Quiet as it’s kept, “‘till death do us part” will jack your life up.
My Dad is an entrepreneur in his spirit. He’s always got a business idea, and most of them are good. Some are great. But he doesn’t always read the room when he pitches these ideas. Here’s what I mean.
Last time I took someone home to meet my Dad, he was flush with the exhilaration of a new concept.
“Ok – here’s the idea,” he said. “What if marriages were 5 years long, and just expired every 5 years, unless the people decided to renew them.” Bam.
It was a quintessential Randy moment. And it wasn’t really a business idea. While I wished he maybe hadn’t brought that up within 10 minutes of meeting my then-beau, he wasn’t exactly… wrong.
I was reminded of this moment over the weekend, when an old friend started to share how much she was still struggling with her divorce a decade ago. The story of her divorce had become warped into a self-shaming monster that was dwelling in her mind. She said she was “scarred for life.”
At that the coach in me rose up and I had to stop her. I had to interrupt. “I won’t even let you be scarred for life. We have to get you a new story about these events. I know you’ve been in therapy, I know you’ve grieved and mourned. And I know it doesn’t feel like it, but EVERYTHING is heal-able. All trauma. Everything. It’s time.”
“Till death do us part” is a toxic remnant from a toxic time when a toxic power structure purported to be speaking for God, this was before we knew that the voice of God speaks to us, through us and within us all day everyday, in the form of our intuition, inner guidance, inner wisdom, inner intelligence, shackles on/shackles off feelings.
The problem is that ‘shackles on’ can also indicate trauma that’s still in your system, and shackles on can feel like home, so if we had a parent or caretaker who was withholding, distant, abusive, narcissistic, shaming, judging, violating of our boundaries in a chronic way… that energy will feel like home to us as adults, and we’ll think that’s love.
My teacher Dave Richo once told me that if you ever meet eyes with someone across the room, and you feel drawn to each other like in the movies… you should hand them your therapists card.
So if you’re still at the place in your journey where your early life trauma is active in your neurobiology, your psychology, your brain-mind-soul-or-body, and that’s when you lock eyes with someone across the room, the magnet you have to each other is a sacred curriculum of learning… not something you are supposed to be saddled with and burdened by for the rest of your wild and precious life.
And when you learn what you need to learn in that magnet, it’ll feel like the poles on that magnet reverse. They will literally repel. You’re not supposed to overrule and override that repulsion in favor of external approval or some vow you took spiritual light years ago.
Part of what you’re in relationships to learn is how to hear and heed your inner guidance and live in ever-increasing alignment and joy as you learn to follow the sacred, God-given intelligence that is wired into your spirit, that is in your cells.
I coached a wise, wonderful woman the other day who has spent the last 9 years out here second guessing their own intuition and telling a story of brokenness and “sin” where what they really did was exhibit the courage to make a very necessary ending.
For about 50 years, my grandmother lived with the mental narrative of religion-based self-judgment for getting a (very warranted) divorce that probably changed the course of many lives for the better.
But you know what, Brilliant One? We know better now.
Because now we know that the idea that ‘till death do us part’ is even desirable is a lie of a culture that promotes bondage, constriction and repression.
And we know that the origins of the word SIN is the concept of misalignment from the Divine, Genius plan for our lives. Many, many necessary endings actually help resolve painful and intensifying misalignments, creating space for wholeness, alignment, free-and-clear relationships, beautiful boundaries, real, respectful love that you can feel in your nervous system… and joy.
“Till death do us part” is wildly incongruous with the House Rules of the Universe that say everything changes… there’s a season for everything… everything is born and everything ends and that is both normal and natural… and the House Rules of the Universe favors those who can resolve disharmonies and misalignments in obedience to their Wise Inner Being, not the external validation or rules of some very flawed institution.
I’m not saying every relationship must end. But I am saying the most thriving love relationships, partnerships and marriages have seasons where some dynamics begin and end, and the most thriving humans are those who can engage wholeheartedly in a partnership through the lens of a commitment to promote each other’s thriving—knowing that will look different in different seasons, and knowing that some seasons of growth are painful— vs. each others bondage to some construct even if or when the disharmonies and misalignments grow grave.
I went on a first date the other day, and the guy asked me if I’ll ever get married again. I said, maybe so… and I already know exactly what our vows will be.
His eyebrow rose.
I said… I got it from Abraham-Hicks and it goes like this:
“I really like you. Let’s see how this goes.”
Let’s see how this alignment adventure goes.
Let’s see how we can play the game of invoking and activating Divine Power and Grace around and through each other and whatever we create together.
Oooh and yeah that… let’s see if we can play the creation game together.
How much fun can we have doing that.
Let’s see how we can invite Spirit into this game and help us create for each other an ever more wonderful life.
Let’s see how soft we can make each others’ pillows….and crowns.
Let’s see how liberating and lavish we can help each others’ journeys be.
Let’s see how much energy we can activate and share with each other.. And with our children and our communities… and with the world.
Let’s see how much beauty we can surround each other with.
Let’s see how much space we can provide and co-create.
How much openness and warmth and attention and affection and approval and appreciation we can extend to each other and let overflow onto the other beings in our lives and our world.
Let’s see how much more play and ease and joy we can each add to each others’ transformational Empire-building adventure and journey into even more love, more joy, more life, more liberation.
Let’s see how awake and alive we can be.
So yeah. I really like you.
Let’s see how this goes.
Head up + heart out,
PS: Yes, I’ll officiate your ritual or ceremony lol – reach out to me.
PPS: This is not only about relationships. A disdain of ending things that aren’t working in any area of your life is a hot mess, coming in hot. I ask every one of my students to read, study and implement Henry Cloud’s Necessary Endings to grow your capacity and skills to identify and make the endings you need to make. It’ll change your life. It changed mine.
Did you miss last week’s newsletter? Want to listen or read again? Here you go!
Transformation Tuesday vol. 196 | Spiritual Beast Mode
Listen: https://soundcloud.com/tara-nicholle-nelson/ttnl-audio-102621
Read: Transformation Tuesday vol. 196 | Spiritual Beast Mode
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