I want to start this week by showing you this message I received from a soon to be married research scientist I worked with a few months back. She gave me permission to share it, though I will keep her name confidential.
She wrote, “I didn’t believe it was possible to meet someone who is so in tune with me. It feels like we are speaking the same language. He sees my love in everything I do, and it’s so rewarding to be able to share this joy of love with someone. Thank you immensely for helping me grow in the ways I needed. There was a lot of change in my thinking that needed to happen to open this path. Thank you also for helping me connect better with myself, so I can engage more genuinely with people, and enjoy life more overall and thank you for believing in this exciting future for me when I didn’t. Thank you for opening my mind to what could be and not letting me lose hope. I’m very, very happy.”
I read that and felt, as I always do when something beautiful like this arrives, an enormous gratitude for the privilege of doing this work, for the women who find the courage to go to the places this work requires them to go, for what becomes possible when they do.
Here is the thing. She did not say, “Thank you for teaching me better dating strategies.”
She said, “Thank you for helping me grow. Thank you for helping me connect better with myself. Thank you for believing in this future for me when I did not.”
That is the work. Not just the tactics but the interior experience.
What love actually looks like when you have done the inner work
I will give you a genuine account of what I have witnessed, hundreds of times, over many years. When a woman completes her past, builds a relationship with herself first and becomes ready to call in love that actually fits who she is several things change, the first quality that changes is her discernment. It’s now more than just the intellectual
kind of discernment. She is now discerning on a bodily level.
The woman who has done her work does not need to make a pros and cons list about whether someone is good for her. She feels it. Her nervous system has been recalibrated. She recognises genuine emotional availability because she has developed the capacity for it in herself.
The second quality which changes is how she is in herself, how she thinks, feels and behaves.
She is present, because she is no longer partly managing an earlier relational wound in the background. She is curious, because she is not trying to get this person to confirm or deny a story she has been telling herself about herself or love. She is warm, because she is not bracing for disappointment in the way she once was.
The third quality to change is that she is able to receive and it is perhaps the most beautiful.
For many women, receiving love, genuine, attentive, consistent love, is the hardest part. She’s found it, allowed it, believed it’s possible and trusted it will continue, stayed open even when staying open felt terrifying.
When the inner work is done, this becomes easier. There’s still effort and vulnerability but it’s genuinely possible in a way it perhaps was not before.
I want to say something important to you if you are reading this and have been engaged in this work for a long time,
You’ve done significant amounts of work on yourself. You sometimes wonder whether the love you want is actually available to you.
I am here to tell you it absolutely is. The work you are doing is not wasted. Every piece of it matters. The patterns you are releasing, the self-trust you are building, the capacity for genuine intimacy you are developing, all of it is building the foundation for something real and loving.
If you are at a stage where you want support doing this work in depth, I will be opening a very small number of spaces later this year for women who are ready, inspired and motivated for that kind of committed, deeply transformational work.
It is called The HELD Programme and I will share more about that in the coming weeks.
For now, if you want to stay close to this conversation, the best place to be is my email Love Letters.
Sign up and receive the free Dating with Clarity guide at https://heathergarbutt.com/dating-with-clarity/
With Love
Heather
My name is Heather Garbutt and I send you my love and wish you every success in the search for your true love. If you would like guidance on attracting, true, committed and healthy romantic love, contact now me on Heather@heathergarbutt.com.