Note: Standing in for Amanda Moreno’s regular column today is her essay for Cosmophilia, in which she reflects on the experience of editing the featured articles in Cosmophilia: You Belong Here, and on the perspective she has gained over the past year. — Amanda P.

by Amanda Moreno

Being immersed in the “You Belong Here” theme for the past several months, I have a heart that is bursting with gratitude. My experiences with the authors I’ve gotten to work with and their incredible stories and hearts have been humbling and inspirational. There are so many of us in the world trying to engage our lives more consciously, and while that path might feel isolating at times, we are not alone in our efforts.

Collage by Amanda Moreno.

My own reflections on the past year have given me perspective about the incredible shifts we’ve experienced, not just in 2014 but throughout the Uranus-Pluto square, about to make its final exact contact in March.

I’m filled with a sense of awe and hope — and quite a bit of exhaustion as well. I’m hoping we might soon begin to integrate and synthesize our collective journey into the underworld.

I’m not trying to be delusional, here. I am in no way saying that the final Uranus-Pluto square symbolizes an end to the need for change, for paradigm-busting (or bridging), for revolution, and for continued emphasis on increased awareness. I still feel that persistent sense of urgency, reminding me of how much still needs to be done to shift our culture to a more sustainable model. We are not out of the woods.

With that in mind, I’m becoming even more aware of just how much we have to do, now that the lightning bolts have hit and the underworld has turned itself inside-out. We have so much work to do to assimilate what we’ve learned, re-imagine our personal and collective roles, and then build the necessary bridges to bring these visions to reality.

As Saturn has shifted into Sagittarius, I’m discovering something magical and yet anxiety-provoking. It seems that so many of us have gone through such substantial rebirth we are left without narratives that help us to make sense of our lives. What a magical and harrowing thing, to be on the precipice of such great change. The process of rebirth provides strong medicine for the soul, yet there is hesitance in stepping out of the shadows.

The magic lies in that we get to really rebuild our collective and personal stories, reevaluate and restructure our beliefs. We’re returning from the underworld and the ground is ripe for planting. But my, oh my, how tempting it can be to cling to those old scripts, or let them take over when we face the feelings of emptiness that can follow transformation!

There is still wisdom in those old stories, however. The stories shared in these pages, for example. Stories of human beings dancing, laughing, fumbling, bumbling and trudging through life, making their own sense of things and using their experiences to guide them.

It’s an incredible journey we’re on, being alive at this moment in time. Communities of like-minded folks are important for many reasons, one of which is to allow space for despair and disillusionment, some members holding the vision when others just can’t see the light. I wonder sometimes about my own attachment to being an outsider, and what it would take to let go of that identity. Perhaps belonging to a community of outsiders? Time will tell. But I’m looking forward to figuring it out.

Amanda Moreno is an astrologer and general fan of practical woo and paradigm-busting. She can be found in the virtual world at aquarianspirals.com.

By Amanda Moreno

I usually try to ignore Mercury retrograde. I mean, I do the whole re-think, re-view, re-check thing. I try not to submit grants (I’m a grant writer in one of my other lives) and I pay closer attention than normal to what I say, but by and large I shy away from anything with lots of hype. And boy oh boy, does Mercury retrograde come with hype.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I also try not to comment on the fact that I normally get through these periods unscathed, lest I bring on some scathing. Sometimes I’ll feel it emotionally, but that’s about it.

This time, however, I noticed the glitches creeping up days before Mercury stationed, and now I’m just annoyed. Because, you see, my iPod just died — and then I learned that they don’t make those anymore. And because my brain has been a ball of loose ends with no hope of connecting the dots, and I have grant deadlines to meet. And because I have now written this column not once, not twice, but three times and somehow lost it all three frickin’ times.

So you will not be reading about mandalas and polycentric models of the psyche. I’ve had to re-think my original plan. My attempts to move out of the realms of personal narrative writing have been very firmly thwarted.

