A friend once told me that I have “truth fire”. It made me smile and tear up…and I’m pretty sure this is a good thing for coaching:)
I live outside of the box when it comes to relationships. I believe in being creative with our love. I believe in breaking paradigms that aren’t working anymore or that never worked. Paradigms that our culture signs up for and subscribes to without really choosing them.
I believe that we can all create the relationships that we are longing for if we open our minds and hearts to a different, wider spectrum of what’s possible and how it can be designed. Sometimes this is considered “radical”…to me it just feels human.
We fall so easily into our culture’s formulaic models for what it means to date, to be in a relationship, to marry, to have sex…there’s not just one way to do these things, there are many ways. So many ways. It can look like all different things.
I’ve spent the last 16 years studying relationships. My own and others’. I’ve explored relationships with men and women, been in monogamous and open relationships, and traveled to many places all over the world researching love and relationships. I’ve interviewed men, women, and children in India, Nepal, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Bali, Turkey, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Italy, and all over the US on what love means to them. Marriage. Commitment. And how these concepts function in their cultures.
For the last eight years I have been in what my husband and I describe as an “open relationship.” It has been a social experiment, a spiritual practice, and the biggest source of learning for me in my life. We have endlessly explored different variations and incarnations of our partnership model and I am so grateful to our willingness to keep saying yes to creatively designing our relationship and adapting agreements to fit where we are now…and then now…as we keep changing and growing together. I view the journey of relationship as a spiritual path and I feel grateful to be a traveler in this creative and revolutionary conversation. It has been truly humbling, most definitely awakening, and very challenging.
There have been so many moments where I’ve known deep down that the difficult conversation or challenge that I’m going through is happening not just in service of myself but so that I can use the learning to share with others. And so I am here. To do exactly that. It is my deepest pleasure to be in service in this way. I hope to bring more connection and love into the world in whatever creative forms work for people!
With so much shmooshy love to you,
Lani