I was voted “First to get married” in my sophomore year of high school. Ha! ha ha!
Wrong!
Maybe that’s a good thing. I avoided the pain of divorce. But I also avoided the joy of having a partner and starting a family in my twenties and thirties.
I was busy trying to prove myself, to measure up to all the expectations people had of me. I was a high achiever. I wanted to make a difference in the world, and that was my whole focus. And I didn’t want to be with a man who would pull me away from my goals.
Despite having a generally happy childhood, with a solid family, lots of friends, spiritual service, compassion, and adventure, I was also raised in a religious culture that valued missions, female virginity, patriarchal authority structures, and absolute obedience to God’s will….. If you could figure out what that was.
The problem was, I didn’t know myself. I had suppressed my own authentic desires and rarely gave them voice. Instead, I adopted the desires and passions I was taught to have.
So, I always looked for a career and a man that would fulfill what I was supposed to want. No wonder I couldn’t fall in love.
As a single woman, I believed I could navigate my life within the parameters that had been laid out for me. In many ways, I thrived within that bubble. But there was so much of life and of myself that had to be locked away.
I had men who loved me, but I was incapable of loving them back. I had to focus on my “calling” and no one ever measured up. The purity culture in my religion drove me underground with sex, but also kept me from truly openly loving anyone.
I had no idea how to open myself to the magic of love. I was afraid to take risks. There was such an emphasis on marriage in my culture, and divorce was never an option, so I was afraid of getting stuck in a marriage I could never get out of. And of course, all relationships were supposed to lead to marriage – the ultimate goal for a woman.
If a man started to get too serious, I would panic and end it. I left behind a lot of broken hearts.
Deep down I was terrified of real emotional or even physical intimacy.
Finally, I got engaged to a man who checked all the boxes. He was an internationally known speaker and leader. I thought this was my ticket to finally fulfill all the prophecies that had been “spoken over” me. But he turned out to be a narcissist. He was verbally and emotionally abusive and had been physically abusive towards his first wife. He lacked even basic integrity.
I began to realize that I was in over my head. I started to feel trapped in this relationship. The future I saw in front of me looked dark and foreboding. But I just couldn’t extricate myself. My family started to freak out, but the more they tried to reason with me, the more I resisted their efforts. My fiancé kept reminding me that I had made a promise, and that I couldn’t go back on my word. It was like he owned me. As his true character became more and more apparent, I began to panic. But every time I would try to break it off, he would put on the charm, manipulate my feelings of guilt and shame, and keep me on the string.
Finally, some dear friends did an “intervention” with me. They could see how he was abusing me. I had just excused and minimized the abuse because I thought it was what I deserved. My friends reminded me of my value. They just couldn’t allow me to go through with this without speaking the painful truth to me. They were right. And they supported me through the difficult process. Helping me have the difficult conversations, establishing clear boundaries, and extricating myself from a toxic attachment that needed to end. I’m forever grateful for these friends.
But after it was all over, I hit a wall. My belief-systems had been exposed as unreliable, and everything I had built my life on started to crumble. I had to finally acknowledge that I was lost when it came to relationships. I couldn’t do this on my own.
So, I finally reached out to a coach. Someone I looked up to and trusted. Someone who had been there herself. She challenged me to start taking responsibility for my relationships with men.
Then she asked me this question.
“Fawn, how long are you going to sit under the table scraping up the crumbs, when the feast is in your honor?”
Tears began streaming down my cheeks. Though outwardly I thought I looked like I was solid and fulfilled, in truth, my heart was starving. What my heart longed for was to be seen fully and loved deeply. But I had spent my whole life under the table, taking whatever crumbs fell my way. Waiting, just waiting, for exactly what, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I was waiting to become worthy to take a seat at the table. Perhaps I was waiting for someone to notice me and take pity on me. Perhaps I was waiting for those crumbs to magically turn into a feast.
What had never even occurred to me, was that I had a chair, reserved for me, at the head of the table, and there was a feast spread for me, in my honor. Not because I measured up or had achieved some goal. But because I was a woman. And as such, I was already worthy of the greatest love. I was worthy of the feast. The person I had been waiting for was myself! All I had to do was get out from under the table, dust off the crumbs, and take my seat.
I started to discover and fall in love with myself, my values, my desires, my shadow. Then I began to take charge of my own life and released my need to measure up to some standard outside of myself. I started to embrace the fullness of who I am. I began to recognize and challenge the internalized patriarchy that I didn’t even know was there, and I stopped giving my power away to others. I had to learn to relax into the flow of trust, taking risks, and watching for magic. Bottom line, I learned to fully see and deeply love myself.
Then, and only then, did Steve come in to focus. He simply loved me. Through all my uncertainties, he had just loved me. He was patient. He saw who I was, even when I didn’t see it myself. And when I was ready, he was there.
I allowed myself to fall deeply and profoundly in love with this beautiful man.
He’s the steady to my crazy. Our hearts are open to one another daily. When there’s conflict, we both lean IN to our relationship, and use the conflict to deepen our intimacy and grow ourselves personally.
We’ve been married for over twenty years now and his family is my family.
He sees me fully and loves me deeply, and this is what I had always wanted.
And isn’t this what we’re all longing for?
I’m still on the journey of unpacking and deconstructing the internalized attitudes and unconscious beliefs that have limited me my whole life.
It’s a journey that will never end.
I’ve spent the past thirty years studying relationships. My own experience of finding love with Steve inspired me to learn all I can to become a coach for women who have also been challenged in creating the love they deeply long for.
I earned a professional certification as a co-active coach, was trained as a first-responder chaplain, and became certified as a trauma informed professional. I dove deeply into transformational training focusing on creating healthy relationships. I continue to study everything I can find from credible sources about healthy relationships. I’m learning about healing religious trauma (as I continue to heal my own), attachment theory (about why we are either anxious or avoidant and how to become more secure in our connections), and conscious dating (how to approach meeting potential partners while maintaining our dignity, personal values, and vision).
I’m happy to have guided hundreds of women through their own process of knowing themselves, owning their life, and opening their heart to the magic of being fully seen and deeply loved.
You can see some of their stories here.
If you relate to my story and you’re ready to transform your own…
Virago: heroic woman, woman of extraordinary stature, strength and courage
When a woman knows her worth, owns her life, and opens her heart, Virago Love is the result.
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