Survivors know about the array of emotions flooding through you, after you leave a situation in which you were unsafe. As many victims of IPV or emotional abuse can attest, we experience a full spectrum of emotions when finally escaping these relationships. This is particularly important to understand when you’re healing, and very important to know if you have a survivor in your life. As survivors, we come with flaws. However, they’re not impossible to overcome.

While there may be joy in a lot of these relationships, there comes an accompaniment of searing pain. One day, the pain overrides the joy, rationale improves, and the survivor has a moment of clarity.

On this day, the pain overrides any joy. Eventually there is no joy to behold, because we’ve lost so much.

We’ve had our identities gutted like a fish. It becomes a secret shame.

Escaping Survival Mode – Flaws of a Survivor

Emotional abuse can be quite insidious. One day, your abuser might make a comment you suspect you are misreading, so you brush it off. This leads to you brushing off the little things. Without realizing it, your sense of self begins gently eroding.

This removes your sense of self, slowly over time. The end result can convince you that you’re wrong. It may convince you that there is something wrong with how you’re experiencing reality. When the emotional harm begins to escalate into hostility, you have already been weakened. The effects of gaslighting can create a sheath of self-doubt around your sense of self. You may even wonder, “wait, was I the narcissist?”

We Adapt To Survive

Eventually, we adapt to these emotional cycles, which can put someone into survival mode. This means your brain is constantly on edge, for fear of what’s coming next.

Recognizing the brain patterns and emotional cycles is critical, to finally breaking-free mentally, from the situation. When you do finally escape, and the dust begins to settle, you may find that your head is getting clearer. Maybe your short-term memory improves after a few months. Maybe you’re less moody, and reactive.

Once we can recognize the cycles and our triggers within survival mode, that grants us the greatest opportunity to heal. For this, I recommend keeping a journal, for intentional healing. Note your reactions to other people, things, and situations.

Once everything is laid out for you to see, you’ll learn to sift out the noise, and find the patterns you created in order to survive. Recognizing the brain patterns is critical to undoing them, and getting yourself on the road to recovery.

Self Love & Remembering Who We Are – Flaws of a Survivor

As we sit there, in recovery from the trauma of abuse, you may wonder how to get out of it. There is a haze surrounding those first few moments–or even months–of freedom. When you’re no longer struggling to survive, you are well on your way to recovery.

Managing the “Flaws of a Survivor” you may have takes intentional work, but remembering who you are is worth the work.

Put yourself into perspective, when you’re getting out of a poor relationship. You’re vulnerable, whether you realize it or not. Your protective mechanisms may not be as strong. In some cases, they may be icon clad. However you may feel, it’s wise to give yourself time to survey the damage.

Be careful of self-criticism, and recognize that it’s from the perspective of someone who has been hurt. If this was one of your loved ones, would you treat them that way? Give yourself the grace you deserve when dealing with your flaws.

To quote myself in another post: You don’t need to be perfect to love yourself. Growth or needing growth is not a reflection of your worth. Forgive yourself for things, of which you may feel responsible. Accepting that you’re not perfect is SELF-LOVE. 💋

Remember What You Deserve–Even If You’re Flawed

Loving an imperfect person perfectly taught me to love myself in spite of my own imperfections, teaching me that it is possible to love someone with the flaws of a survivor. I was flawed before I was a survivor, and I didn’t love myself. Self-love was not even something I knew existed, which means I never learned how to love myself.

Having spent many nights with tears in my eyes, and many mornings fearful of what I would awaken to, I now wake up with joy. Sleeping and waking with tears and fear was so profoundly impactful. But now I’m healing.

Then one day, you’ll remember who the F#CK you are! So, take the first step. Be honest with your self-assessment. You’ll be surprised by how far that gets you. ❤️

The Alchemy of Love – A Love Letter to My Past

While I have never been keen on dating advice, I am also not one to hide my stories and share what I have learned. While I may not share these stories with anyone unprompted, I felt inspired to write a bit about how I have learned to become a better partner, find an ideal partner, and how I’ve managed to keep faith in love, in spite of the pain and sorrow peppered throughout my love life lore.

In my age and wisdom, I have found that when it comes to love, age has come with wisdom. That wisdom came from loving freely, and believing completely that giving love meant that I should expect it in return.

Well, love doesn’t quite work like that.

Perhaps it’s the current astrological transits, or perhaps because I’m ruminating on getting older. Perhaps it’s the feeling of finally being in a loving, safe situation with the actual ideal partner. Whatever it may be, I have found myself reflecting on the dramatics of my love life, from passionate nights to heavy traumas, and how they have impacted me as the partner I have become.

As I reflect on my ability to fully comprehend the joy of my life, I find I was not always this amorous. This time, I have found myself reflecting on past mistakes, triumphs, and glories that have led me to this place in my life where I finally feel secure. I feel loved, and appreciated and experience passion every day of my life, and I wouldn’t have manifested this without learning from my mistakes. One critical portion of my unsolicited dating advice: learn from your mistakes.

Alchemy is the practice of taking something; an object, a thought, a desire, and turning it into something new. It’s the magical process of transformation, creation, or combination. And all you need is to see love and life for what it is, in actuality.

