Intimacy: In to Me See
As I have shared before some people inspire me and one of those women who motivate me is Iyanla Vanzant. Her raw and real approach has often times been one that I needed to experience in order to create a change in my life. This last time that I saw her she talked about intimacy and framed it as, "in to me see". This of course elicited the thought that intimacy is about allowing others to see us, to see who we really are and invite them to look inside where the deeper self resides. Intimacy means that I am willing to get out of my fear place and allow myself to be vulnerable with someone else and that someone can be a partner, a relative or even a stranger.
I have had many opportunities to see how intimacy unfolds between myself and others around me and the universe is always offering up more of those chances to share something of intimacy and to put myself in a place where I am vulnerable, loving, compassionate, connected and reaching out to others. One such experience happened when my daughter and I went to a video bar called Sidetracks in Chicago on Sunday afternoon. As is usual for her, Camile drew people to her like the butterfly that she is. She is my daughter but let me just say that she is a better version of me and a higher version of her mother. One such person she drew to us with her smile was a young man by the name of Thomas. It all flowed out of her and she simply said hello, introduced herself and introduced me as her dad. I could tell by the look on his face that he was a bit taken aback and that had she allowed it he would have walked away after the initial introductions, but she was not going to have that. Camille started to ask him questions and engaged this lovely young CPA, seemingly luring him out of his head and maybe his equations and bringing him into his heart where I sensed there was a fear of intimacy, perhaps a longing not to be fully seen just yet. His reaction was not one that was verbal but one that could be read in his "body language", but the more he stayed the more it looked like his body, face, demeanor and heart softened. Although the dialog was short that dialog could have been shorter but in the end I gave him my business card and invited him to a brunch that I had been planning for the upcoming Sunday. For me it looked like a toss up and frankly I did not expect to hear from him. I thought about how people sometimes misinterpret an invitation that early on and I thought about what his body language was saying and the fear of exposing whatever there was in him that he might be wanting to keep to himself for now. In the end he did show up for the brunch and although he looked shy at first it appeared that he had a very good time and he blended in beautifully with other older friends and acquaintances who attended. We have since emailed back and forth several times and he and I will be going to a Luna Negra dance performance March 9 at the Harrison theater. It appears as though we are well on our way to becoming friends and that the normal fears around allowing himself to be seen might be overcome. The thing about this story in part is that my daughter and I were willing to be seen inside, willing to share who were are and took the chance to invite him into our home, allowing intimacy to unfold and fear of being seen to dissipate. That is what opens our hearts and affords us the gift of love.
I teach a salsa dance class on Sundays and in the beginning I could feel how stressful it was for some of the students to surrender to the process and allow intimacy. I have often shared that dance is spiritual and that it is intimate. It requires people to hold each others hands and that kind of physical connection asks us to be intimate with the person we are dancing the dance with. Life is like a dance and if we are not willing to hold another person's hand we cannot perform the dance of life. What I saw the last time that I taught the class is that now everyone is willing to be seen and that whoever joins us in the dance can see in to us and is more apt to surrender to the intimacy that is required to feel the joy of the dance.
The reason we fear intimacy is because we are afraid to show others what is deep inside of us, our thoughts, our insecurities, our dreams and even our desires. We learned this in our lives long ago when we were children and our parents asked us not to talk about certain things or demonstrated to us that we needed to be guarded and felt unsafe. We learned early on that whatever it is we are feeling in our heart or what we yearn for is no one else's business, in fact it was as if it was a secret. We were not encouraged to tell others what we needed because that was selfish. We were not encouraged to tell others how much we loved them because then we'd be "taken for a fool" or used by them. We were not encouraged to share our dreams because others would stomp on them and laugh at us. The messages some of us got was that if we divulge too much information or too much of our intimate feelings someone somewhere would leak it out and we would be in a vulnerable position, not a place we want to be. We were fed so much false information about sharing ourselves with others that we learned not to and became guarded and discovered we have a difficult challenge when it comes to being intimate. We basically learned to fear it rather than embrace intimacy as something of value and a feeling that would end up attracting more love and more of all that we need as human beings.
What intimacy means to one person may not very well be what it means to another. In fact, it will likely vary. We reveal our inner person when we are ready and with whom we are ready to do that with. There is not a set time limit and there are no rules around when we share our deep feelings or when we hug someone in a display of how much we like them. I would encourage others to start small and reach out of your box slowly and with people who you know, going one step further each time. I am revisiting my relationship with my own mother and although it is difficult for me to admit that, it has been a challenge. As a child I expected her to be ever present, nurture me and have the answers. I had the expectation that she would protect me and help me to understand my feelings and my attraction towards the feminine and towards males. Today I am starting a new story around intimacy with her and taking it one step at a time, slowly and gently, when I am ready and when I sense she may be ready. At first it was small talk and then more profound dialog over the phone where I shared more of my feelings, beliefs and dreams with her. Today we are still healing but if I am not willing to be intimate with her and let her see inside of me we will inevitably stay stuck in the old story. When we are ready, the teacher appears. I feel like I am ready and as a result I am allowing spirit to be my teacher and take away the fear of intimacy and trust with my mother who in the past was abusive and not as kind as I would have wanted her to be when I was growing up. I will share just one more caveat about this relationship and that is that I know that my own progress and healing depends on my willingness to be vulnerable with her and others, to create intimacy at a deeper level and to be open to the new journey.
