The Power of Choosing
To Create Together & Be With Women
It was one of those dark, rainy and cold December days that feels like the sun never came out in the northeastern United States. I had been visiting my parents for a couple of weeks for Thanksgiving, with my brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and Jeff, the man I am romantically relating with. I was deep in my birth culture, in the context of modern culture, in New Jersey, just one short hour’s drive outside of New York City where I was born and ran the rat race in cycles until I left once and for all in September 2022.
I am smiling to myself writing this because I didn’t realize all of the layered contexts I was living inside of at this time when I said a full YES! to living in a Women’s Bridge House to explore Radical Freedom.
A new possibility started to form this Monday in New Jersey, just about a month ago, as I drove in dreary weather on a 4-lane highway to drop off Jeff at Newark Airport for a flight at 3 in the afternoon. He was off to Miami for a week and I was heading down to Guatemala the next day where we would meet up again. From Newark I went to go see Vera Franco, who was staying in Staten Island at Patricio Diaz’s house near the Ganas Community before she headed to Brazil. I brought some Guatemalan cacao and lots of tahini for us to make a warm, heart-opening elixir to enjoy together.
We settled into a couch and embarked on a conversation that brought me very liquid, something that seems to happen with me in connection with Vera more often than not, and I love it. We dug into the purpose of “being together” in romantic relationship and what it is unconsciously that keeps me so committed to the importance of this in my life. She landed in me a distinction between the Bright Principle of Being With and the unconscious purpose of being together, which I am still just beginning to examine how it works in me.
During this conversation, it was unveiled after excavating multiple layers, that the fear of being alone is what has been driving my (unmet childhood) need for togetherness, and that AT LEAST, if everyone else leaves me, I will still have this one person, this ever-loyal partner (or best friend or mother or so on), that will still be there for me no matter what. What a juicy breeding ground for unmeetable expectations and resentment galore!
In exploring the constructs of how I expect love to look like, I realized that in relating with people that I am interested in, am attracted to, or that I care about, there is something that I want from them: I am trying to meet a personal need by connecting with them, romantic or not. For example, it could be getting approval from an authority figure by saying the right thing, smiling to get attention from a man or woman, experiencing belonging by overly tending to my friendships so my friends need me, or working overtime without boundaries to be the perfect employee so my boss pays me.
Vera then brought the distinction of neutrality versus need-meeting in relating. I was shocked when I heard myself say out loud, “Isn’t relating boring when it is neutral?” And that was my X on the map.
I realized that all of my attractions to relate to someone, up until this point, had all been about getting my childhood needs met, and not at all about Being With. My whole life I had been going around, attempting to create exciting relating spaces that feed on the low drama of the impossible projection of expectations onto the people nearest and dearest to me so they could fulfill whatever I didn’t get as a child. WOW. Liquid state activated.
We flowed from here into what it means to become an empty vessel for the energies and intelligence of the forces of my Archetypal Lineage to come work through me. How can I unleash the power of being a neutral space so “I” can co-create and collaborate from a radically alive place in full service of humanity and this planet? And THIS is what I have believed to be boring?! How ABSURD! I have had it all backwards all this time and I had no idea.
When Vera then shared that she wanted to morph the seed of a Radical Freedom Bridge House into a Women of Earth Bridge House to explore Radical Freedom I had a clear, impulsive, alive, no-turning-back YES! Everything I have already written about here is exactly why I chose to say YES! to the initiation of joining this gameworld.
In Choosing to participate in the Women’s Bridge House I said YES! to: being in the presence and practice of radically dangerous women who bring me into a liquid state so my Being can evolve, practicing relating as a neutral vessel in service of the Bright Principles of Creation and Collaboration, letting land in my 5 Bodies the difference between the Bright Principle of Being With and unconscious need of being together, taking a stand for women living together to empower each other for their Beings to unfold, working on building my Inner Structure to truly support a life of Radical Freedom and aliveness, to fully tending to and stretching my capacity to hold space for each job ECCO puts on my plate, and many more magical experiential learnings that I am sure will happen that I don’t know about yet.
Choosing to join the Women’s Bridge House has also brought up many emotional fears and doubts such as: am I doing enough, am I showing up to support this project properly, am I honoring my commitments, am I really on women’s teams, will the man I romantically relate to find someone else or become disinterested if we spend a couple of months apart, is this what my Being really wants to be doing, will all of these amazing women see the imposter that I believe myself to be when we live together day in and day out with nowhere for me to hide?
Choosing to join the Women’s Bridge House also meant saying NO! to: staying committed to my emotional fears, remaining the same, playing it safe, being committed to my Box, finding excuses why not to go, creating confusion about all of the possibilities available to me, hiding my Under-, Middle- and Upperworlds, denying what my Being truly desires in order to protect various relationships in my life, knowing how it goes, seeking out other projects or trainings that I could be doing in Guatemala, Brazil, Europe or elsewhere, and more.
As I am writing this article, I made a choice to come to a virtual writing space with three other women who are in-person at that Bridge House now—Sónia, Alice and Vera. In choosing this, I said no to going to the weekly Sunday Kirtan that happens where I am in Guatemala for just a couple more weeks. I am really starting to experience the power of choice, and the discernment that is required to stay in alignment with my Being’s aliveness; in the initiations from child into adulthood that I am undergoing in this chapter of my life. There are so many things to choose from and the child in me wants to do them ALL! And yet, true aliveness, true creation, as I am just starting to taste it, comes from Choosing with a capital, Conscious, “C”. Sometimes the choices are obvious and sometimes they are not, or is this just a story to evade the clarity that is radiating out of my Being that I simply can turn towards and embrace at any time?
Since the Choice and Declaration for this Bridge House to exist occurred, I have experienced the Bright Principles dancing in pure Celebration about the Aliveness and Creation that is happening here!! Six women came together in a Telegram group with the shared Inspiration of their YES! A Bridge House Codex was written, shared and reviewed with Depth and Integrity. Locations for where the Bridge House could exist within Brazil were researched, proposed, refined, and detailedly decided upon with Precision and Collaboration.
The three women I mentioned before have now already kicked off the Bridge House in person in Brazil! Seeing them on the screen today, gathering to write together, I was overflowing with Archetypal energy pumping through me simply be being in the shared field created by the WOE Bridge House. I will join these women in mid-February after some other women will join in the meantime. Even more women are having conversaviews about joining to see if it is a fit for where they are at on their path now, and some are still deciding if they will choose to come or not. The seed has been planted, the seed is growing, and it all started with a choice.
A wise woman named Vera once said to me: “You are your own woman. Actions and inactions have consequence.”
So, I will end this article with one simple question: What are you Choosing today?