Category: Dear Sara

As the title says, there really is a new era loading.
It is absolutely unbelievable to feel this happening, and it’s so welcome and I am so grateful!
Who wouldn’t be, if you suddenly feel that surge of energy. A deep desire to make any dream you ever had come true and have the type of motivation built to last.
The type that does not sway and that you have known was buried deep within, all your life. And that it was just a matter of time before it would reveal itself.
And there it is, in all its shining glory, and even more impressive than you thought it would be.

I mean:  Wow!

However, what I would like to discuss, and for the n-th time so I hope there’s still some capacity left with you to hear this, is WHY, HOW and OMG NOT AGAIN and IT S ALWAYS THE SAME THING AND WHY WON’T I REMEMBER.
And also:
“Should I not feel some kind of shame around this being that frickin’ shallow?”

Because Sara; It was a man. 

And it made me realize that I so still not have this knowledge, which is probably already past its 12.5 year anniversary by now, ingrained into myself.
I still make the same mistake.
I still think there is somehow something to be planned, to be figured out, in order for me to reach my goals. Or even, that I have goals.
And hobbies. Hobbies, Sara? Do you know what the first thing was that I did?
I pulled up his astrology chart, which I could do because he was a celebrity.

Now for context; This is the year I have pat myself on the back for getting more serious with astrology.
And I would probably have kept doing that, had I not become aware that my first instinct with him, was to pull up his chart.

Because for me there is no getting serious with astrology, Sara.
Having someone’s birth chart was new to me, I had never done that because in real life you do not have those data.
However what astrology had been doing, in retrospect, was bringing me closer to men; Past, present and future.
Through knowing their sun signs, but more importantly, because astrology made me understand myself better.
What I needed or how I interacted.
And sometimes it also made it easier to understand what had happened within a certain dynamic with a man too.

So recap – and I know I’ve written this same conclusion to you at least five times in the past 8 years:
Everything is always, about a man.

And vice versa:
When I am not motivated and not feeling it? Not making progress and am super-stuck? It’s simply because there isn’t a man attached to that area.

I’m like a little bunny who wants to chase the carrot. I’m not going to move, unless there is someone that I imagine myself (sometimes unconsciously) getting closer to by studying, doing or achieving the thing.

I need men to be my muses to inspire me.
Exactly like male writers and artists have needed female muses.
There’s just no way this dry, boring 3D is ever going to get anything done with me (or I for it) unless I ve tied it to a bigger cause, and that cause is a man.
A muse.

Except there was one exception: I have acknowledged that socially, I really do need to be embedded in a real life job and local context.
Only working for yourself online, is torture.

Maybe not when you are married, have a family, and your whole life is one big group chat and an endless stream of appeal, requests and expectations.
Then, having your own online business is your time away. In a way, it’s rest. It’s a boundary you are allowed to pull up.

But being alone, working alone just wasn’t for me.
And I’ve known that ever since late 2018, when I went all in on writing under this name.
Within weeks, I was cured.

So for years I’ve known that a normal job is required, and I could share even more very practical thoughts on this. All valid, and I am still standing by them.

But now there’s also the perspective of:
If the universe can send you this man? Exactly the right person, at exactly the right location, behaving in the precise way unlocking your full power and potential – If the Universe can do this – And, we now know it can, because it just did so;

Then what else, can the Universe do?

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

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I am writing you from a place of heavily mixed feelings.

Part of me is exhilarated to have cracked the code to her life, and knows what she’s doing.

But there is another part of me that has become painfully aware of a thick layer of trauma around things that are very close to home, and would theoretically need clearing out before this new life starts.
They currently revolve around being bullied by patriarchy on the moments I resisted being socialized. And that not being a closed chapter, but like a war that will never be won.
I have been on the cusp of social exile for as long as I can remember.

And that was week 2’s drama, after traumatic memories from childhood returning last week. And I will never share them because I have decided earlier this year that I will never do emotional labor for someone else, but that also means that no one else ever has to do mine.
I recently cried with a friend and – although there was nothing about it that could have been prevented or that was inappropriate in any way – it was the moment I realized the contrast between that one moment of vulnerability and no longer giving anything personal in all my other relationships.

The deeper layers in me are, and I would say “finally”, completely closed off. They are no longer taking part of my daily interactions, and this has been a strategic and conscious choice.

And yes, that’s a trauma response.
And also: It’s the best I can do.
There’s not going to be a part two, where I’m letting people in.

And also!
As sort of a mid-post PS, real connection at a pure 5D energetic level is still very much possible. I’m still present there, I live there. 
The sealed gates are only felt at earth level, which is not where we’re going to have any conversation of meaning anyway.
I am now ready to be the warrior who never sets foot outside the house without her armor.
Trusting people with the real me has proven to be a very unsatisfactory experience and I am, again “finally”, dressing for the occasion. 

