crown of violets

How we express our love for each other and the role it plays in our happiness was a huge theme for me last year. When I was younger, I used to think that love was complicated and fragile. I thought that it was something rare and strange that existed between two people that were then devoted to each other. Not surprisingly, I was often a lonely child.

As I’ve gotten older, I’m finding love to be very simple. Love is what connects us to those around us. Love flowing through us rejuvenates our spark, giving us vitality and passion. We love spontaneously, without reason, and with surprising strength. We love people, ideas, animals, objects, tangible and intangible things. It’s natural for us to love. Our hearts were made for it.

We’ve chosen to teach each other that love must flow through certain channels (friends, family, lovers, etc) to be valued and celebrated, but I’m learning this complicates and confuses my feelings. Instead of focusing on expressing what I feel naturally, I worry and begin to concentrate on expressing my affection through ideas of what is and isn’t acceptable based on what class of relationship I’ve put someone in. Love doesn’t flow as easily and I start to feel a lack of it in my life. I block the love that is being given to me and my spark doesn’t burn as brightly.

This year, I’ve let myself love much more. I’ve explored different types of emotional and physical relationships, deepened existing connections, let more people into my life and shared more about my inner self. I’ve been more assertive socially, more forward about what I wanted, and when in doubt, I did what my heart told me to do. I indulged my curiosity and instinct to explore. I learned to first speak my mind in difficult conversations and later to initiate them if I felt confused or that it was necessary. In return, I’ve found more joy, more connection, and more self-confidence. I’ve felt both happiness and sadness, clarity and confusion. I’m a lot closer to many people in my life and farther away from others who I wasn’t compatible with.

Because I was often pushing myself to express what I felt, while being afraid to do so, sometimes I felt erratic and foolish. I felt a little like a child who was learning to speak. The act of loving felt natural, but holding it back also felt natural, maybe because holding back was something I’d practiced so often.

When I express love for different people, what I’m feeling is a mixture of affection, affinity, intimacy, desire and other things I don’t know the name of. How I feel about each person is unique and the way I want to express it is fluid. Sometimes it can be material, like the desire to give gifts or to pamper (making food and feeding people is becoming one of my favorite ways to express love). Sometimes the expression of love is physical. We associate physical intimacy with sex and romantic intentions, when it’s just another way we express ourselves with each other. I’ve found the more I let myself express love organically, the more physically affectionate with my friends I’ve become. I hug more, hold hands more, kiss more and cuddle much more. This type of affection used to be reserved for romantic relationships but the friends I feel comfortable with physically are often also the friends that I feel emotionally close to or strongly about.

How we love is shaped by our personality, past experiences and the choices we’ve made. When we interact with someone, it can feel complicated because we’re often struggling with ghosts of jealousy,insecurity, paranoia, anger, and other demons. Even if we’re able to love with an open, care-free heart, we often use the same words for different things and forget that our desires and styles of loving are unique.

Communication has been the most useful and hardest skill to build in my relationships. It can be hard to talk about intentions and where each person stands in a relationship. It can be hard to talk about something someone has done that has hurt or upset us. Sometimes we just don’t know what we want or feel vulnerable talking about things that hurt us. But it’s necessary to build the skills of expressing to others what we want, what we’re feeling, and our intentions and boundaries. We learn how to do it by opening up and trying. The more we practice, the better we get. This is an integral part of showing love for our self and for others. It can build stronger relationships or show us the ones that we have to let go of.

I’m learning that the relationships we have strongly shape our view of the world. If I spend time with those I have honest and loving relationships with, I feel that the world is a safe, loving place. If I put energy into relationships that are full of insecurity and confusion, I end up feeling insecure and confused. Our relationships are reflections of ourselves, and where we put our focus is what we’re going to create. Looking forward to this coming year, I want to focus on being around those that value the things that I value (honesty, courage, and abundance in love). I want to share my time with those that bring joy and wisdom into my life by inviting out the best in me and asking the best of themselves.

We are halfway through 2009, which I decided some months ago would be the year that I built up my courage muscles. Since I started, I’ve learned a lot about what courage really means to me.

When I first started this challenge, I focused on the ways in which I let fear compromise what I thought I believed in. I left a job that no longer served me. I told the truth about things that I’d lied about in the past. I even started telling everyone I knew about my work as a way to push past the confines that living a life of fear had placed around me.

As I set different challenges for myself and accomplished them, eventually I came to a space where there was no clear path. I had scraped away the first layer of things I wanted to change and I was left with much deeper challenges.

When we let ourselves be ruled by fear or the constraints of society, it’s easy to privately rebel. I used to spend so much time in other jobs writing about all the stories and art projects I could have been accomplishing. I would writes pages of notes that I would feel frustrated that I couldn’t develop beyond the small amount of time I had between other tasks. I felt resentful and frustrated that I couldn’t spend all day every day following my heart and passions. The first thing I thought I would accomplish once my time was free would be to barrel head first into completing these projects. After all, I would finally be free of all those silly restraints society had placed around me.