*Enter a 15 minute pause while I stare out the window.*

I really like Aquarius. And by “like” I actually mean love. How is this relevant? Well, because Mercury is retrograding through Aquarius, and because Aquarius is my Sun sign. Growing up, I was a part of the Catholic cult for a moment, a fundamentalist Christian cult for a second, and bounced from Methodist church to Methodist church in the in-between stages. The scripture and gospels were fairly irrelevant to me, and nothing really spoke to the strange nature of my experiences. What I loved about the various churches was the sense of community they provided. We Aquarians sure do love a good tribal vibe — even though we often feel like complete outsiders, or make ourselves that way. We’re weird. It’s true.

When I was 12 or 13 I came across a poster in some kitschy shop in the mall that said “Aquarius” at the top. Lo and behold, it spent three paragraphs describing someone who was somehow like me. It explained my experience. It spoke to my soul. I became hooked on astrology, at least in theory — the real hooking didn’t take place for about a decade. I soon thereafter read a book that said something along the lines of, “Aquarians travel further in their minds in a day than most people do in a year.” Uh, yup.

I love the Aquarian ideals — brotherly love, progressive thinking, evaluating the structures of society to see if they’re still working and relevant and if not, breaking through them (I am indeed a fan of the Uranus-ruled Aquarius, although the Saturn rulership is clearly important as well).

I also tend to think of Aquarius as the sign of individuation, of finding one’s own path and breaking away from the collective, which makes things confusing when you think of Aquarius as a tribe-oriented sign, as tribes don’t tend to like outsiders. That seeming sense of paradox is so important to astrology as a whole.

In fact, that conflict — the Aquarian/11th house affinity for tribe and friendship — is a core conundrum. In my experience it mainly manifests as a longing for tribe conflicting with a feeling that I’ll always be an outsider, that I will never truly belong — at least when I’m feeling low.

Aquarius, to me, is also very much about detachment, particularly detachment as a function of trauma. In evolutionary astrology, Aquarius, Uranus and the 11th house indicate tendencies toward and experiences of trauma and fragmentation. As the sign associated with individuation, or the process of following the path of the soul and differentiating from the group, it is the sign of the outsider or exile. The beauty of the mind is that it can see far into the future, and the danger of the mind is that we can get stuck there, bypassing emotion, especially when the body has become an unsafe place to be. We can also be ostracized for seeing something that seems weird or different before our culture is ready for the idea.

I find the detachment most prominently in my own life when I head full-speed into an experience that I know will be intense but sounds so interesting. For example, as I explore my kinky self, someone will say to me something like “Hey, Can I tie you up spread eagle on this massage table?” And I’ll say, “Sure! Sounds interesting!” I then have to make space for my emotional body to respond — or not, depending on the situation.

I can’t even tell you the number of times in the past six months I’ve experienced the disconnect between the Aquarian part of me that finds super sexy kinky experiences to be fascinating and interesting and the 4th house Scorpio Moon part of me that is extraordinarily sensitive and vulnerable (and, well, totally down for intensity too). Bridging the two is a matter of letting myself feel the intensity and then processing it later, rather than bypassing it all together.

So, what’s the point? Well, the point is that I’ll hopefully have a more cohesive blog for you next week. In the meantime, I’m going to take some advice from a recent Planet Waves horoscope for Aquarius and review the past six years of my life. I’m also going to give in to that urge to keep staring out the window in reverie. Mercury is dredging something up, and I’m curious to see what it is.

By Amanda Moreno

I have a confession to make. I have not really been following the Charlie Hebdo story. I’ve pretty much tuned out of world news entirely, although I do pay attention a bit more at the local level.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I say that and then realize that for me, ‘tuning out’ still involves paying attention. I still see headlines; I still talk to people. I still listen to Planet Waves FM.

But by and large, my distrust in the media is so great that I’ve become apathetic to world news and more likely to browse reader comments to articles, or to stare at pictures to glean what I can from the images, or to scan The New York Times as I wait for my coffee in the morning.

I’m grateful to know that people here at Planet Waves are paying attention and reporting and sifting through disinformation. I myself can no longer do it for the most part. And it’s not out of apathy but out of general distrust of every news source and a belief that I can help in other ways.

