Dear Kelley, Four years ago I married my husband. We get along great and he is a good step father to my son, but the past year or so I have been having doubts about whether it was a good idea to marry. Everything is a competition. We don’t communicate on any level deeper than what’s happening in the world so our sex life has suffered because I don’t feel listened to. Other wise he is a really good man and I know he loves me. When I said I wanted out about 4 months ago he was so sad that I started feeling guilty about hurting his feelings and also about taking my son’s stepdad away, as his real father is not in the picture. I don’t know what my future holds if I stay or if I leave….. Drowning in Self doubt! Cathy G.
Hi Cathy! I hope this note finds you well! I am immediately led by two of your spirit guides to areas of a forest in which buried in holes, you have hidden memorabilia, trinkets from your past that have certain personal significances. Your guides lead me to several such holes, and I see that they have dug up these mementos you have buried. They are things such as old love letters, a small figurine, and a gold necklace with a flat glass pendant. It seems that you have made a habit of not just leaving special parts of your life separate from your present, but that you have intentionally hidden them for safekeeping, for preservation. The thing is, I don’t have the sense that you ever intended to return to them, at which point I ask your guides, “Why save them at all, then?”
The guides lead me then to a cave in the woods. It’s not any ordinary cave, you see. It looks more like someone’s great aunt’s attic. The cave is filled, positively crammed full of junk, broken things, discarded household items, intriguing antiques… and not one of them is yours. Your guides tell me that you have so filled up with other peoples’ unwanted things, you did not have room to carry things that were, are, very important to you. So you buried yours and left them, which tells me there is an aspect of soul loss in this, because you never “intended” to return and balance things back out. Somewhere along the way you made the choice not to carry your own things, but to manage the junk of others.
The thing is, by inquiring about your life right now, you have returned to your forest primeval.
I am led past the holes and cave, to a hilltop, where a soul aspect of you is waiting. She looks very healthy and well, and I know this is the part of you who is seeking balance and peace now. She tells me that she is the soul part who has been under the weight of others’ relics, and she is ready to return to Spirit. This is a very healthy step for you, and not something that happens very often. With soul separation, which occurs due to some sort of trauma, quite often soul parts can’t find their way back, or the circumstances of your life do not suit their return. Yet their loss is felt in patterns that go unresolved, chronic illness, depression… a myriad of things. It is when these soul parts do not return on their own that a shaman is sought out to retrieve them. With you, this soul part has found her way back. It seems that she took the responsibility for carrying the weight of others, so that the “rest of you” could do the best possible job just to keep up with Life. It no longer has to be that way now, and she is ready to return to Spirit. In a “traditional” soul retrieval, the separated soul part is returned to the client in a highly personal ritual, followed by an integration process, in which the client re-acquaints with the soul part. The process is fairly elaborate and brings a great deal of healing. When done at a distance, or even spontaneously as your soul retrieval is occurring now, the soul part(s) either takes itself to Spirit, or I send it there, so that your High Self is given full control over how that integration manifests healing.
When I have taken this soul part up to Spirit and returned, I find a chipped wedding band on the ground. When I hold it I have the feeling that there was something wrong with one of the wedding bands from your marriage, the current or another marriage, and that gave you an odd feeling about getting married from the beginning. It felt like an omen to you. I also have the sense from the band that you have often gotten into serious relationships for reasons other than love, desire, or connection to your mate. It has been more almost logistic, like a resolution to a set of circumstances that being married made better, where being single made more complicated. This pattern of deciding to marry based on data more than feelings is connected to that feeling that you are always competing with your husband and child. It is constant comparison, like that of a pro/con list that has yielded even your most basic communication to that same “logical” level. Black or White. This or That. There is no feeling in it at all.
In many ways you have not been able to break that pattern until you could realize how much of other peoples’ stuff you have been carrying. The sense I have of it is that entering relationships HAD to be data driven, because the feelings around what was happening in your life at the time of making the decisions to enter relationships would have been overwhelming. I don’t know exactly what was going on at the time, but your guides are telling me now that you have a level of self-empowerment now that you did not have then, and that you need to make yourself aware that your circumstances have radically shifted. In other words, where your decisions to marry were based on data, your decision to not remain married can be based on your feelings.
In fact, every decision can. I don’t mean basing your decisions on flash-in-the-pan fleeting feelings, like eating all the icecream to feel full, or the compulsion that a brand new Jaguar XK would make you totally happy, or running rough shod over the feelings and wellbeing of others in hopes of bringing yourself satisfaction. Tempting as such may seem after the drought you’ve had, I mean the deeper feelings that are your Truth, who you are when everything else in the Universe is stripped away: joy, peace, love. But then, who am I to suggest to you what that Truth is? Maybe you do need a Jaguar XK? You have certainly gone without a lot of your heart’s desire, and now is the time for you to claim it. She is already there, with Spirit, making elaborate plans for your joy.
I don’t see you rekindling your Truth in this marriage. I do see the habit of you taking on your husband’s sadness, and even your son’s sadness, wearing very thin. Deep down you want to retain respect for this man and yourself, and that is not something you can do if you allow yourself to be someone else’s emotional whipping girl. It’s just not a role you’re interested in playing anymore. Troubling though it may be for your son, you have the ability to teach him how to make the best decisions he can, by having a parent who does.
There is a newfound passion blowing into your life, with the coming relationship changes. It is going to be exhilarating and strange to you. Remember to feel the breeze, but not be carried away by it. The only thing worse than making decisions without feeling, is to make them solely ruled by passion. You have the advantage of feeling passion, and remaining grounded as you enjoy it.
I wish you the best, Cathy.