Once I changed jobs and started working in my chosen field with Sydnee and Winnipeg’s Finest, I had a lot of free hours on my hands that I could be doing anything with. Instead of being more productive, I found I was doing less than before. I ended up doing almost nothing. This went on for a few weeks before I decided I needed to understand what was going on.

After some time and thought, I realised that in the past I had been blaming jobs, peoples, and situations for things that I had complete responsibility for. Jobs, imperfect situations, or imperfect relationships had nothing to do with how much I was or wasn’t contributing to society. It was my personal drive and beliefs that dictated what and how much I was doing. I’d believed that we created our own circumstances for a long time, but now I was faced with the a darker side to it. I wasn’t acting in a way that I thought aligned with the beliefs I had chosen for myself. I wasn’t putting action to words because somewhere deep inside I was afraid to change.

We get comfortable with who we are, even if there are things we’d like to improve. We may dream of different things, but the courage to change is not something we always want to embrace. In many ways, I was extremely comfortable sitting on the sidelines, dreaming and not acting, and watching the experiments of others. Asking myself to change forced me to look at things I didn’t necessarily want to see about myself. The next step of acting on the desire to change asked me to call on compassion and will to rewrite a lot of the beliefs I carried around inside me that were holding me back.

Change like that doesn’t seem to come easy. It’s a constant process of shaping who I want to be in the world. It has to come from a place of love and strength. Strength to chose to act differently and continually embed new beliefs into my heart and mind, and love to forgive myself my faults and embrace what I am.

Broken Heart
Originally uploaded by Gabriela Camerotti

I decided this year would be my year to build my courage, while carrying forward my gift of a loving and compassiionate heart. The past months I’ve made challenges for myself and achieved them, building my strength and breaking free of the fear that once ruled my decisions. The biggest challenge so far has been one that I didn’t expect and couldn’t plan for, but has been teaching me some great lessons about myself and my heart.

One of my challenges was to come clean about a lie I’d told when I was sixteen. The last person I had to tell was one of my closest friends, who has been one of the most important people in my life for the past six years. I’ve always cared deeply for her, but something in our relationship changed that day.

We had actually been living quite separate lives for a while and I couldn’t get a hold of her to tell her the truth in person, though I’d left messages and sent an email. She heard it from a mutual acquaintance and called me to talk about it. I went to see her and after clearing the air somehow ended up in her arms in an intense kiss. I still can’t quite recall how it happened.

The next week or two was a roller coaster. Wanting her passionately brought up new challenges related to past relationships. She has been a catalyst for amazing growth for me. She mirrors my own giving heart and was the first person I could begin to open myself to. She has shared both the best and worst of my life.

I wrestled with the shadows of an open and receptive heart and fought the urge to push the whole situation away. After all, I’d just starting taking clients as a companion. Was pursuing a romantic relationship what I wanted? I’d never really considered how having a personal intimate relationship would manifest while being a companion. I had been so focused on what I was creating for myself, I didn’t think of how another person would fit into that. How much of my time and energy would go where?

Having an intimate relationship with her in particular would put us in unknown territory. We’ve grown up together. We’ve been witness to some truly messy growth spurts and energy cycles, many of which we’ve acted out on each other. Our greatest strength has always been that we’ve both made a commitment to love each other as unconditionally as we are able. We both lead very spiritual and independant lives, and have a history of codependant relationships. Codependency happens when instead of nurturing ourselves, we nurture someone else and expect that person to fulfill our needs. Instead of bringing a whole to the relationship, codependency is about halves. We energetically polarise and instead of completing the cycle of giving and receiving ourselves, we give and expect someone else to complete the exchange by fiving. Neither of us has chosen that in a long time, but I’ve been working with old ghosts of fears and releasing them, so that energy was very present.

I also worried about how a relationship between us would develop. We have been children together, each other’s mothers, friends, sisters. I had my first spiritual companionship and sexual healing experience with her. But my love for her never felt passionate until that day. I felt like something had aligned in me.

Overwhelmed by conflicting thoughts and desires, I sought refuge at a friend’s place to vent my fears and thoughts. I ended up forgetting a very special necklace there that Sarah at Glamourkin had custome made for me last fall to celebrate how much healing gardening had brought into my life.

After letting myself sit with all the things I was afraid of, I decided that I wanted to try. After all, it was my year to build my courage and not let fear stop me. The universe had chosen a challenge for me that went deeper than I could have imagined, but I wanted to meet it. I talked to her and asked that she think about what she wanted. I tried to act with grace, openness, and courage and was so proud of how I approached. I felt incredible.

