Chapter 22: I Cannot Unknow This

These are chapter-by-chapter excerpts from my book, Fertile Like a Mother, Fertile Like a Lover. If you’re just finding your way here, you might want to start from the beginning — each piece builds on the last.

I developed a practice of being with my longing, being with my desire.

What I was longing for, again and again, was more. I had done as much energy work alone and in women’s groups as felt possible. I’d explored Yin energy deeply and knew it could only expand as far as the container holding it. I wanted to experience Yang energy—to push against my edges within the safety of an alchemical vessel of relationship. To feel the dance of Yin and Yang in union, in intimacy, in intensity.

Being with my longing was a powerful energy mover. I felt it unlocking so much blocked energy. Shame is a big-time stagnator, filling the body with an almost fog-like mist that kinks everything up. When I stopped feeling shame about my longing and just allowed it, it became clear that I couldn’t not keep moving forward along this path.

I knew I’d been somewhat successful at pushing it away before. But this time, I couldn’t. And that scared me. A part of me felt ashamed for being willing to risk my family’s stability for my own aliveness. It felt selfish. But I began to feel like a fraud in my work: here I was, helping women discover and explore the depths of their wombs, while I was suppressing my longing, my own womb’s desire.

And I loved my family. I loved our family life. Yes, I felt stuck in what often felt like an unhealthy dynamic with Dean. But I loved him deeply. We still had good times—trips, holidays, regular days together that, as long as I ignored my deeper needs and didn’t try to share my feelings with him, were great. And that was a need too. I wanted that time, not just for my kids, but for me. I wanted the safety and stability of my home life. I wanted every day with my kids, not just an alternating co-parenting schedule.

I stayed with these two opposing truths for years. Jung calls it holding the tension of opposites. When two things feel equally true, neither can be abandoned, yet both cannot fully coexist. But if we stay in the tension long enough, a third possibility eventually emerges.

So I held them: that I could not live without more, and that I loved Dean, loved my family, and didn’t want the stability of our home life to change.

In witnessing and being with my desire, I began to see how my need in relationships—the way that I believed I could earn love—had made me complicit in my own extraction. I’d believed my value was in my capacity to give, to do, to keep proving my worth through doing. But it wasn’t working anymore. Maybe it never had.

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