In the interest of an abrupt subject change, while I once again find myself in awe of the distortions of religion, what I have been noticing in the past week is that the theme of how we create meaning keeps coming up. You know how I have been told to create meaning? By making babies.

My upper(ish) middle class upbringing instilled in me the belief that I was to graduate from college, begin a career, get married and start having babies before the age of 30. Seems like a fairly typical tale, and in so many ways having children and building life and creating meaning around them has become the substitute for religion. We humans do tend to need to engage that meaning-making function, and the Judeo-Christian myth sure has made it easy to make child-bearing the end-all, be-all of ensuring a life filled with meaning. Unfortunately it doesn’t work for everyone, which makes the monomyth quite problematic.

I deviated from that norm around the age of 21 in favor of figuring out who I am and what I love (mainly through following Dave Matthews Band around) — and the resulting goals for my life did not include having babies, although I reserve the right to change my mind at any point.

Don’t get me wrong — I support people who choose the breeding path. I know some really amazing people who have some really amazing babies and I’m so happy to be a part of their lives. Furthermore, I’m a big fan of the act that leads to creating babies. It’s one of my favorite acts in the world.

I, on the other hand, have suspected since approximately age 18 that I likely would not have babies. For many reasons.

For example, I’m a fairly easygoing person. But as an easygoing person, I’m also quite sensitive. So when I realize that most of my blood relations voted for George Dubya not once but twice, or that radioactive water is leaking into the ocean to the tune of several hundred tons per day and that people consistently support and justify the use of nuclear energy, or that our ground water is contaminated, our air is questionable, food sources have to be consciously thought about, and on and on…well, I’m aware that I would likely become a rabid control freak if I had children. I would probably need to move to the middle of nowhere and would feel permanently guilty, and guilt is an emotion I’ve so far avoided for the most part in my life. Unless I’ve done something wrong. In which case I apologize and do what I can to correct the situation. And I think that’s the function guilt is supposed to serve (though I know guilt is an incredibly complex emotion, and I hope to tackle it more thoroughly in a later column).

I also have huge plans for my life — dreams and goals that require a large amount of freedom. I don’t know that I will reach these goals while I still have eggs to spare, and I’m OK with that.

In recent months, however my reasoning mind has met its match. The biological urge to have children has gotten so profoundly distracting that I’ve become completely convinced handbooks should be written to help women who do not want children deal with this shit. It is absolutely unbelievable. My sweetie can joke about having babies and my palms start sweating, my mouth waters, and it’s all I can do not to… well… make him put his money where his mouth is.

I’ve learned fascinating things about my own cycle and about the female sex drive. I’ve really gotten in tune with the fact that said sex drive is full and constant (well, I’ve always been in touch with that), and that it’s just as intense when I’m fertile as when I’m not. That’s an entirely different discussion. Oh, the power of feminine sexuality.

I’ve also been forced to look at the quality of the urges and place them into context of what I can actually have in my life, and what I want to cultivate. What I’m discovering is an urge for family that is so intense that sometimes I don’t know what to do with myself. If I start to lean into it, I get anxious because parts of me don’t believe I can ever have it. Then there are the parts of me that get anxious because I don’t want to have to subscribe to a model of what that family should look like.

I’m also discovering that inner child work apparently goes on forever. That I’m learning to parent myself and a little girl inside of me, who has so many tears that I’m sometimes afraid it’ll never change. Which is where the process of unconditional love comes in, I suppose. Patience, dedication, loyalty and unconditional love to the parts of me that are still struggling despite years of work, and who still feel utterly alone despite an external world that tells me I definitely am not.

There’s insecurity there, too. I know world events are constantly reverberating through to my core. Mass shootings, natural disasters, rallies and protests… It’s hard for an adult to feel secure in this world, let alone a child who has not yet been conditioned to shut down and shut it out.