So no details on week 2’s realizations on social exile, nor on week 1 of childhood memories, but I mention the sequence here to illustrate that I was disappointed when after properly, although grudgingly, finding a way to deal with those very unwelcome childhood memories in week 1, I had systemic social trauma coming for me in week 2.
It was the point when I realized:
This is never gonna stop.

Either I’m gonna do the work I am here to do, or I am going to waste my life figuring out what is haunting me, on repeat, like I’m in the Tartarus.
*in line with earlier explained policies around not sharing stressful stories, specifics about Tartaric torture have been omitted*

I can heal and work through traumatic layers of my past, and spend my precious weekends on it, or I can cut my losses and say;
Goodbye trauma.
I see you, I know you, and you’re welcome to take your seat in the back, but you’re not driving this bus and you’re not giving directions.

So there is all that, Sara.
An awareness that I went through so much excruciating stuff, and that the past tense there is definitely not a real-life-depiction of truth.
Past tense is a statement.
It’s a declaration that I decide those things are in the past.
Or, as I often see with Tarot readings on Instagram where viewers are encouraged to leave a message in the comments (but often do so without needing any encouragement);
“I claim this message.”

It’s over, it’s done, and after this acknowledgement that I enter this birthday carrying the scars of my past, fresh cuts as well as wounds that will never heal, we now get to the good part;
The Sigma part from the title.
Which is not a new thing, I ve written about it multiple times, but after a year or eighteen months of detours I’m circling back to the label because I find it the easiest and the most clear one.

A Sigma is someone who lives solitary and isn’t part of the emotional infrastructure of society. There’s different interpretations, but an agreed upon aspect seems to be that they are disciplined, have a plan in life and execute it.
A Sigma operates according to their own set of internalized values.

All things considered, it makes this birthday a mixed bag.

The acknowledgement of deeper wounds than I ever realized I was carrying.
The exhilarating choice to be Sigma, and Sigma only.
And the comfort that there is at least one friend with whom I can still cry.

All things considered, I claim this birthday.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

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This is mostly a part II to the last letter I wrote you, where I came to the conclusion that my desire to be a yoga  teacher had been genuine, and that I was going to rebuild teaching it, in some shape or form.
And I did, rebuild.

Shortly after writing you I started an online space, where I can build a body of work. In the upcoming years I do not see myself having opportunity to teach classes in real life, but I will be able to hang on to my teaching skills this way, as well as being able to build towards having a global audience.
Something teaching locally would never be able to do, or if or when it does, it will be on top of online visibility anyway.
So the online option suits me well.

However, once I had successfully brought this online, it definitely took a while for the excitement to kick in, I have to say.
And when it did it the online yoga space was not a major part of it, but a minor one. A seed, not something in full bloom.

And as I’m writing this, days after the big breakthrough, even the excitement of that epiphany, the ecstasy of finally having life figured out, has entirely left me.
Which should come as no surprise because I’m writing this on Friday afternoon, which has become notoriously unproductive.
I want to squeeze in everything I did not get done over the week, when I don’t have the energy for any of those things.
I’m having trouble even keeping my eyes open, and just took a nap lying straight on the carpet, and it took tremendous willpower to end it after 15 minutes.

All in all, the festive mood of having it all figured out, and looking forward to writing it all down in this letter to you, has definitely left.
But I remember the parts, and how they went together.
So let’s go.

First of all, a recap of the yoga epiphany that started it all.
The one I wrote you about, last month, when the epiphany was that I realized that although the profession of being a yoga teacher had proven to come with some baked-in financial challenges that I was ultimately no longer able to outsmart or outrun;
It had been a legitimate choice, and one that dated back to the previous century.

That it had not worked out did not mean it had been the wrong choice. 
It had been my original profession, and practical concerns should not overwrite that.

So that’s all stuff I wrote last time, but what it inspired me to do is to take stock of other original things, that had been present from the very beginning.
Because if my turn of the century choice had been to become a yoga teacher, then what had been the rest of my original blueprint?

I identified music/ hardrock, but also Madonna.
Music was and is present in my life. It’s not something that suddenly falls out or something. Those areas do not require active management.

I suddenly remember one of the first emails I wrote you, in 2018, a drawing of a tree symbolizing what I was about.
The roots of the tree were Madonna (50%) and Men (50%). And the trunk and branches were split in two as well, with half being writing and half being yoga.
So I think that is one of the things that has not changed, because it was pretty much what I landed on this time as well.

That yoga had indeed been genuine, and truly me (half of the tree), but that the other two were writing (the other half) and men (the roots).
Madonna has taken a backseat, for non-specific nor dramatic reasons.
If I had to guess, I’d say it is because I integrated and internalized what she stood for to me. Like I said, nothing particularly dramatic or anything.