And then, she turned me down.

I was heartbroken. It had seemed so perfect and so congruent with the growth I was experiencing. It had seemed like it took so much for me to more forward and open myself. But more importantly, I loved her deeply and wanted to see what would happen if we explored this new dimension to our relationship.

All of her reasons had been the same things that I myself had been struggling with and I had to respect that we had come to different conclusions. I made a commitment to love her unconditionally and it was that I chose to renew. I turned my attention towards processing the experience and working with the parts of me that it had unearhted.

It was difficult. The next few times I saw her, I tried to process what had happened and my attraction. I felt that she was attracted to me too, but honoured her decision.

A week later, I made plans to visit the same friends who I’d stayed with before. They returned my necklace and I realised that the new moon was approaching. I was mystified to learn the whole experience had occured within the cycle of one moon. I renewed my desire to let go of what didn’t serve me and to meet the challenges unfolding with strength. I sang to myself on the walk home. I mentally thanked her for everything she’d given me over the years, everything we’d shared, and asked for a more appropriate romantic interest.

She visited unexpectedly the next day. I learned that she had stopped by the night before, while I’d been out, and had spent the evening very similarily to mine, releasing her attachments and inviting clarity into some situations she was going through. She told me she’d been mistaken, that she wanted to try. We spent a lovely day together and kissed in the snow, under a tree.

I didn’t feel anything. For about a day and a half, I felt numb and sad. Wasn’t I supposed to feel happy? Even more confused, I realised I needed some counsel. I turned to another friend of mine, whom I’d know even longer than the one I was attracted to. She suggested that I was in shock and the change in our relationship, coupled with rejection and then the sudden change of heart had all happened too quick for me to process. I had to agree. I went back and forth, first shaken by her rejection and then, finally we both agreed to honour what the other was feeling in each moment and hold each other to nothing but that we explore what was going on with compassion and trust.

I wish I could tell you I’ve figured it out. I hesitated to share this story, because of the deeply personal nature and because I don’t know the ending yet. But sharing the journey as it happens, with all the ups and downs and confusion is part of opening myself to others and part of the reason I decided to start this website. I’ve learned from this situation that I can invite and plan, but the really tough lessons are the ones that come from opening myself to the mysteries of the universe.

So unexpected or no, I’m going to try to meet them with as much grace and courage as I can.

The Magician

When I first decided to become a companion, I was staying with my friend Rae-annon. It was the middle of winter, just over a year ago. It seemed to come out of the blue but I felt such a moment of clarity. I’ve always been interested in studying women of arts and pleasure, muse, geisha, oiran, hierodule, and a thousand names more… women dedicated to enchantment and beauty. I found their names throughout history as they roamed with humanity across the globe. Each one expressed their gifts through different ways but they were all linked through an invisible golden thread in my mind. I found inspiring examples both in history and in fiction and one day stumbled across a blog that opened me to the world of escorts and courtesans in the modern internet age. Livvy’s blog led me to Gillette and I finally started respecting the pull I was feeling. Using information from them, I started building the vision of what I wanted to create. I eventually started my own wordpress blog called “Chère Juliette” for what I thought would be my working name. I thoroughly enjoyed writing there, sharing my aesthetic and what I was building for myself. I shared my love for vintage erotica and interacted with some very inspiring people.

At the time, my life was very fragmented and Juliette became no exception. I had pieces of but no one part of me seemed to support the other. I understand this fragmentation now as a consequence of being untruthful with myself. I knew what I was and what I was called to do, but I wasn’t strong to face the inner discord that made it impossible to build a firm foundation. It was also an incarnation of my receptivity, a shadow tendency to back down unless truly threatened. I moved forward at a slow pace with a sound intellectual position but without the emotional weight to back it up. I hadn’t truly invited this aspect of myself to flourish and I hadn’t learned to hold my ground and lay the rules, with myself or others. My results were understandably chaotic. Frustrated that I wasn’t getting what I wanted, I deleted the blog and took a hospitality job.

It wasn’t too long before I ended up leaving the restaurant. It was a restrictive environment with many employees feeling fearful to talk freely about themselves and especially their sexuality. After a series of disagreements with the manager, the moment to leave came after disagreement over tarot cards. I had given one of the girls I worked with a reading after our shift while we were enjoying our free meal of the day, in the restaurant. Weeks later, we were called into the back to explain. I was told that if I ever brought them back I would be without a job. Understanding a need to respect the public space, I told her I wouldn’t bring them into the restaurant again. She started asking me if I understood the nature of the cards. Confused, I responded with the history I had learned and was immediately cut off. It quickly became apparent that she viewed the cards as inherently negative and dangerous. She started telling me stories of her cousin who had been possessed by evil spirits after playing with them. I told her that the cards were important tools to me and I didn’t care to discuss it further. She withdrew, sent me away, and cornered the other girl in my absence. It was near the end of my shift and feeling very angry, I clocked out and went to get changed. A few minutes later, the other girl who had been involved came into the locker room and said that the manager had started asking her religious questions about her faith. She had wanted the girl to talk to me about what I was doing. I quit, citing an unsuitable environment as the cause. I had loosened the first strings of fear by speaking up and defending something I felt strongly about, without losing my temper or acting disrespectfully.