In a wonderful little check-in via text with a friend just now, we had a mutual acknowledgement of the desire for family and were able to put it in the context of the Mars-Neptune conjunction. Astrology is, after all, our favorite way of making meaning. There is something elusive about emerging desires right now, allowing us or forcing us to get in touch with that which we may never be able to possess.

So I’m just going to sit with that for a while and try not to jump to conclusions — or to just give in and have a baby because my body is telling me to.

Ah, the cyclical nature of being. I’ve always been fond of philosophizing about concepts like soul fragmentation, reincarnation and the nature of existence. I’m quite at home in my beliefs, open to changing them should my experience dictate that they’ve become irrelevant, but I’ve never been interested in debate or in proving that I’m right and you’re wrong.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

Belief and truth are fluid and subjective in my world, and to me that fluidity is the mark of mature psychology, although I’m aware that the culture at large views it quite differently.

The work I do definitely revolves around the belief that reincarnation and past lives are ‘facts’ of existence. When it comes down to it, I’m not too concerned about whether or not it’s Absolutely True, but instead concerned with the healing that can come from such a perspective and from tools that help us to engage life that way. Add to that the fact that so many of the world’s spiritual systems point towards cyclical phases of being, as well as my own experiences in alternate realities, and again I’m at home with my beliefs and can hold space for yours, too.

The Tibetan Buddhist understanding of death and the afterlife inform the kind of regression work I do. In short, it says that there are certain traumas that survive death, traveling through the various etheric bodies in between and throughout incarnations (I highly recommend watching this video  for a compelling look at the Tibetan Book of the Dead).

My summary of the idea is this: when a person does not die consciously, they do not know what happens as they are transitioning out of the body. They often die with a phrase or ‘complex’ running through their head. That complex (e.g., “I always have to do it alone” or “If I don’t get away I’ll die!”) chases us through the bardo states as a demon or demons, and we jump into the first cave to hide. The cave, then, is the womb, and we burst into the world with the same complex active within us. I suppose this gives some credence to the idea that we’re born with PTSD.

There is one component of my belief system that I’m sometimes hesitant to approach or convey, especially to clients. I do believe that we choose at least some aspect of our experiences in each life — the parents we are born to and the time and place we arrive.

I don’t have an allegory for how this works, and I don’t have any ‘direct’ experience of it, as none of my bardo state memories include that component — although I’m quite familiar with the state of being confused and stuck in the afterlife — but it’s what rings true for my soul. If time is a sphere, and fragmentation is a natural state, perhaps part of us is somewhere in the clouds deciding on experiences while other parts are fleeing and still others are stuck, or happy and at rest. I’m sure there are plenty of texts on the subject.

The belief that ‘I chose this’ has brought me great solace at times. It allows me to make meaning out of events, particularly the difficult ones. I’m able to center myself in the knowledge that there is a lesson my soul is trying to learn. I’m able to imagine some aspect of myself, and perhaps the other that I am interacting with, floating in some other realm, looking down and laughing at the predicament we’ve gotten ourselves into in the great cosmic game called Humans Incarnating Unconsciously. It’s a framework that gives me perspective both in immediate situations and over the long view.

There is conflict, however. It is tremendously insensitive, and perhaps even detrimental, to convey this belief to someone who is currently experiencing grief or trauma, or someone who has experienced a nightmarish childhood, especially if it’s outside of their range of conceptualization. Victimization is such a complex thing and its processes need to be honored on whatever timeline they develop.

It is while pondering these things that I remember how important it is that experience play a central role in defining truth, and the importance of holding space for contrary and different beliefs while remaining grounded, although perhaps not entrenched, in our own. I suppose that’s where the Sagittarius-Gemini axis comes into play: Sagittarius being associated with Truth, and Gemini with curiosity and mapping and dialogue for the sake of dialogue (rather than winning). In any case, I’m looking forward to delving into these topics more in the months and years to come. There is so much to learn…and experience!

