Death to Happily Ever After

Happily Ever After has finally been beaten out of me.

It only took forty years and multiple loves, entanglements, mistakes, and Oh-Shit-I’m-Being-Weird-Again situations, but I made it.

It’s not as dire as it may sound to those of us who’ve been raised on Disney movies and romance novels.

The death of Happily Ever After means being able to appreciate each day with someone for what it is, rather than constantly grasping for Is This It? Is this The One? Are there babies and an engagement ring in my future? Will I finally get to update my relationship status on Facebook?

It means enjoying the person for who they are rather than what your relationship might be in the future. It means getting to know someone without mentally redecorating their apartment in case you move in one day.

I don’t think life meant to drag my Happily Ever After into a back alley and shoot it, I think life meant to show me how to surrender. How to take things as they come. How to be present in the moment-to-moment of each experience without regretting the past or grasping for a particular future.

When we love someone, it’s natural to want that love to last forever.

And, really, it does.

If I love you once, I will love you for the duration. A corner of my heart is annexed to you and you get to live there forever, like it or not.

I was joking the other day that I need to expand the physical mass of my heart because it’s running out of corners.

He replied, “Good thing your heart is infinite.”

Our hearts are infinite. There is no limit to the possibilities, up to and including Happily Ever After. Some of us do meet that person and choose to keep showing up and loving them until this mortal coil is shuffled, however imperfect and wounded it feels. Some of us have even mastered enough of this human existence to love with ease and pure joy.

Since I want Happily Right The Eff Now, I’m pulling the plug on Happily Ever After.

Because there is no past, there is no future, and my heart has more corners than I could hope to fill in this lifetime.

If Your Love Life Is More "WTF?" Than You'd Like to Admit: Hi, Soul Friend!

Honestly, all I can really say about my romantic life at this point is: WTF?

After being single for six years and then cycling through three breakups in three years, with a bonus miscarriage just for fun, I got no clue.

(On a date once, someone said, "It seems like you were born to be a wife and mother. So why aren't you?" My head almost exploded all over the bagel shop.) 

That said, I do feel like I’m preparing for something.

I do know that this divine partnership wouldn't be calling me so vehemently and relentlessly if it wasn't part of my path. 

I do feel something big on the horizon, even if I don’t know what - precisely - it is.

If you're feeling this too - fist bump, soul-friend.

While all my guidance is around surrender and prepare and don't-worry-about-the-details-little-miss-wants-to-know-all-the-things, I have gotten that October is going to be a BIG month for those of us on this divine partnership path.

Who knows what that actually means, but it sounds fun, so I’m game.

This morning, it popped in that I should do some group healing and guidance sessions with Mary Magdalene and Jesus on this, because they have that divine partnership thing down. They love this stuff. They live for it. (However multi-dimensional ascended masters can be considered to live for things.) 

So here’s a here’s a healing session Mary Mags and Jesus, to get some clarity, some heart clearing, and hear what they have to say about stepping into divine partnership:

We teach what we need to learn and, oh-my-flying-unicorn-cakes, romantic love and partnership is a big lesson for me.

(So is money! And work! And self-love! I GUESS I'M JUST SUPPOSED TO TEACH EVERYTHING. Haha, sigh.)

We are all balancing between our human selves and our divine selves - this merry ascension process is about merging them into one. Just as the divine partnership path is about balancing our shadow and our light and peering over the precipice and into the sun.

(Or something. I honestly have no idea what I’m talking about.)

(At least my human doesn’t, which is why I’m doing channeled sessions on partnership over the next month, so hopefully my divine self can get my Amber self up to speed and help us all find some light and clarity and peace and excitement around our love lives. If you want to join me, message me here and I’ll give you the details.)

Grief Anniversaries

As much as I congratulate myself on understanding grief - hey, take the wins where they come - there are still so many pieces that elude me.

Someone posted on Twitter about how today would have been her three-year-old's birthday if she hadn't miscarried, and that struck a rather resounding chord so I did the math and realized HEY ME TOO.

Perhaps that's the cause of all the emotions today. I don't remember what happened this time last year or the year before - I'm so emotional most of the time that this stuff honestly doesn't register until I'm sobbing wildly and it somehow clicks in that "Oh, it's my dad's birthday" or "Oh, the baby I miscarried would be three today" or "This was the day I finished reading the final Harry Potter book."

But I do remember the first year, and the first year was bad.

On my actual due date, I went to a dance class to make myself feel better. It was with a teacher I didn't know, and she was one of those who walks around the room, yelling at people to smile. (Which is super obnoxious, no matter what your gender.)

When she got to me and I couldn't smile - like, literally, couldn't, even if I had wanted to or was willing to, which I 100% was not - she stopped the whole class and started yelling at me about how I was what was wrong with Mill Valley and just because you all have money you think you can do whatever you want.

First off: Sister, have you seen my bank account? I had to use a credit card just to get into this $15 class.

Second: That all sounds like a personal problem that has no place in a dance class you're supposed to be teaching.

So I walked out of class and the tears that are always pretty close to the surface on a normal good day rushed up, post-miscarriage and random admonishments from a short she-demon in yoga pants.

