Closed for now, catching up on readings!
Newer reader looking to practice! I’m offering 5 free 3-card readings in exchange for honest feedback. 🃏♥️
Drop your question + initials below and I’ll choose 5 to read for. ✨
Tonight,
I will not ask the water
to erase me.
I have asked enough impossible things
of this world.
I have asked time
to run backward.
I have asked memory
to become mercy.
I have asked love
to return wearing yesterday's face.
The water has no answers
for any of these.
Only this:
Sit with me.
So I do.
Not because I am healed.
Not because I have forgiven myself.
Not because the ache has loosened
its hands around my heart.
I sit because
I am still here.
The breeze does not ask me
whether I deserve to feel it.
The moon does not interrogate
my mistakes.
The trees do not keep score.
Even the water,
holding the trembling reflection
of a woman who has forgotten
what peace feels like,
does not turn away.
Perhaps this is grace.
Not the sudden lifting of sorrow.
Not the miracle
of becoming someone else.
Only this quiet refusal
of the universe
to withdraw its beauty
because I am grieving.
Tonight,
I lay down one burden.
Not forever.
Just until morning.
I let the stars
keep watch
while I rest.
I let the water
carry what I cannot.
I let God
hold the parts of me
I no longer have the strength
to hold myself.
Tomorrow,
the tide may return.
The remorse may return.
The longing may return.
But tonight,
I choose something
that asks nothing of me
except to remain.
To breathe.
To stay.
To believe—
if only by the width of one heartbeat—
that the same God
who made oceans,
and moonlight,
and still water,
has not forgotten
the woman
sitting quietly beside the pool,
trying,
with all the courage she has left,
to make it to morning.
God,
Please bring peace to both of us.
Where there is grief, be gentle with us.
Where there is anger, let it move through without becoming cruelty.
Where there is guilt, teach me what is mine to learn without asking me to destroy myself.
Where there is hurt in him, bring healing I cannot give him and do not need to witness.
Please care for him where I cannot.
Give him rest. Give him clarity. Give him people who love him well. Heal the places in him that were hurt by me, by our relationship, and by life long before I arrived.
And please care for me too.
I am so tired, God.
My mind is tired. My body is tired. My heart is exhausted from reaching backward for what it cannot hold.
Help me release him without making our love meaningless.
Help me accept that I may not be part of his healing.
Help me stop trying to force open a door that is closed.
If there is forgiveness for me, help me learn to receive it.
If there are amends I must make through the way I live now, show me how.
Make me more honest. More loving. More courageous. More peaceful.
Please return me to myself.
And wherever he is tonight, let there be a little less pain in him.
Wherever I am tonight, let there be a little less pain in me.
We loved each other imperfectly.
We hurt each other.
We mattered to each other.
Please take what I cannot fix.
Hold him.
Hold me.
And give us both peace and healing, even if our paths never meet again.
Amen.
God,
Please bring peace to both of us.
Where there is grief, be gentle with us.
Where there is anger, let it move through without becoming cruelty.
Where there is guilt, teach me what is mine to learn without asking me to destroy myself.
Where there is hurt in him, bring healing I cannot give him and do not need to witness.
Please care for him where I cannot.
Give him rest. Give him clarity. Give him people who love him well. Heal the places in him that were hurt by me, by our relationship, and by life long before I arrived.
And please care for me too.
I am so tired, God.
My mind is tired. My body is tired. My heart is exhausted from reaching backward for what it cannot hold.
Help me release him without making our love meaningless.
Help me accept that I may not be part of his healing.
Help me stop trying to force open a door that is closed.
If there is forgiveness for me, help me learn to receive it.
If there are amends I must make through the way I live now, show me how.
Make me more honest. More loving. More courageous. More peaceful.
Please return me to myself.
And wherever he is tonight, let there be a little less pain in him.
Wherever I am tonight, let there be a little less pain in me.
We loved each other imperfectly.
We hurt each other.
We mattered to each other.
Please take what I cannot fix.
Hold him.
Hold me.
And give us both peace and healing, even if our paths never meet again.
Amen.
I’m almost afraid to ask this because I know no one can tell me what will happen in my situation, but I’m really hoping to hear from women who have actually been through something similar.
I was in a turbulent long-term relationship with a man I love very much. We both wanted marriage and talked about it, but we never actually made it to that point. (And I’m genuinely open to opinions about whether the fact that we weren’t married matters here or changes how the Skills apply.)
The hard truth is that I broke his trust. There was emotional infidelity and dishonesty on my part. There were also a lot of control and fear-based behaviors in our relationship that I can see so much more clearly now. By the time I really understood the damage I’d done, he was done. He doesn’t trust me.
I’ve been learning the Six Intimacy Skills and honestly… it’s painful sometimes because I see SO MANY things I wish I had understood when we were together. The control. The fear. Trying to manage everything and manage him. Not knowing how to receive. Not understanding respect the way I thought I did.
I know the Skills aren’t a trick to make a man come back. I know I’m supposed to stay on my own paper and practice them for me. I’m trying.
But the honest truth is I still love him and I desperately wish there were a path back to us. He’s the man I would want to marry, if he could ever trust me and want to be with again.
Has anyone here actually been the woman who broke the trust and had their husband/partner leave or become completely done… and somehow rebuilt the relationship?
What did practicing the Skills even look like when you were separated or had very little contact? Did trust ever come back? Did you have to do anything beyond the Skills?
And if you think the fact that we weren’t married changes things, I’m open to hearing that too.
I’m not looking for anyone to promise me he’ll come back. I think I’m just hoping to hear real experiences from women who have been in this particular painful place.
I love you so much. You made my life so rich and beautiful. My body calls out for you. My heart is attached to you in a way I don’t know how to undo.
I miss your body, your voice, your hands, your presence. I miss the feeling of you near me. I miss the life that existed when we were together—the ordinary moments and the extraordinary ones, and the way the world felt fuller because you were in it.
There is so much I wish I could go back and do differently. So much I understand now that I couldn’t seem to understand then. I wish love and insight always arrived at the same time, but sometimes they don’t.
I wish I had known how to be still inside something beautiful. I wish I had known how to let myself be loved without fear getting tangled up in it. I wish I had understood, while I was living it, that these were the days I would someday ache to have back.
I miss our life. I miss the small things that no one else would understand the significance of. I miss the world we made between us. I miss being known by you. I miss knowing you.
And I miss you as my lover. I miss the intimacy of you. My body remembers you in a way that feels almost separate from my mind—as if some part of me is still waiting for your hands, your warmth, the comfort of being close enough to hear you breathe.
I don’t know how to stop loving you. Maybe that isn’t something I can force. Maybe I just have to carry the love differently now.
But if I could tell you one thing without asking you for anything, without trying to change what is or undo what has happened, it would simply be this:
You were so deeply loved.
You are so deeply loved.
And I am so sorry I didn’t always know how to love you well when I had the privilege of being yours.