Chapter 24: The Closed Door

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.

While I’d spent nearly a decade learning about and feeling into and exploring the art of receiving, from myself and my animus and from nature and from spirit—receiving from another still felt like the most terrifying thing imaginable. In love and even friendship to some extent, I could love and love and give and give, but the idea of receiving made my throat tighten and my chest clench and my body ache.

It was a different kind of surrender than letting my body relax into the earth and letting myself be held. Feeling safe with another person enough to surrender to receive, somehow, felt even more terrifying than death. I knew that it wasn’t logical or rational, but the fear lived in my cells.

And yet I knew that this was the next step in my soul’s journey: to fully receive. From a man, specifically. To feel safe enough to drop all of my guards, and just BE… in my Yin Feminine. And receive. That possibility didn’t feel remotely available in my marriage, so for years I tried everything else I thought might bring me to the same place.

I had loads of therapy, danced at women’s circles, sat with Ayahuasca and psilocybin, begged Spirit to let me meet this part of my work alone.

I had lain on the Earth, letting her hold me as I rooted into her, drawing her sustenance into mine. I had communed with the river, letting her carry me, honoring her ferocity and her flow. Around fire with sisters, I had spoken truth into the flames and been witnessed in my vulnerability and strength. These were all powerful medicines, essential and holy.

But I knew there was more. Even more. I kept arriving at a threshold I couldn’t cross, a closed door for which I had no key. The Feminine asks for trust, and despite my resistance, I began to see that if I didn’t follow this call, my spirit would wither. When I imagined turning away, my energy collapsed. I felt heavy, stagnant— like aliveness stopped moving through me.

I tried for a time, to ignore the call. To turn away from the door. I’d get cranky or irritable or depressed. I gained weight. Didn’t feel like getting out of bed. I felt listless. Life felt pointless.

All of the logical parts of me longed to shut it down, to stay with the life I knew—the one I had built for twenty years. But something deeper wouldn’t let up. It kept calling me back, towards the door. I think I knew, even then, that to open it would have to mean the end of my marriage. A woman who could hold and contain the energy that pulsed behind that door would not be someone who could stay in a relationship where she couldn’t express all of herself.

She was not someone who couldn’t want more.

When I felt into the stirring energy, it actually scared me, because it felt so big. So powerful. So dynamic. It felt like aliveness and love and magic and ecstasy. Even just a taste of it activated some of that energy in me, and I just couldn’t feel where in my life there was any room for it.

It felt like aliveness and love and magic and ecstasy.

When I tried to turn back toward my familiar world, the same question that had haunted me years before returned: Is this all there is?

Only now, I knew that it wasn’t. I knew there was more. I had felt all of that elemental energy moving in me and around me, and by now, I trusted the importance of it too much to just be willing to turn away. I felt it, like that clarion call of resonance. This was my path, calling me forward, despite my feeling the impossibility of it all. I could no longer pretend I didn’t know.

I had tried for years to engage that alchemical dynamic within my marriage, but I finally had to accept that it wasn’t something I could force. It wasn’t happening there.

I wasn’t ready to give up on my marriage, but I could no longer pretend it was enough. I stopped pretending I was happy while frustration quietly smoldered inside me. I was no longer able to play the helpless victim of an unfulfilled life.

It was time to step into full ownership of my experience—to recognize that I was orchestrating my life from the inside out.

Upcoming: Chapter 25: The Man of My Dreams

This first conscious image of my animus was learning, just as I was, to trust the value of the Feminine. He was holding my softness. He was beginning to understand that Yin qualities were not weakness, but wisdom. He was willing to slow down, to pay attention to what she needed in order to … just exist. He was willing to just be with the Feminine, show her that he was there, that he had her back. He showed me that I could stop trying so hard, stop doing so much, and simply be. He was protective of my exploration of the Feminine.

Is there a part of you that knows that there’s “more” available to you, but you don’t know how to access it?
I’d love to know if/ how this resonated.

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