By Amanda Moreno

I’m in the process of reflecting on the incredible year that has been 2014, and I have to say I’m hesitant to put things into words at this point. Although I’ve been writing about much of the restructuring and growth in this forum, it still feels too tender to be concretized by words.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I’ve spent time this week going through my journals from this year, specifically the 40 or so pages from my five weeks spent immersed in ‘the work’ while in Florida. These reflections as well as a whole bunch of synchronicities and the cards in my new tarot deck (side note: after four months of searching, I finally found a deck that gave me that love-at-first-sight glow of knowing!) have been echoing one theme: major rebirth. An entirely new cycle beginning. Resolution and purification of some very old core complexes.

This year has been a monumental one in my life at all levels, and I’m happy to be getting positive affirmation and reinforcement, even if there are still parts of me that doubt that I’ve really changed any patterns at all. Perhaps that doubt will keep me humble and honest? I hope so.

Long-held narratives surrounding relationships of all kinds, the anticipation of trauma, and what it means to be of service while having strong boundaries have broken open to more hope and possibility. The resulting upsurge of encounters with my vulnerability and insecurity has helped me to understand just how sensitive I am — and what a blessing that can be, even as I fumble through getting to know myself as an emotional being. I feel like a child in so many ways.

I’ve been blessed in the past year to finally begin to experience the true merging of career and personal path. Vocation in its true form — as Jung used it, mainly as the path towards individuation — is being realized. I can remember specific moments this year when I claimed the labels “astrologer” and, dare I say it, “writer.” I’m so hesitant to claim labels other than my name, so these moments were breakthroughs for me. Creating a sustainable way to live my calling is an adventure I just can’t turn down.

I wrote the above, and then found myself in a many-hours-long plunge into a well of emotions. It felt like all of the old stuff rushing to the surface, like a greatest hits sample-platter of all the things I thought I cleared and healed this year.

This emotional plunge led to a fitful night of moving between sleeping and dreaming and crying. To find comfort and stop some unnecessary mind-fucking, I pulled out Caitlin Matthews’ book on Sophia.

During my time in Florida, I was enchanted by a mega-swarm of synchronicities that kept showing me that Sophianic mythology is of huge importance to my path. I gained more understanding of what I’m here to do and came into contact with the heart of my lineage. This feeling of homecoming happened so frequently this year. It seems to be something that happens as consciousness becomes aware of what the soul knows, tapping into ancient memory.

As lie in my bed, the emotions continued to build. I did my best not to assign meaning and words, but to instead let the emotions come out. At first they trickled slowly, but then gushed out in a torrent. I kept in mind the knowing so supported by my lessons in divine wisdom, courtesy of my run-ins with Sophia: I am here to anchor love. Love is really all there is.

I could feel a particularly insidious old pattern arising: a pattern of amping up drama until someone noticed (they rarely ever do, I’ve come to find out). As the grief intensified I was reminded of my new narrative, that I am someone who asks for, receives and gives support. I managed to find my words, and said out loud to my sweetie (at 4:00 am): “Too much sadness.”

I felt his arms around me (oh, how long I’ve waited for someone to hold me during these times — thank you, 2014!) and the instinct to run and hide and cry in private overwhelmed me so much that I started to crawl to the edge of the bed.

And then I stopped, that I could receive the comfort I had asked for, and he curled himself around my sitting form, and I just let it flow without understanding why.

Finally, words came: I don’t want anyone to suffer anymore. I could feel all around me the acuity of the suffering in the world, the acuity of the suffering in the various lines and lineages I’m a part of, my heart open and tapped in and grieving.

I heard myself saying, “Nothing ever changes,” even as I had an awareness that it felt like I was saying goodbye to something. A swarm of negative thinking, beauty and pain melding to create tension on the heart, and the resulting catharsis. The realization that so much of my personal ‘anchor love and light here’ mantra is based in my ability to open my heart and feel what is going on with my loved ones and in the world.

We have all been through so much during this Uranus-Pluto square. Understatement of the year, I know. And really, it’s not limited to just this small blink in time, as the epic of our collective time on this Earth ripples out in a sphere. We’re nearing the ‘end’ of this one little transformative passage, and I wonder all the time what we will do with what we’ve learned. I wonder if the depths of the Plutonian underworld will be able to integrate the sudden barrages of Uranian lightning bolts. It’s a line of thinking that is something along the lines of: if the soil is not ready, the seed will not take.

