How to fall in love
There are so many of us seeking love in the world.
We look for it within ourselves and we look for it outside of ourselves. We search for it via swiping and apps, we look out for it across crowded rooms and we embrace it in words, affection and touch.
Love is multifaceted, intangible and cannot be defined the same way by any two people on this earth. We all experience it in different ways, let it flow through us at different speeds and open our hearts to it at different points in our lives.
My journey to love is an interesting one which is what I wanted to share with you today. This doesn’t come from a place of self-satisfaction that I’ve found love and I can now tell others how to find it.
Instead, it comes from a place of realisation that I wanted to capture and share with the world, for I see my journey reflected in so many people around me, and if I can share just a little bit of how love came to find me, it might also find someone else who’s heart is aching to love too.
I, like so many of us, have a big capacity for love. Not only do I have those big loving vibrations in my Soul Contract where I can experience and share love in even the lowest vibrations, but I just love to express it too.
But, I had a winding road to this capacity for love to be fully realised. I wrote about it once before and now I have a great need to write about it once again.
Heartbreak when young can close the heart
I had so much love growing up from my parents and in my home, and I know how incredibly lucky I am. There was however a time, perhaps when I was separated from that love, or lost my belief in it, and found it a little hard to recover.
In fact, it took me all of my twenties to find that love again.
I had a few casual flings when I was a teenager but I pushed them all away, not wanting them to get too close. I now realise I was scared that they would truly see me and I wasn’t sure if I was lovable enough for someone to love. To protect my heart I pushed away.
It’s interesting that the people who push love away are often called the heartbreakers yet they are the ones who already have a broken heart and are desperately scared not to be so vulnerable again.
And then there came the great heartbreak. It seems so small and insignificant, that one summer fling could have such devastating consequences on my heart, but that it did.
He cut it off, out of the blue, without me knowing or understanding why, and then proceeded to become involved with one of my so-called best friends at the time. It sounds like the classic teenage soap drama but it’s these seemingly trivial things that happen when we’re young, not quite fully formed, not quite sure of ourselves and who we are, that can be the most terribly wounding.
My heart hurt for years afterwards without me even being aware of it. I had unconsciously tucked it tightly away and closed the doors to my love, not wanting to be in that vulnerable position again.
What happened next was a classic story that I know is reflected in so many other young women. I lowered my value and sought approval in men in the only way I knew how. The only way I believed that I could be worthy to them. It wasn’t through meaningful love and relationships, I didn’t understand or have experience in those things.
I measured my worth through my attractiveness to men. This was how I tried to prove my worth, over and over again. And it felt so empty. I remember the feelings so clearly; like this hollow, grey feeling that I couldn’t shake off.
It took me years to unravel this pattern and understand it for what it was. I didn’t believe I was capable of love. I didn’t believe I was worthy of it. I didn’t believe a man could love me for who I was. Having grown up with so much love I don’t know how I came to believe these things, but somehow I did.
Exploring love through Kinesiology and my Soul Contract
Having studied my Soul Contract I can clearly see how the energies in there have shaped and moulded this story. I have the big 12-3 energy coming through not once, but twice in my chart, which is all about feeling worthy to come out of hiding and share myself with the world.
I also have the gentle, sensitive 8-8’s that feel everything around them so deeply yet refuse to feel and acknowledge their own emotions, alongside the tender-hearted 7-7’s which play a huge role in this story. The 7 energy represents the heart, healing it and opening it up again. Deep down at their core the 7’s can feel so unworthy of love, closed off to it and scared to open themselves up and let their true selves be seen.
7’s wear a mask to hide their pain and this is exactly what I did for so long. This is eventually why I stopped drinking alcohol. Alcohol was the glue that kept the mask in place and I no longer wanted to wear it. I wanted to know that I was enough and could be my true self in any situation, without needing the confidence boost or crutch of a drink.
Yet there’s only so long that we can wear a mask without it slipping.
When I was 26 I suffered burnout after overworking, and over giving, leading me to feeling quite despairing, unable to know what was wrong or what to do about it. This is a classic 12-3 energy from the Soul Contract. I morphed from this outgoing, smiley person to someone who felt this unbearable lowness and didn’t know how to handle it.
All this sadness and grief could no longer be contained and it had sought its opportunity to pour itself out of me by whatever means necessary.
This is how I came to be lying under a blanket, in a dimly-lit room smelling of essential oils, being gently listened to by a lovely Kinesiologist called Kim. In this safe and loving environment I could finally let go and allow myself to feel what was really going on.
The shame that keeps our hearts closed
It took me by surprise that on the second visit to her I shared something I had never told anyone. I told her that I had never been in love, never even been in a proper relationship and that at the age of 26 I thought there was something deeply wrong with me.
It was this eternal shame that kept me imprisoned in this belief, for this is what shame does. The more we judge and shame ourselves, the more it locks the emotional programming in place.
Confronting the programme was the key that unlocked my heart. In the session we muscle-tested which belief I was holding and it was “I am unworthy of love”.
When I said the statement out loud my body had a huge release. A heavy, dark mass of energy erupted from the depths of me in great, heaving tears followed by uncontrollable laughter. Everyone experiences emotional release in different ways and this, I’ve come to learn, is how I do it; tears and lots of laughter!
And this is when the magic happened. Just a few weeks later I met the man who was to become my first boyfriend, the safe harbour for my heart and the person who showed me I was loved and capable of love.
I had taken down the forcefield around my heart of shame and grief, which had allowed this new possibility into my life. This is what healing does. This is why I’m passionate about the power of clearing emotional programming. This is how radically life can shift when you get to the core beliefs that have dominated your life, and shift them out of your energy.
The simple truths of finding love
There are many sayings about love.
One that was often quoted to me was ‘love comes when you least expect it’, and it’s actually true. The reason for this is that when we let go of seeking the thing that we want, letting go of our demands and expectations, we can open ourselves up to allow the Universe to surprise and delight us with the unexpected.
This is the beautiful, freeing concept of Aparigraha, the spiritual law of non-attachment; desire without longing, opening up to all that may come and trusting that what we’re seeking is also seeking us.
When we long for something, not trusting it will arrive in Divine timing, we’re actually vibrating at the energy of lack and attachment. All energetic frequencies that block the very thing that we’re so desperate to attain.
The other saying is ‘you can only find love when you love yourself’ which I really don’t feel is helpful or true in any way at all. We’re all on an eternal journey of self-acceptance and true self-love, and our relationships with others is part of our learning process of love.
Everyone is worthy and deserving of love in their lives, no matter what stage of the journey they are on, but there are so many factors at play that impact our experience of love; our childhoods, the examples of love we witnessed around us growing up, our soul contracts, our level of self-worth, our past lives, our karmic attachments with others, and so it goes on.
But, I do believe, at my core and from my own experience, that the more we are at peace with ourselves, the more we radiate this energy back into our lives.
I am in the most wonderful relationship now, what I call ‘the big love’ of my life, for which I feel so deeply grateful.
I don’t believe this relationship happened by chance. When I met him I was in a wonderful place; I had recently cleared another belief around feeling worthy of love with Divine Healing, was living a life that felt so aligned, and I was putting up boundaries around me, finally knowing what I really deserved. In this energy he gravitated into my life and for the past year has been teaching me how to love and how to be loved.
He is opening my heart with infinite tenderness and care, letting me know it is safe to be me and I am accepted and loved for who I truly am.
I wish this love for everyone, for it is deeply healing and catalytic. And if I can find the love that I never believed I was deserving of or capable of finding, then all of us can find this love. Open your heart, heal the hurt and let go, and that love will come.
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