Love is our teacher.

In my nearly 30 years in this life, I have been lucky enough to experience all different kinds of love. Gentle, earth shattering, intensely romantic, caring, loyal, sweet.

Throughout my twenties I’ve had different partners who have each showed me very different aspects of love. What I’ve learned most through each partner & experience is that for me— TRUE love is joy. It is the kind of love that allows you to be your authentic self. To some, that might seem like a sentence of denial, because yes, love can be suffering and it can be compromise. But what I’ve learned most about this expansive feeling is that true love gives you the freedom to be you!

When I was twenty-one I was lucky enough to meet someone who mirrored every single aspect of myself back to me, many of which I didn’t realize I had inside me until recently— most of which I am still processing. The experience was intense (to say the least) and from there, I swirled into a roller-coaster of different connections, which have weaved all different aspects of love through my life.

The following thoughts and feelings are what these experiences have taught me most thus far:

1: Do not ever dim your light for others! I used to pull an oracle card over and over that would read: “where are you dimming to fit in?” The answer, my friends, was everywhere. I now know that it is worth waiting for people, partners and experiences that match my own unique frequency of joy, expansion and being authentically me. The moment you feel yourself shifting who you truly are for a relationship— that is the moment you run toward something else!

2: Love comes in all forms. In my early twenties, love was INTENSE, fleeting & large! When I was twenty-three, I entered a deep soulmate relationship riddled with a lot of karma. The love was deep but so was the pain. From there, my relationships changed with age, experience and wisdom. I learned that I crave to be understood by a partner in deep ways, but in the same breath, I crave companionship and stability, which doesn’t have to be constantly earth-shattering. I will end with where I started: love comes in all forms.

3: Don’t compromise. This one goes alone with dimming. Compromising in love is different than compromising for the sake of maturity. Compromising in love means denying yourself of a need that isn’t being met in a partnership. For example, if you push aside an important value you hold for the sake of a partnership, that is a negative compromise. That is different than compromising on a time to meet for dinner, travel plans, business ideas, etc. You are allowed to keep sacred what is true for YOU, and not settle until that is met in someone else.

4: You are sometimes wrong. Love and partnerships can show us our faults, specifically when we are stubborn or if we get in our own way. There’s a saying about how we truly can’t change others, even if they don’t see themselves as we see them. I can attest that my most recent partner saw positive things in me that I am finally beginning to see in myself! The moral of this story: even if a partnership isn’t “forever”,  it doesn’t mean that important lessons can’t be learned. Relationships are our mirrors and the more we listen, the more we eventually see.

5: Finally, and last but not least, allow yourself to be loved! I’ve struggled with receiving love, I still do. Traumatic experiences and the way we are raised can affect our ability to allow in “unconditional” anything. But when we begin to uncover and shift our biases and conditioning, we call people into our lives who can truly hold us. My words of wisdom here are to be gentle on yourself, and to know that you are worthy of expansive love and healing. All you have to do is learn from your experiences and trust in them, and your future, as much as you can.

That’s all for now— I encourage you to take note of your internal musings, especially during partnership with others. And remember to always, always, always trust how you truly feel inside.

Xxooo,
Gab Rising

“No control
but just complete flow.
With freedom to be
and with freedom to fly.” 💫

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