#8 WLFC The physics of the quest
I'm finally ready to share this part of my Eat Pray Love journey...
“I have woken up every day for two years wondering what is wrong with ME. What book do I need to read? What podcast should I listen to? What course do I need to take to fix myself to make this marriage work? You’ve helped me realize that I do not need fixed.”
As you know, I got back from LA last Wednesday and have finally readjusted back to east coast time. Time change always hits me hard and I was sleeping in till like 11:30 multiple days in a row - aye!
With that being said, last week’s email was all about my magical shenanigans, but this week’s email is a big dose of introspection and the “physics of the quest,” as author Liz Gilbert calls it (No N updates this week, I’ve got other things to say).
So, I haven’t shared many details about my reasonings for separating from my husband, and there are some things I will never tell you, but far too many have reached out to me with statements like the one beginning this email.
Far too many women want more but won’t ask for it.
Far too many women believe they are in too deep.
Far too many women are caged by the trauma they hold in their bodies.
Far too many women are living vicariously through me at the expense of living.
Far too many women have dreams that they are convinced they cannot have.
Far too many women believe they need fixed.
This time last year I had a different legal last name and I had never traveled alone on a plane before.
Remember when you were a kid and the thought of ordering your own food was a big step? Well, that was me getting on a plane alone for the first time to LA in 2021.
Now I’ve moved to a different state 700 miles away from my hometown and am consciously uncoupling from my husband.
I live alone. I bought a car in March before I drove down here (We had one car because he couldn’t drive for a year after the accident). Got my own car insurance. My own phone bill. My own French coffee press. My own everything, really.
That’s quite miraculous isn’t it? After all, a miracle as defined by A Course in Miracles is simply “a change in perception.”
Indeed, every perception, every limitation I had about who I was and what I thought I wanted or was capable of, was flipped upside down. Like the hanged man in Tarot I was thrust into seeing life and myself with completely different eyes.
In essence, I got everything I always knew I wanted but didn’t think I could have. And not because Brad told me I couldn't, but because from the at times codependent lens I was seeing through, it was not yet possible.
The way my apartment looks now is reminiscent of vision boards I used to make back in 2016 when I still did vision boards, including the pink couch. Flying to Pittsburgh and then 13 days later flying to LA was the vagabond lifestyle I dreamed of but felt too tied down and guilty to live. Working entirely from home and being able to fully support myself without having to split bills was the freedom I couldn’t figure out how to create since 2016.
And because I see myself in leading ladies these days, I watched the memoir movie Eat Pray Love on the flight to LA. I’m most interested in the female journey to Self. We have the Hero’s story, but what about the Heroine’s?
Liz says in the book and movie, “I had actively participated in the creation of this life. So why didn’t I see myself in any of it? The only thing more impossible than leaving was staying. I didn’t wanna hurt anybody.”
While I didn’t actively choose my husband’s accident, of course, I couldn’t shake the fact that I couldn’t see a future as a couple anymore. I could see myself, that’s it. Everything else was black. The soul contract complete.
“Why couldn’t you just find yourself in our marriage!” Steven yells at Liz at the divorce table.
While Brad and I had an amicable conscious uncoupling, there were very hard conversations just like this. Divorce is hard. There’s no way around it.
I had to temporarily (at the time) move hundreds of miles away just to feel myself. To think for myself and hear my own thoughts. I’m the most extroverted introvert and I could not hear my own inner owning while trying to live a life I wasn’t sure was mine anymore.
After 16 years, despite the strong woman I was, the lines where he began and I ended were blurry; add shared trauma and you’ve got yourself a real case of high risk codependency.
“You can’t just check out, Liz,” her friend says. But like Liz, I completely agree, my choice to leave wasn’t because I was checking out, but because I was checking IN.
Why are we so quick to tell women they’re being rash but actually, maybe for the first time, they’re really doing something just for them? They are daring to see a life that is all their own. That oozes from every pore their most authentic self with no outside influence or needs pressed upon them.
And despite the audacity of strangers who have reached out and asked me “What happened?” the details are no one’s business unless I share it of my own volition. Hell, people even asked me months ago “Did you get a divorce?” I know, UNBELIEVABLE. P.S. asking people such a loaded, potentially triggering question is sooo not trauma-informed; we must remember that social media access to someone’s life is a privilege, not a given. There are humans behind these screens.
But, I digress…
I can honestly say that making this decision was the best thing we could do both of us.
How can I figure?
Because I’ve come to believe that if one person isn’t all the way in love, then it’s not possible the other person is as well. Love is a two way hell yes.
Me finding me is also him finding him. Not who we were, but who we are most presently.
Liz Gilbert talks about something called, “The physics of the quest.”
“I've come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call, The Physics of The Quest’— a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum. And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: "If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared – most of all – to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself... then truth will not be withheld from you.” Or so I've come to believe.”
What a thought, right?
That means Brad, hot/cold guy, N the receipt guy, KJ the musician, clingy bass player, the guy I refer to as my Magic Mike from Nebraska (lord that’s a story for another time), and everyone in between, whether they be lovers, friends or acquaintances, hold a clue to who we are, a lesson which must come through the experience you are to create with them IF we are brave and curious enough to do so.
The question is, how long are you willing to sit in the discomfort of not knowing while the Truth unfolds and are you truly willing to receive it when it comes?
Because although the Truth is a gateway to greater joy and intimacy, the journey often makes you crawl out of your skin first.
Which reminds me of the time in LA last year when I was away in Mastermind with some of the biggest names in the New Age/Coaching community and was ugly crying alone in the fetal position on a patio in Malibu while I energetically regurgitated every limiting block I held around money, no, wealth. (more on this in next week's letter)
And the question one of my sisters there asked me, “What do you really need, Alyssa?”
I looked her dead in the eyes…
“To be alone.”
And I did. I needed to experience the physics of the quest, which for me, I needed to do alone, for the first time in my life.
I pray my life and these letters to be an inspiration for your own Self journey, but inspiration is not passive.
Inspirare is a latin word which means “breathe or blow into” and in Middle English it refers to“divine guidance.”
May my journey breathe life into you to seek your own divine guidance, your own quest.
So, are you on your own quest? Do you want to be? How did this land for you? I welcome a reply email, babe.
With love from Charleston,
Extras to Snack On
Life is a soundtrack. This is our song of the week! Dance with me? The lyricssssss to this light me up on the quest!