As I was sitting outside sobbing, an older woman came up to me and crouched down next to me and just kept saying "Jesus te ama, Jesus te ama."

I didn't retain enough high school Spanish to read the Taco Bell menu, but that translated.

For every she-demon, there is someone who will send you love and sit with you as you cry.

Allowing Fate

My last date ended 20 minutes in after he asked "What would happen if you accidentally got pregnant?" and I said "I would want to have it" and he said "I would not want you to have it" so we shook hands and walked back to our cars.

This true ass story perfectly illustrates my current stance on dating. Which is: hahahahahahaNOPE.

Dating was actually going better than it's ever gone before - aside from that random 20-minute misalliance, I've never before been able to basically snap my fingers and have amazing guys pop in like magic.

But, as it turns out, I have zero interest in dating.

I don't want to get to know you. I want to get to know ME.

Even though I just turned 40, I still have so much about the interior of my soul and brain to discover. There's a multi-verse to play in, within me and in the other dimensions. Healings to do, dragons to channel, books to write, coffee to drink, friends to meet, goals to dance with.

So no more playing the numbers game, no more going out with random strangers in the hopes of finding the partner - I am now relying 100% on fate. Maybe fate will deliver, rom-com-style, maybe it won't.

It's amazing how much space in my brain this has freed up. I feel like I'm able to really truly enjoy being single for the first time, possibly ever.

There's nothing to do, nothing to worry about, nothing to strive for.

My future relationship is entirely in the hands of god, the angels, karma, my higher self, destiny or pure unadulterated chance. Whoever makes these decisions, I surrender entirely to you.

In the meantime, I'm going to take singing lessons, work a lot, FaceTime giraffes, dance as I clean my house, write animal stories, drive anywhere I please on weekends, take myself out to fancy meals, get my nails painted wild colors, go out in the city with my girlfriends, lie on my bed and heal the cracks, eat crackers for dinner, and genuinely enjoy the hell out of my life.

Meeting My Daughter

My daughter first stood in front of me on a summer day three years ago.

I was sitting in the Super Duper Burger near my house, eating a hamburger under a sunny window and minding my own business, when she showed up out of nowhere - eight years old with long blonde hair and wise eyes.

I’ve had visions before, especially when I was younger, flashes of downloaded information about how we all connect as souls and how the universe works. But this was my first holy-shit-I-can-see-her-standing-in-front-of-me vision.

She was my daughter. In my future, but already so present. Her name jumped right into my head as we looked at each other and I started sobbing into my lunch.

It shifted and rearranged me on a cellular level. Not having children was no longer an option, because I had seen her and felt her and knew her as mine. I loved this vision that, even a year or two before, I might have chalked up to biology-driven yearning or low blood sugar. Which is probably why she waited to visit.

When I accidentally got pregnant a few months later and my new boyfriend was panicking, my rib cage released a few terrifying questions: Is this my daughter? Will I have to do this alone if he bails? Will I have to make a choice that will break my heart? In a channeled session with my teacher, my daughter told me that this wasn't the only chance, she could always come in another time, another way. 

I ended up miscarrying, and coped by developing a rather intense attachment to a stuffed sea otter. 

So many relationship decisions have been drastically affected by that summer lunch I spent crying into my french fries. Can’t commit to children? Bye. Not ready to even have the discussion? Bye.

Sometimes I wonder if I should give those relationships more of a chance, if maybe the flesh-and-blood human in front of me should win out over the etheric vision. But she was so powerful - as an energetic being, as a part of my future - that if this man wasn’t ready for her, I couldn’t stay. Because I wouldn't be sacrificing my dream child, I would be sacrificing some essential piece of myself.

She looks like me, but lankier, with light-filled eyes she'll get from her dad. 

She left for a few years, as I struggled through that relationship and breakup, but when I was in Hawaii last April, my daughter started showing up again.

Wearing goggles and bumblebee wings and racing around a grassy farm fueled by a delirious hybrid of pure joy and epic sugar high.

A toddler, handing me a lollipop because she sensed I was sad.

In the last vision, she tugged on my hand, dragging me through the zoo as I ask, “Where’s your daddy?”

I cried a lot in Hawaii, is what I’m saying.

She’s been quiet for the last year or so. But I’m sure she’ll show up again. It would be super convenient for me if she really would point out her daddy. But I don’t think children are that biddable, especially spirit-realm-children you can’t threaten with loss of television privileges.

I turn 39 in July, which is terrifying on one level, but on a deeper, more peaceful level, I know I have time. I’m healthy, pretty damn fertile, and still working on healing my own wounds and releasing ancestral patterns so they aren’t passed on to her.

She’ll be like me, and probably even more so, a ninth generation sensitive with superpowers that will likely be both a gift and a terror. The more work I do before she’s born, the more I’ll be able to help her when she lands on this planet in the haze of forgetfulness that we souls sign up for.

Or maybe she’ll be born fully realized, knowing exactly who she is and how she’s here to contribute, and just needs me to feed her and clothe her, and drive her places. I don’t know. But I’m really excited to find out, and finally hold her in my arms.