And so the prioritization of inner work and the spiritual path continues, even as I grapple with understanding just what that means. I have so much gratitude for getting to participate in the world stage at such a difficult, tumultuous, inspirational and magical time.

Thanks for reading.

As I’ve mentioned before, I tend to dread this time of year. This time around, however, December has been pretty amazing. It’s also been incredibly busy and full of hustle and bustle and socializing and some delicious experimentation. I’ve been enjoying myself and loving life.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I have, however, noticed a certain theme coming to my attention more than normal: that this time of year is ‘supposed’ to be about quiet, silence, reflection, ‘going inside,’ etc. I agree — normally I’m all about those things, especially right around now. But this year the hustle and bustle has felt good. I haven’t felt like I’ve been missing anything.

I went to a ‘sacred sexuality’ gathering this past weekend. It’s a group I’ve been meaning to attend for a few years, but hadn’t due to timing and apathy and general hesitance to walk into situations where I can’t gauge what the energy will be. The focus of the group this time around was “the fallow time,” and we just did some really simple ritual. Nothing at all sexy, although it was quite intimate.

When the lights went down for the ritual and the silence began, the simple candlelight brought me into that familiar light trance feeling. I realized there, in a small group of strangers, that I have been neglecting the inner in favor of the outer and that it’s important that I change that. I sank into how good the silence felt. Listening to a poem. Listening to personal offerings from my fellow ritualists. I just remained silent.

I realized that I had an instinct at the beginning of the month to plan for the last two weeks of the year to be quiet and reflective in honor of the torrent of change that has been 2014 (And much of 2013 too, for that matter. Well, shit. I guess it goes back to like 2009?). Time for integration and healing and hopefully some long steeps in tubs of hot water.

I also realized that I haven’t really committed at this point to doing anything like that at all. I see myself happiest in the forest with maybe a friend or lover and a lot of silent simplicity. I could probably keep rushing through the month and be just fine (although I can feel my immune system starting to disagree with that), but there are several astrological events in the next week or so that are such fantastic opportunities for ritual, intention setting, reflection and honoring of all that has happened this year.

I am hard pressed to let opportunities like these go by unmarked. The solstice, New Moon in Capricorn, and Uranus stationing direct all happen in the same day (today!). And then there’s that blessed event I’ve been giggling about for a month now — Saturn getting the hell out of Scorpio. Hooray!

Writing a weekly column on the topic of ‘spirituality’ has been an interesting adventure for the past six months. Most weeks I can find a thread that sparks my heart and makes the words flow. This week, however, I’ve felt a flatness whenever I try to write. Or a lack of time when inspired to write about something more in depth that could use some academic backup or research. I’ll admit, sexy explorations have trumped writing this week. My heart (and my body) is quite happy about that.

So in light of the above, and in reverence for the fact that we are heading into a week during which the astrology is inviting us to re-frame our narratives, as both Ms. Painter and Mr. Wallick have said, I have an invitation for myself and for any of you who’d like to join in.

Let’s make a point of reflecting in the next week, shall we? Perhaps that means an exploration into the events of the year and a re-collection so that we can begin the integration process. Perhaps it’s something deeper than that, an inquiry into our shadows and attachments so that we can consciously let things go during this potent phase. How can we reframe our personal stories, and how have we? How can we celebrate that?

Next week I’ll share with you what I’ve learned. I’m grateful for a forum like this that promotes accountability. I’d invite you also to share something about what you learn in the process, at whatever level you’re comfortable with. We have a wonderful container here at Planet Waves, and there’s nothing quite like the power of being witnessed.

May you find joy, comfort, silence, or whatever it is you need at this time.

I have a confession to make right now, before we journey any farther together. I need to reveal something that makes me somewhat uncomfortable.

I am of the Pluto in Libra generation.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

Not that that’s a bad thing, really. But I’ve come to realize that my Libran shadows are so deep, and those karmic patterns so entrenched that anything Libra tends to make me squirm.