So since our last call and the redemption of yoga, I am looking for ways to integrate those two other areas back into my life, writing and men.
The writing, and in particular the body of work I created as Lauren Harteveld in the past. It’s something I’m not altogether clear on how to move it forward, but somehow being clear that Writing (or Publishing) is on my To Do or To Tackle list, is already clarity in its own way.

And the Men!
Oh, the men…..
Well, just like with Madonna, I think I integrated much of what they meant to me. And that, fortunately, a lot of what they stood for can be achieved by myself. And I also mean that punned 😉

But at the same time Men give my life its true meaning.
And I know how tone-deaf that is, in a time when women are finally, one-by-one, standing up, refusing to keep carrying the load of being society’s unpaid therapists and caretakers, and be the emotional-support laborer of the relationship or family.
No more, Sara!
Hell hath no fury like a woman no longer cleaning up after patriarchy.

So, yes, there is all that, and expect to see me at the barricades.
And at the same time?
Once we’re clear that from now on, we are all gonna clean up after ourselves and respect the sacred space of our conversation, our games, union and frankly just of society at large?
We are definitely ready to rock!
Because I love men so very very much.

Their defensive silences sealing off emotional depths the size of the Mariana trench, no one will ever set foot in.
Their two-punch jokes, that rely on you asking a predictable question.
Their sexual omnivorous nature, where the first flavor of what they do not like is yet to be invented.
I like their enthusiasm, their risk-taking.
I like how incredibly low maintenance they are, like dandelions happily sprouting from the cracked pavement and happy with a pizza and a beer.

I love their bodies, all shapes and sizes. They are like an entirely different species to me, so foreign. Like they hold an energy or ingredient I do not have myself, but on which my survival will depend.
The key to life but in a non-verbal way.

So again! There is all that!
And yet, still not done.
Because there is also a more quiet, and far less obvious thing men “bring” me, but that has nothing to do with them.

Because I am an entirely different person, when I’m dating.
Someone who takes excellent care of her body, and her house!
Two things that will become how I make my “Men Roots” operational.
And I’m nowhere there, just to be clear, but like with the humble yoga platform beginnings, and the At Least Now I Know I Got To Publish The Book beginning;
There is comfort in knowing what to do.
Taking care of my body and house, is a start.

Now naturally, I look forward to growing beyond these humble beginnings.
From an empty new online yoga space into a large online yoga empire;
A neglected collection of writings to a pristine collection of hardcover Lauren Harteveld books;
And from the mundane start of taking better care of my house and body,  to a bells and whistles sexual renaissance.

But these seeds of my new life have been planted, and the soil is being attended to.
The dandelions will be there, as they’ve always felt welcome.
And the rest will take a bit longer.

All in all, the old 2018 tree still proudly stands.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

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But more than facts or details, it’s just the entire vibe of my love life that has changed. For a long time, I’ve had the endgame in mind to be able to feel (big apology for the theatrical language) like an absolute Goddess, fully owning my sexuality but completely independent of if I have lovers or not.
And that is exactly what has happened.

It’s best explained as a feeling of sovereignty.
There is so much, that is no longer on the table.
And if you caught the sexual reference, then that was punned. The Goddess demands a proper bed.

Simply put, sovereignty means I’m not going to share my life in any traditional, or non-traditional, sense.

As soon as I wrote it out, the word sovereignty also gave me the key to what the jar of happiness is made of. Fortunately, because I do not feel like analyzing every area of happiness. Just analyzing it by my changed relationship to men, already gave away the answer.

Sovereignty is the reason I’m now suddenly carrying around this big jar of happiness, looking forward to lovers, career, business and the whole rest of my life, because I got everything handled and whatever happens on top of that will spark even more joy.
Give more satisfaction, interaction, meaning and purpose.

Every area of my life, I’ve already determined how I relate to it, and what my version is.
Including estimating the maximum price I am willing to pay to live this independently.

It’s like I engineered something I always believed was up to chance, until it was within my control.

There is an old riddle about two guards, guarding two doors. One leads to heaven and one leads to hell. The guard in front of hell will always lie, and the one in front of heaven will always tell you the truth.
What question should you ask, to know which door to take?

The riddle teaches us how to navigate uncertainty, by using what little certainty we do have.
But prior to that, there’s an even bigger message;
Only walk through gates if you know exactly where they lead to.

In particular, if they’re guarded.

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The word armed before mission, comes from armed peace, a term used during the cold war to describe the absence of open conflict, but reflect the deep distrust of one another.

Where mission meant I am here to establish a way of living that can mean something for the world at large.
Or, put differently, where I can be of meaning to the world at large, through how I live;
Armed, stands for me being prepared to defend it.

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