I’ll be gearing up for some announcements in the near future. One of those announcements will be my plans to leave some social media platforms behind and rely on my website for communicating with readers and fans. If you’d like to be in the loop or receive the updates first, please pop back to my main page and opt into the email announcements. Thank you all for being so incredibly supportive. I look forward to being able to continue writing and creating content for you all. 

It seems weird to be doing a mid-month update of intensely personal evolution even as the world is burning with much larger and more important issues to tackle. That being said, I don’t have the energy today to dig into those larger issues, so I’m updating with the lighter more frivolous goings on.

I realize this will come as a shock to longtime followers, but I’ve decided to start dating again. I know. Long story short, I started to peel the Band-Aid back, then figured…to hell with it, the world is on fire. So, I just ripped the bandage and…whoa, the flood gates opened.

Go figure. The most action or interest I’ve had in five years happens to be during a worldwide pandemic and under self-quarantine orders. It just goes to show my love life has the most epic crap timing. Then again, if you’ve been with me since the BlissQuest days, you already knew this. Also, turns out, dating via zoom is not awful. It’s rather nice, actually. So much less strain or stress involved. I dig it.

I started saying yes. I started reaching out to those I'm interest in. I dipped my toe in the water and my leg wasn’t chewed off by piranhas, so I guess I’ll keep saying yes for a bit and see what happens; see where it goes.

With all that, there’s a lot to unpack in the shift from considering leaving the woods for human relationships again. I won’t be leaving the woods for anything less than fucking spectacular, obviously. Yet I do recognize that my self-imposed hermitage is coming to an end. It’s in the air, the stars. I feel it when I’m casting. There’s a shift in the tone of light. It’s time.

It’s been tough to explain to men why I opted for hermitage. Either they assume I’m a man hater and was driven to isolation and seclusion by some awful experience and I must be damaged in some way (don’t worry, if I pick up that vibe from them I just quietly move along), or they seem to lump me into a female Unabomber category and stupidly ask if I own a gun. (Yep, I move along from those as well.) No less than five dudes in the last 30 days have asked me if I own a gun. Seriously guys, fuck off about asking a single woman who lives alone in the woods if she’s armed. It's hella creepy.

So, explaining hermitage seems like it should be relatively simple—turns out, it’s been more of a hurdle than I imagined. While I’ve explained myself more than I should or need to, it boils down to this statement that I’ve finally just made my go-to phrase to stop the question from being a thing: “I live where I have absolute peace and creative freedom. The world doesn’t come to me, I go to the world when I want something.”

I can see the glazed, blank expressions, and can usually tell right away if that made sense…and if it doesn’t, we’re not a match on the level of expectations for quality of life. I say thank you, and move on.

It’s been illuminating, really. Less so about men in general, most men are what they are, but mostly about what MY actual intentions are. Up until recently, I had no intentions around dating and or relationships. I had my hands and brain full of creativity and craft, and surviving the forest, there wasn’t time/energy/interest in dancing around the relationship topic. It started around January; a slow creeping shift in the season of quietude. Huh.

Stranger still, it became more urgent just before the quarantine. Then, woosh…the sensation of readiness to engage became a space of intense forced reflection. Serious self-reflection and deep shadow work. The kind of #shadowwork I haven’t dug into in a decade or more, so I was long overdue. I’m grateful I had the time to reflect that deeply in a space that allowed the kind of safety to really go into the realms. When I finally came back up for air the truth was a bright, burning glare.

My continued expansion, growth, and evolution is now at the point where true partnership and reflection in a union is the next phase of personal evolution.

Fucking hell.

The truly shitty part of this is, I can stay happily fulfilled, full of joy and freedom and bliss out here in my bubble, but I recognize there will be a limit on my expansion. It will be a level of happiness, true. It will be joyous and I’ll love it, true. But I am unlikely to go beyond this point of blissful expansion in my heart or energetic realm by myself.

BUT I’M SO HAPPY! So, what’s the harm in just staying as I am? Staying happy? Staying Free? Staying creative?

There is no harm in maintaining this contented space. Happiness has been a hard-won prize, it came at great cost, but I know now that I will always have it. I can always obtain it on my own. What I don’t know if I can do yet, it obtain it while in a partnership…that’s a bit trickier. Furthermore, as I work to understand personal story, community story, tribe and relationships in general—how do I deepen those understandings if I am approaching them from the place of being an island?

Damnit.

Gah! I feel stretched between two worlds. I suppose that’s what coming out of the wood and into the light is, really. One foot in the ethereal realm of creative immersion, driven by the urge to finally connect, share, grow—but reluctant to give up the security that is self-reliance and personal connection to being a wholly empowered individual.

My brain says, nope! My heart says, yes please! Bring the adventures! There’s a lot of wobbling back and forth between yep-nope-yep-nope-yep-nope.

Essentially, I don’t expect to be good at this right away. I’m flinchy and a little feral. I’m struggling to make sense of the scope this toe-dip will make to my story as a whole. I can’t see the big picture completely, yet. I’m still defining what I want and what I’ll willingly engage with. So—to practice, I’m saying yes to invitations. I’m sending invitations out. I’m sifting through the experiences to decide what will make my heart and mind align in a solid forward momentum toward a true partnership.

I’m looking for that connection that will excite me enough to release that last bit of stubborn grip on this old phase and charge forward delightedly to the next adventure with them.

I already know that nothing less than a sense of true partnership will interest me. I’d rather just keep my stasis in the woods and maintain my happy space. Only a leap for something beyond that is going to lure me out, so I’m trying to understand what that will look like so I can articulate it well, and look for it specifically when asking people out.

Yes, I do the asking when I’m interested. I’m not a wilting violet waiting breathlessly to be chased. I’ve got shit to do, and worlds to build. I get on with the getting it on. That’s adulting at its finest, yo. (Also, true partnership recognizes initiative is taken by whomever gets there first, right? Or…whomever rolls the best on 10D….)
DM never said “roll for initiative” but really meant, only guys can take that initiative. So, if I’m stepping out-- I’m doing it with my hands on my dice pack, and my chin up.

Like I said, a weird mid-month update considering the world as it is. For folks who’ve been following for some time, I imagine this is something you knew I needed long before I did. Thanks for not rubbing that in. I’m getting to it in my own sweet time, apparently, and by my own unorthodox strategy. (I even signed up for a matchmaking service. I know. I know.)
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As I mentioned on Instagram, I usually don’t post the deeply personal nature of shadow work or my sketchbook where I work these concepts out. But in the spirit of this world needing what feels like a bit more acknowledgement that shadow work needs to be done, and deep personal development is both vulnerable and difficult—these are the two sketches from my notepad that define this internal transition as I’ve come to the awareness of being open to possibilities of partnership and creative emotional collaboration. 

The first: The Hanged Man/ Hermit tarot card prompts of retreating to the woods to do the work. Chrysalis.
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Essentially, by the time I finished the second sketch, my mental/emotional reality had shifted and I knew the hermitage phase was closing out even though I have no idea what the next phase will actually look like or how it will come about.
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Shadow work leaves you raw and exhausted, that’s why it’s work. But the final product is relief, optimism, and a new sense of freedom. It just so happens in this case, that freedom is dancing with the idea of combining superpowers with another human being.

​Curious, indeed.

#shadowwork #tarot #elderglade #dating #gettingbackoutthere