At the close of this year I am thinking of my determinations for 2023 and all the lofty goals I have and dreams I want to pursue. It is a beautiful ritual I will likely continue for the rest of my life. But I am learning something new for myself about New Year’s resolutions. Though I accomplished this goal and many others, and find it exceedingly valuable for me, one thing I am terrible at is sitting in stillness, not doing. It is probably one of the deepest darkest corners of myself; this anxious drive to do, lest I disappear all together. Who am I when I am not doing? So one of my determinations for this new year is to attempt to do less and be quieter. How I will possibly manage that I have no earthy clue, and may fail at it utterly. But maybe not. Maybe in a world so filled with chaos and noise, one needs to step back in order to survive. If this resonates with you too, feel free to join me. It’s okay to just be where we are and it’s okay to just be who we are in this moment. It will always be the journey, and we are likely to never reach our destination, so sometimes it’s good to just sit back and enjoy the view for a moment

Sculpture by Paige Bradley

…I was grieving so much and moving though a tremendously triggered space. My anxious attachment was craving for someone to save me. I felt blown apart with such a deep desire to have the person who hurt me, comfort me and hold me. I knew that wasn’t possible so I forced myself to go back to the work I started at the beginning of this year. I began the hard work of pulling the pieces back together and finding secure attachment to myself again. I’m going to share some of what I am doing in the hopes that it might be helpful to others out there who are facing their own traumas or heartache or loss.

When we say to someone that we love, “I choose you”, I wonder…how often do we come back to that choice after it has escaped our lips? What if there was a partnership evaluation that could asses levels of satisfaction, ways in which the relationship is successful, where there could be improvement, and whether they would like to choose to continue the partnership. I decided to create one.

This year has been devoted to my internal community, leaning in to my personal fears and discomfort and having talks with the pieces of myself that have formed the image of my reality; the little child piece, the defender piece, the protector piece, all parts of the bigger puzzle that is me. I took it all apart and explored my attachment traumas, my pelvis, my non-binary queer identity, my desires and fears around sex and kink, healing through pleasure and generally dismantling my learned and toxic social education. My puzzle was coming back together, forming a new image. With of all this internal shifting, I began to desire a new external community that would understand and support these efforts.

Here is a quick list of my Top 5 do’s and don’ts for polyamorous parents. Take it if it feels helpful, and if not, do what’s best for you.

…As a grown person I was often intimidated by people who seemed to have a healthy relationship to sex. Their ability to own their desires and express them irked me, and I resented my own confusion and lack of education. I judged those who were “promiscuous” and thought kinky people were truly violent deviants, imagining scenes from the horror movie Hostel. I wrestled with being scared of it all, and also pulled to understand why I was also so attracted to the ideas.

I wanted my new purchases to reflect the personal work I had done over the last few years to accept my body and my gender fluidity. I was excited by the idea of purchasing my first pair of long board shorts and letting my queer boi out to strut in the sand. But I also wanted a suit for the femme part of me too, and thats when things got tricky.

Little known fact. In French, metamour means leftovers.

If someone were to ask me “what’s the most surprising thing that has come from stepping away from monogamy and into polyamory?” I would say “how it has changed me in ways I could never have imagined”.

Jealousy is the worst, am I right? I confess, over the years, I have harbored a green-eyed monster who’s suspicion, insecurity and possessiveness drove my parters to the brink of madness. I guess I didn't want to be alone in the chaos. I felt out of control and just wanted someone to catch me, to shield me, to tell me I was safe. I hated that monster in me. It made me miserable, embarrassed, and just generally hateful of anyone who was happy and secure when I wasn’t. Ugh, I hated happy and secure people. They are the actual worst, am I right? But here is the thing I have come to realize…I was wrong about jealousy.

My growing education in neurobiology, the nervous system, body work and attachment trauma, made it impossible for me to hide from myself, and the more I tried to cling to my parters for security, the more unstable those relationships became, and the more isolated and jealous I felt.

The big wins are great and help fuel our progress. Celebrate it and write it down! But the little wins are great too. They are the day to day gratitude that we often don’t acknowledge. These little moments of recognition go a long way toward mental and physical well being, and that is at the heart of all of this. Let’s reframe the story of our success and lean into gratitude for the work we do.

Change is inevitable. Relationships shift, grow, end, or transition to something new all the time. Like gravity, change is always operating within and around us, every moment of every day. So why is it so much harder to accept the law of change when it comes to relationships? Because we take it personally.

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