Coming Up For Air

I really want to celebrate myself for a moment. I would like to honour my willingness to make difficult choices, and to see each opportunity as a chance to grow.

My first post on this blog was more than a month and a half ago. Then, I was in an open relationship with my partner and living with her, her husband, and their three children. Wow! What a choice!

I have been following my heart on a journey of community and fatherhood. My heart called me to this woman and I immediately joined her, and her family. We shared, it seemed, such a similar vision, including living in community, having a child together, sharing our work and our passions with each other. Our love was strong, there is no doubt. Our love is strong. But recently I realized how challenging this choice actually was.

I don't know any other men who have left their friends and community, moved to another town, and moved in with a nuclear family, while having relationship with the mother and wife. It seems kind of crazy. It seems overwhelming. I didn't have a bedroom of my own. In fact the only person in the house who did was the 14 year old daughter. The two younger girls share a room. And there was a bed in the master bedroom and a bed in the living room for the adults to negotiate each night. (I don't want to make it seem like there was a lot of negotiation. Generally it just sort of happened.)

Moving in with an established family of fourteen years is kind of like moving to another country. When you move to another country you have to adapt to the culture, you can't expect the culture to adapt to you. It is firmly embedded and reinforced on a daily basis. I was a little bit like the guy from another country. At first I struggled with acceptance. In order to fit in I joined. In joining a new culture I left behind a part of my own culture. The culture that was a part of my identity. I left behind a part of me.

It wasn't inevitable, or necessary, but it was how I responded to the situation. It lasted as long as it needed to. And then I realized, this is not healthy for me. I am not meant to give up what I have worked so hard to create. I am not a passive recipient of culture. I am a conscious evolutionary, a choice maker, a culture creator.

I want to be a father. And to be a father, I need to be a king, and a king needs a kingdom. Whether this kingdom is tangible or intangible, made from brick and stone, or purpose and passion, is not important. What is important is that a father create a space for his child to enter into the world in a way that honours his integrity.

I was out of my integrity in that home. Like a trapped animal backed into a corner I scratched and clawed my way to safety. I am not proud of some of my behaviour then, but I am proud of my ownship of my present situation. I have compassion and forgiveness myself and I recongize the incredible challenges I chose, listening the judgements by others who saw it as messing up a family, the stuggle for acceptance within the family, the unresolved tramas at play, the financial ambiguity, the resistence by other members of the family to the idea of our having a baby. The list could go on and on. But it doesn't need to. There is one piece that is most important. My purpose in life, what fills my existence with meaning, is to live and model empathy-based, co-creative community. I wasn't living up to this dream.

So now I have moved out. I'm not sure what the future looks like. But I know that I am committed to my purpose, and that it will guide me to the fulfillment of my dreams. I trust this.

There is a soul waiting to be born, waiting to find life through my seed. There is a community waiting to be born, built in part from my precious dreams. I am committed to listening, to loving, to saying yes. I am ready to receive all that I dream of, and more, in an easy and healthy way, and I trust that it is already happening.