In my 20s, I found myself deep in a relationship that was painful to be in and, once it ended, painful to heal from.  It left me feeling lost and disoriented.  I had spent so much time conforming to be who my partner wanted me to be that I lost track of who I really was.

When I had healed enough to make drastic changes in my love life, I began to share my story and lessons with others.  We talked about the aches and pains that can come with love, and I taught them what I had learned: that not only is it possible to love someone without losing yourself, it’s crucial to do so if you want to feel deep intimacy. 

As I shared, so many people nodded their head in agreement and some let tears fall from their eyes.

So many of us move through our love lives with the following question buried underneath all of our actions:

Will Anyone Love Me if I Show Them Who I Really Am?

The answer is a clear and resounding YES.  YES.  YES!

In fact, that’s the only way deep and nourishing love happens.  When you pull back the layers and let the right person see your true self, you open yourself to a earth-shattering love.  I’ve felt it…that beautiful deep connection that comes from authenticity.  It’s like a tall drink of water when you thought that all you’d ever have was the dry desert.

I want you to have that feeling too.

I’ve created a program to help you see what your world can be like when you go through life knowing that you deserve to be loved.

Click the picture below to learn more.

With compassion,
Marsha

I have an amazingly brilliant friend who is one of my closest companions.  She always has answers for my questions, and gets excited about researching the things that I don’t know.  For her,
Life is clearly black and white, right and wrong.  There are no greys in her perspective.  I love her dearly.

I call her Little Me.  Others call her the monkey mind, the ego or mafia mind.   As with all of my friends, I seek her advice on most things, and deeply value her insight.  When she tells me that the leaves are falling off the trees so I should probably wear a sweater, I listen.  But Little Me doesn’t get to make decisions for me.  She gets really frustrated by that.

I’m great at decision-making, she tells me.  I can always make 1 + 1 = 2.

She’s right.  Little Me can balance an equation like nobody’s business.  But when it comes to leading my life, and making the decisions to move me forward, my true Self is in charge.  My Self understands that sometimes 1 + 1 = 0  if there isn’t any compassion involved.  Self sees things in so many subtle shades of grey, that I’ve lost count of them all.  Yet She holds every shade, considers them wisely, consults with Little Me and the Divine, to find answers that we all can get on board with.  Self can embrace defeat and simultaneously rejoice in possibility.

Who leads in your internal household, your true Self or Little You?

And today is National Coming Out Day.

The funny thing about coming out is that it’s a process that never ends.  I’m out to my family, friends and co-workers, yet because of the assumptions that are made when people look at me, I find myself needing to come out in almost every space that I enter.  On my most positive days, though, I see that as a wonderful blessing.  My journey to claiming my queer identity has forced me to look at all the other aspects of my being that have been closeted.

We live in a culture that makes it radical to be your authentic self, no matter what package you come in.  Living your life without apology is an act of rebellion.  Some communities have borne this pressure to be inauthentic more than others, but each time a marginalized community insists on being seen and being counted, they bring more spaciousness to all of us.  Each person who claims their truth gives us permission to claim our own.

So I’m coming out…again.  I am

• queer (I don’t identify as gay or lesbian)
• an introvert
• an HSP
• femme
• black
• Haitian-American
• Christian
• sex-positive
• curvy
• God-loving (not God-fearing)
• warm, compassionate
• fiercely kind
• obsessed with my natural, not permed, hair

Coming out isn’t just for queer folk or transfolk.  It’s for all of us.

What closet are you hiding in?

In a past post, I originally wrote “You are perfect.”  Which, as we all know, actually isn’t true.  It’s one of those phrases that must have seemed profound the first time it was said, but these days it’s completely hollow.  When I’m not thinking, I’ll repeat it to myself and others; each time, the phrase lands with a clunky thud.

You aren’t perfect.  And neither am I.  So when I hear the words you are perfect, I get lost in the impossibility of it all and I miss the point.  I think whoever launched the phrase actually meant to say

Forget perfect.

Yup, forget it.  No one actually wants to be perfect.  At least not at first, not in their first few years in the world.  They want to be loved.  Held.  Accepted.  Known.  Take a few minutes and watch how a baby occupies her time.  She explores the world, tries out her limbs and make tons of “mistakes” without a care.

That is, until we teach her that you can only be loved, held, accepted and known if you are perfect.  Then her pure need to be loved is disfigured:

I want to be loved.  To be loved, I must be perfect.

What’s your version of that internal mantra?  I want to be loved. To be loved, I must be _______.

What would your life look like if you no longer had to work for love?

You are enough.  You deserve to be seen, loved, held and accepted.  You deserve to be affirmed by others, but most importantly, by yourself.

So you can stop striving. You can stop pouring your precious energy into working for things that are already yours to claim.

You can rest, you can relax, you can breath.