Experiencing Romantic Love 

This could be a controversial statement, but: Love is not unusual, nor is it hard to find. Good, honest love is hard to find, but love itself?

Working with the belief that LOVE is as much of an emotion as it is an action and activity to participate in, helps put things into perspective. It’s easy to have a bad relationship and think you didn’t LOVE that person.

Sometimes that action, in love, is simply “being in a relationship” or “enjoying a passionate night together”. You can find love anywhere. You can find sexual passion in a bar, you can find a lover on an app. Sometimes we look for love in “all the wrong places,” but sometimes you get it right!

I fundamentally believe that romantic love is meant to be experienced in various times of your life, including when you’re too young to understand it. Lovers are meant to come and go, as are friends. Lovers are here to teach. Some may call them soul mates, even, or soul partners.

Many people have different beliefs on soul mates, and mine leaves room for multiple people to come into your lives. I don’t believe in “twin flames”, or in soul mates in the conventional sense of the word. I believe in the Elizabeth Gilbert philosophy of soulmates, which spoke to me after one of the hardest breakups I have ever experienced in my life. This can be taken as a piece of relationship or dating advice, as you move through your quest to find love.

Some relationships aren’t meant to last forever, even if you want them to last. This is where your life lessons come in, and taking lessons from your relationship is critical to finding something that suits you. If you want to see the OWN interview where Elizabeth Gilbert said this, you can watch it here. It came to me at an extremely impactful time.

Dating Advice – Learn From Your Relationships

After leaving a long-term relationship, I found myself a little confused as to the type of person I really wanted in my life. I knew it wasn’t my ex, but I was not sure where I wanted to go from there. 

Falling victim to the romantic idea of “what could have been,” I came across a man I had dated in the past. We dated in our twenties, and it was fun! It did not work out, and he spent many, many years wondering about me now and again. He knew he screwed up back then, and made sure to address it when speaking to me again. 

There were a few times he had reached out over the years, and I was usually in another relationship. But this time, I was single. He was just my type! This guy had a good job, he lived on his own, and took care of himself. However, it wasn’t long until he started getting more vulnerable, then started acting odd and distant.

As gung-ho as he was about a second chance with me, he slowly withdrew. I tried prompting him about it, and it was like talking to a wall. So, I left it alone. I simply did not reach out anymore.

It’s Not Always Personal

At the time, I was feeling glad I had not slept with him yet. While the lesson may seem obvious, I feel like the lesson was even deeper than not falling for “what could have been”. We ain’t Ashanti OR Nelly. This isn’t going to work out. 

It was learning that no matter what happens, no matter how much time has passed, most people do not change. To me, the lesson was that those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. 

These same themes can be repeated even in relationships that had nothing to do with the original.

All of this helped me arrive at the most critical piece of dating advice I can give: Be truly intentional when picking your partner. Knowing what you want and don’t want is key.

Applying The Lessons

I fundamentally believe you can love someone in spite of their faults, and want to see the best in them. Otherwise flawed people would have never received our love to begin with. However, you’re not learning from love if you are not applying the lessons. 

We love humans; we don’t love products. There are human responses to things that may be considered positive or detrimental. When you begin to learn what is detrimental to you specifically, you need to take a step back when that is demonstrated in a partner.

You’ve already been there, baby.

Patterns repeat until they’re disrupted, and your job is to disrupt the pattern. Whether it be by a breakup, a conversation or something else. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, but when it comes to partnerships, closed mouths don’t get fed.

Understanding what you have experienced is crucial to enhance your own human experience. We learn not to touch a hot stovetop because it’s hot, but we don’t like to apply that to people that may not have the best intentions or who may be stumbling through their life journey. I’m telling you that if we aren’t applying what we learn, we are going to have the same experiences over and over. 

Whether it’s learning how to implement boundaries, learning what you truly want in a partner, or even learning to accept accountability– these are all lessons I have taken from relationships to help me grow. This is when life became fruitful.

Expecting Imperfection

People don’t come out of the box perfect. Our manufacturer didn’t design us in the same way a product is placed into production. Accepting your own flaws, as well as the flaws of others, is just a small piece of the dating advice sprinkled throughout this piece. There are no plans, so that means we come with faults. They are inherent. This is human. This is our gift and our curse. 

We cannot expect perfection where we are imperfect, ourselves. When we give our love to someone, it should be immediately reflected in our own self-love. After all, if we’re putting faith in someone else, we should be able to put a little into ourselves as well, no?

To all those I’ve loved before,

The ones with unique faces, big ears, curly hair, long hair, no hair. To the ones who were fat and bald and imperfect; the ones who had doll faces and long locks; the ones who wanted me to swing, the ones who were sexually confused. Oh! And we cannot forget the ones who ran the spectrum of ethnicities, the ones who have hurt me, the ones who have loved me–genuinely or disingenuously…

You all taught me valuable lessons, harshly and softly. Once I healed from the friction of your love or pain, those lessons became law. Pain became transmuted, and I created something even greater out of myself and my life. The “Sorcerer’s Stone,” if you will. For that, I thank you. 

And that, is the Alchemy of Love.

To Me. 💋

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