My faith tells me that we have the ability and resources to be open, allowing others to see inside of us and not feel like we need to hide so much from others. If we let people see us and are open to that kind of intimacy this will create a beautiful collective connection between all of us. In part this is the main challenge I see on the earth. We are afraid of intimacy, we are living lies around intimacy, we are holding back from intimacy and in the end we are robbing ourselves of our own joy.
I have had many opportunities to see how intimacy unfolds between myself and others around me and the universe is always offering up more of those chances to share something of intimacy and to put myself in a place where I am vulnerable, loving, compassionate, connected and reaching out to others. One such experience happened when my daughter and I went to a video bar called Sidetracks in Chicago on Sunday afternoon. As is usual for her, Camile drew people to her like the butterfly that she is. She is my daughter but let me just say that she is a better version of me and a higher version of her mother. One such person she drew to us with her smile was a young man by the name of Thomas. It all flowed out of her and she simply said hello, introduced herself and introduced me as her dad. I could tell by the look on his face that he was a bit taken aback and that had she allowed it he would have walked away after the initial introductions, but she was not going to have that. Camille started to ask him questions and engaged this lovely young CPA, seemingly luring him out of his head and maybe his equations and bringing him into his heart where I sensed there was a fear of intimacy, perhaps a longing not to be fully seen just yet. His reaction was not one that was verbal but one that could be read in his "body language", but the more he stayed the more it looked like his body, face, demeanor and heart softened. Although the dialog was short that dialog could have been shorter but in the end I gave him my business card and invited him to a brunch that I had been planning for the upcoming Sunday. For me it looked like a toss up and frankly I did not expect to hear from him. I thought about how people sometimes misinterpret an invitation that early on and I thought about what his body language was saying and the fear of exposing whatever there was in him that he might be wanting to keep to himself for now. In the end he did show up for the brunch and although he looked shy at first it appeared that he had a very good time and he blended in beautifully with other older friends and acquaintances who attended. We have since emailed back and forth several times and he and I will be going to a Luna Negra dance performance March 9 at the Harrison theater. It appears as though we are well on our way to becoming friends and that the normal fears around allowing himself to be seen might be overcome. The thing about this story in part is that my daughter and I were willing to be seen inside, willing to share who were are and took the chance to invite him into our home, allowing intimacy to unfold and fear of being seen to dissipate. That is what opens our hearts and affords us the gift of love.
I teach a salsa dance class on Sundays and in the beginning I could feel how stressful it was for some of the students to surrender to the process and allow intimacy. I have often shared that dance is spiritual and that it is intimate. It requires people to hold each others hands and that kind of physical connection asks us to be intimate with the person we are dancing the dance with. Life is like a dance and if we are not willing to hold another person's hand we cannot perform the dance of life. What I saw the last time that I taught the class is that now everyone is willing to be seen and that whoever joins us in the dance can see in to us and is more apt to surrender to the intimacy that is required to feel the joy of the dance.
The reason we fear intimacy is because we are afraid to show others what is deep inside of us, our thoughts, our insecurities, our dreams and even our desires. We learned this in our lives long ago when we were children and our parents asked us not to talk about certain things or demonstrated to us that we needed to be guarded and felt unsafe. We learned early on that whatever it is we are feeling in our heart or what we yearn for is no one else's business, in fact it was as if it was a secret. We were not encouraged to tell others what we needed because that was selfish. We were not encouraged to tell others how much we loved them because then we'd be "taken for a fool" or used by them. We were not encouraged to share our dreams because others would stomp on them and laugh at us. The messages some of us got was that if we divulge too much information or too much of our intimate feelings someone somewhere would leak it out and we would be in a vulnerable position, not a place we want to be. We were fed so much false information about sharing ourselves with others that we learned not to and became guarded and discovered we have a difficult challenge when it comes to being intimate. We basically learned to fear it rather than embrace intimacy as something of value and a feeling that would end up attracting more love and more of all that we need as human beings.
What intimacy means to one person may not very well be what it means to another. In fact, it will likely vary. We reveal our inner person when we are ready and with whom we are ready to do that with. There is not a set time limit and there are no rules around when we share our deep feelings or when we hug someone in a display of how much we like them. I would encourage others to start small and reach out of your box slowly and with people who you know, going one step further each time. I am revisiting my relationship with my own mother and although it is difficult for me to admit that, it has been a challenge. As a child I expected her to be ever present, nurture me and have the answers. I had the expectation that she would protect me and help me to understand my feelings and my attraction towards the feminine and towards males. Today I am starting a new story around intimacy with her and taking it one step at a time, slowly and gently, when I am ready and when I sense she may be ready. At first it was small talk and then more profound dialog over the phone where I shared more of my feelings, beliefs and dreams with her. Today we are still healing but if I am not willing to be intimate with her and let her see inside of me we will inevitably stay stuck in the old story. When we are ready, the teacher appears. I feel like I am ready and as a result I am allowing spirit to be my teacher and take away the fear of intimacy and trust with my mother who in the past was abusive and not as kind as I would have wanted her to be when I was growing up. I will share just one more caveat about this relationship and that is that I know that my own progress and healing depends on my willingness to be vulnerable with her and others, to create intimacy at a deeper level and to be open to the new journey.
My faith tells me that we have the ability and resources to be open, allowing others to see inside of us and not feel like we need to hide so much from others. If we let people see us and are open to that kind of intimacy this will create a beautiful collective connection between all of us. In part this is the main challenge I see on the earth. We are afraid of intimacy, we are living lies around intimacy, we are holding back from intimacy and in the end we are robbing ourselves of our own joy.
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