When I get a glimpse of the not-so-shiny Libra shadow (placation, for example) I cringe. So I’ll say it — my name is Amanda and I have Pluto in Libra (in the 3rd house) and the South Node in the 7th house in Aquarius (that’s a Libra house).

I practice Evolutionary Astrology, so Pluto and the nodes of the Moon are super-important. Using this form of astrology, I’ve been able to understand that within my karmic past lie some tendencies towards getting tripped up by decisions I have made or that others have made for me. Usually involving betrayal, abandonment and other Scorpionic themes. The path of individuation has been thwarted, and this time around I’ve chosen to work on that.

Relationships, by virtue of my karma, my choices, and the path I’ve chosen or been led to, are part of my spiritual path. It’s the path of all of those in my generation, if you ask me. The healthy formation of human relationship is vital to the healing of our world, and that’s what we Pluto in Libras are trying to figure out.

Getting to know my chart as it is expressed in my life has helped me to identify that authenticity and celebration of myself as an individual are crucial to my growth. I’ve also come to understand that part of my process of healing involves relationships that support me as an individual. Furthermore, there is a need to revisit the karmic past, to revisit old ways of engaging relationship and then do something differently in order to heal. Paradoxes abound.

In summary: I’ve never had conventional relationships. Several years back I encountered the book The Ethical Slut, and immediately rejoiced that there were other people engaging sexuality and relationship differently from the norm. Then in the summer of 2011 I came across this random podcast — Planet Waves FM — and the host (our dear friend Eric) was interviewing someone at a “Poly conference” or something like that. My jaw hit the floor.

After hearing that podcast, I delved into the world of non-monogamy, first intellectually, and then practically. I floundered, I flailed, and I re-wrote my entire personal myth of soul mate and relationship while trying to figure out how in the hell to stand up for myself in relationship. I discovered that I can make entire mental constructs around an idea, and that I have to make sure those constructs resonate with my experience rather than just serving as rationalizations for enduring or continuing bad behavior.

Changing conditioning around relationships, and the cultural construct that monogamy and commitment are synonymous, can be really fucking grueling work. In my experience, no matter how liberated or progressive-thinking the individual, the thought of non-monogamous relationships is oftentimes too much for a person to grasp. The monogamy myth is perhaps one of the most insidious I’ve encountered.

I’m not comfortable building my identity around a relationship orientation. But I am clear that maintaining myself as the center of everything I do is important — as important as finding people to be in relationship with who can support that endeavor. Some would consider that to be a primary relationship with my Self. But that 7th house urge to surrender everything I am to the needs of the other is gigantic, compulsive and largely instinctive.

I love the idea of non-hierarchical relationships — relationships that exist without a “primary partnership” structure. I also love the idea of having one person who prioritizes me. I think there is room for both of these styles of relating, and more.

I am passionate about greeting relationships and exploring them and seeing where they go without a predetermined idea about the ‘shoulds’, with an emphasis on personal growth. I also think it’s important to recognize needs (something I struggle with) and be able to work towards a goal. But how can a relationship be authentic and nurture the authentic identities of those involved, when it has a predetermined construct of where it’s going?

The other day I realized — even though I’ve managed to grasp these ideals and am ready to embody the paradoxes and work honestly with them within relationship — how in the hell am I going to find partners who are also ready to engage at this level? And if I find those partners, how can I ‘know’ that any of their partners are able to honestly engage as well? I love non-monogamy. But in so many ways, it can be a clusterfuck.

And then I spent time with my love, my sweetie, one of my soulmates. He stepped in to dance with me in on the anniversary of my brother’s suicide and we kind of re-wrote the anniversary script. We realized that night: we’re doing it.

We’re doing the non-monogamy thing really honestly and well and it is expansive and mind-blowingly sweet and passionate and complicated and hard. But I feel so good about it and so grateful for this man’s presence in my life and the ways in which we are able to go deep and swim around in ambiguity and respect for each of our paths — and so lucky to have the freedom to find others who can do the work at this level.