I spent the summer gardening, developing a connection to the earth and learning how to contribute. I became very involved with community work and continued to look for a fulfilling career. I found another piece of my passion for nourishing through the garden and food security groups. I learned how the earth feeds us and how we can feed each other. This work led me to taking a temporary administration position at a social services agency. I learned many things in this position about how we respond when we aren’t nourished and the responsibility we all have towards caring for each other. Unfortunately, I again found myself at odds with the environment and instead of taking a permanent position, I left. I didn’t have to think about what I wanted to do. I already knew.

In the end, it felt right that I took a wander off into the forest before circling back to this marker on my path. Mysteries are happen when we become receptive to the divine. My experiences over the past year have given me skills I would have never thought to seek out, but which are definitely serving me well. I wonder what I would be creating and where we would be if I hadn’t turned away. More so, now that we’re here again I wonder where we’ll go next.

{the charming nickname of divine oh nine was coined by the lovely gala}

A little while ago, I started rereading Steve’s blog on personal development after his post on polyamory. I’d always enjoyed his blog, but this post and his new focus on intimate relationships changed the way I read and thought about his work. A few days later I picked up his book and started a chain reaction that has left me breathless with how my life has changed in the past few weeks.

The book is based on of seven principles of personal development and offers many ways for the reader to start building strength in areas they are having trouble with, bringing their life into a harmonious balance. As it was the new year and the season of change and beginnings, I ended up thinking hard about what my focus for 2009 was going to be. The answer I came to developed organically while I was enjoying the growth blitzing exercises in the book. It came from the principle of Truth, a simple suggestion to tell the truth about something I had lied about.

One of the biggest problems I had in my childhood was lying. I was a storyteller and terribly afraid of doing anything bad or wrong so I simply took to lying as a way to handle my fear. This continued well into my teens, where during a relationship I made up an elaborate story about friends that didn’t exist and my sexual experience to gain attention and to escape from being myself. I continued telling the stories for a few years, effectively creating an emotional wall between myself and anyone I met during that time. Eventually guilt and a fair amount of growing up helped me moved on and I locked the secret away, trying to pretend it never happened. I wrote the confession on papers and threw them away. I started making friends who hadn’t heard the story and my life gradually moved away from that space. What I didn’t know is that when you lock a fear away instead of facing it, you are not free from it. It’s still there and it can wait a long time. Every now and then, especially during periods of extreme stress or fear, something about the story would come out and I would feel like I was slipping again. I began to feel like this fear and this lie was bigger than I was. Six years later, the simple suggestion that I tell the truth brought all the fear and guilt about what I’d done back. I told myself I could never tell the truth about it, that I would do something easier, that I couldn’t ever let this out again, that I had moved on… And then, I just stopped. I stopped listening to that voice. I had done it for too long. Soon after, I picked up the phone.

Once a day for the next week, I told the truth about what I had done to one of my friends. As much as possible, I tried to arrange a meeting face to face. If that wasn’t possible, I told them over the phone. I was met with such love and encouragement and even pride from my friends about my strength. I couldn’t believe it!

To keep the ball rolling, I quit my job. I had been working as a receptionist for a social services agency and found it harder and harder to get myself to work, especially in frigid winter temperatures. While I loved the work they were doing, the position wasn’t fulfilling and my work and happiness in other areas was severely suffering. So I left. I began to understand that 2009 would be my year to flex my courage muscles. My wish for this year was to no longer live in fear. I had watched fear grow and begin to control me.

The next challenge for myself was to sort out how I was going to contribute to the world. I had been a writer for years, but I began to see how fear of my work not being good enough had slowly suffocated any joy out of it for me. Last year, I had come to the decision that I wanted to be a companion. At the time, I let my fear about what people would think about me being a sex worker and my lack of belief in my abilities to express my vision control me. I had dreams of art, travel, and many other interests that I had never really considered possible because I had let fear control my life. I knew suddenly that all of these doors, and more, were open to me. So I created this website as a way to bring all of these pieces together.

Tonight, I am facing another challenge of courage. This is one that I didn’t see coming but that I intend to face head on, with trust and love. This world is truly full of limitless possibilities, if only we open ourselves and let our love become stronger than our fear. I have been living a truly divine ’09 so far and I know whatever happens, I’ll be strong enough to face it.