it was to adapt, to receive crumbs of love, or you may have even sworn never to open your heart again. When you have an intimate relationship, the structures of the box that protect your heart begin to crack, and memories come back, which can be terrifying.
One way or another we all went through this in the house, and maybe Vera and Jaqueline in Kenya too. We tried leaving the armor aside, and being with each other giving and receiving love. We were afraid, reactive, but we continued.
Yesterday we were on an online call together, two in each room. When the call ended we were all together with Sónia in her room, holding space for her to cross the walls that protected her from love. It was almost midnight and the four of us were there, in the room, in the intense heat, and committed to staying there together until Sónia finished the process.
Then we gathered in the kitchen for dinner and tapioca, love and salad, and we talked about how when we saw each other through the zoom windows on the online call we felt a lot of love for each other. When the monkeys started to make noise on the roof, we knew it was time to sleep.
We also wrote about our findings during this week in the articles below. And before finishing this Newsletter, we want to share with you a photo of our view of this house of love that we are saying goodbye to.
—— The Women Of Earth Bridge-House.
