Category: Dear Sara

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

I would like to book an extra call, in the upcoming week. For two reasons. One is that we had a 4 week interval planned until the next one, so that I could have it on my birthday, and this was a longer time-frame than usual. 
On second thought, I want the call on my birthday to be an extra one, not a regular one.
So I should have requested another call regardless.

Secondly, I had such a massively profound insight, that I want to mull over with you!
And not on my birthday!
It really feels like I finally understand WHY my relationship with my lover has felt so meaningful. Why it has symbolized everything I value, and why even if I would no longer be seeing him –
the person I became, the person I had to be in that relationship, will last me a lifetime.

But the trick is:
How do I translate those principles and that identity?
How do I manage to be that person, even when the other people in my life, do not have his keeping-it-all-to-himself “Mr.Big” character?
Mr. Big, as I started calling him for my blog, in 2015 when our affair started.

How do I hold my ground as my version of poised, sexy Carry-the-writer (!this profession might be holding part of the clue! Hope we can get back to it!), when I have to play the role of entrepreneur, friend, family member, citizen or even a writer within fandom.

How do I roll out that persona I created with him, the strongest, most fun, most independent, most successful version of me, to the rest of my life?

I found out what it is I do different when in relationship to him. And that it is this exact skill, this carefully crafted trait, that I drop almost immediately, when I step out of “our bubble” and enter normal life!

And not only does it hurt me personally, to be a “Not-Her” version of myself;
But I am convinced that ultimately it also hurts the people around me.
That they too, the world at large even, would be far better off if I behaved in the way I do when I am, or was, with Mr. Big.

Energetically I can feel he’s “Off” towards me, and having a good time. Him and me are on Neutral. Although still full of potential 😉

But being surrounded by the gifts our relationship has brought me, is good company.
And besides I have set the intention to have two lovers, not one.
This time away from each other could be the thing that gives me the space to welcome a new lover.

So the thing I have analyzed that makes me so intensely happy when I am with him, is that he is immune to any pulling, or whining or neediness from my side, whatsoever.
Just like the real Mr.Big from the series.
Immune means that he does not come to the rescue and accommodate whatever there is to accommodate to, so that things get more pleasant for me.

And that is why I have had no other choice than to uplevel to a place where I no longer use pulling or whining or neediness.
A level where we BOTH only show up when we are our radiant, confident selves-
but also a place where if the other slips and does not show up in that form, the other one does not take the bait!

We have gotten so good at this, and have been at this level from almost the very beginning (after the first months of drama, where I figured this out!), that the dynamics have become so strong, so ingrained, that trying to trigger a fight (masculine form of whining) or triggering empathy, has become impossible.
Because even if one of us falls into that behavior of trying to get the other to come over and behave in a different way, “for cheap”, without taking full responsibility for what it is they want;
Then the other will not pick up that ball.
Even when the other does feel the emotional trigger, as we all do, there will be like an intervention on their own feelings, not to respond.

A deep understanding that if we would start responding to each others passive aggressive balls, rolled through the gate of communication, we’re done.
With us, the other will never do the work of comforting, of pampering over your ego, of saying it will be alright;
If you yourself are not able to articulate and propose in a way that leaves room to say No.

You need to ask permission to step through the gate, you have to earn it.
You have to seduce the other, into opening it.
And if any one of us tries to negotiate why they have a right to go through that gate of communication always (solid or real relationship), or if they try to trigger the other person into ending it and closing the gate for good;
The other person does not respond.

But that gate does not stand alone.
It is attached to something;
A castle.

And the castle, with the gate that needs magic words for it to open?
That castle is not something you can enter into, by labeling it this and that.
You can’t say: “we have a relationship” and poof! Castle appears!
No;
This castle was created.

By giants and for giants.

Enter: The secret why I loved being with him so much.
And the reason I still feel so good.
I stepped into my giantess powers in being with him!
And I got to keep that.

What I learned, literally, is to hold the space for a giant, and in order to do that I had to become a giant myself.
Although we do not share assets in a worldly sense, and even though I can no longer feel him at this point, I feel I got to keep the castle! 

So far for the description of how my relationship, my affair, with Mr.Big has unfolded over the years.
And why it has been so much fun, and why I found my true strength, my giant powers, in being with him.
And that I got to keep our energetic real estate.

Now to the other side of the coin, where I seem to lose who I am, and my giant powers are nowhere to be found.
But first how men like Mr.Big are tricked into losing their powers!
Because that, their other side of the coin, has been so easy for me to  see. How they are tricked into giving up their power.

The most popular way to deal with men like Mr.Big is to break them.
There are many cases of even the biggest Don Juan’s, having been tamed “successfully”.
Quotation marks because taming, changing or ruining someone’s personality is a bad thing by definition. Not to mention in this case a total loss.
And the process seems to be irreversible;
Either it doesn’t really stick, and the marriage or relationship strands within a few years and the man falls back into his own behavior which he never gave up in full.
He just wanted to be good and normal, but his woman was unable to create the change he so desired.

But if the change is successful?
If a new relationship, helped by public shame and guilt over his former ways, has him pinned down into being monogamous?
I have not seen anyone bounce back from that.

I do not run such a risk.
Not the risk of being forced into a monogamous relationship, but also not the risk of ending up with a man who does not have other girlfriends.
I know what I need;
And if forced, I would still never settle for a man who does not have other women, but I could make peace with being monogamous myself.
In fact that is my default.
I have not had another man in those 8.5 years, with the exception of one man in the first 18 months. But that was someone who had been my lover already, and for the first two years whenever he visited the Netherlands he would visit me.
Until after two years we found out it didn’t work.
My feelings for Mr.Big were just so overwhelming, and I was so attached to his ways, so attached to him, that the lover for whom I had been willing to migrate just one year prior to meeting Big;
No longer had a place in my life.

Monogamy, for me personally (me seeing other people), is a matter of principle more than practice. The issue at hand being that I do not want to be in a relationship with someone who desires for me to be faithful, or who needs me to be faithful because otherwise his feelings are hurt and he is insecure.
I do not want a man whose self-worth is hanging by the thread of my fedility.
I want a man who desires me to grow, also sexually, so he is forced to up his own game as well.

So although I can see Don Juans falling prey to monogamous relationships where they in my opinion violate the essence of who they are, and are no longer in integrity;
I do not run that risk myself because I don’t feel guilty over not being monogamous, and see non-monogamy as a principle I endorse and live by. For many reasons.

So for the longest time I thought that meant my lesson was “finished”. That I had passed. I had learned and integrated everything there was to learn about my now 8.5 year long affair with Mr.Big and that was the end of it.

Until this new insight that I got, that contrary to most if not all non-monogamous men I know, in the field of love (yes) I do have an A+ in understanding why I resent Monogamy, and I did implement all the lessons I learned!
I will never fall into the monogamy trap, not now not ever.

But what I failed to see is that in practically ALL other relationships- friendship, family, and every and all group settings where I am not the boss of things – I fail, where non-monogamous men do not (credit to them!).

The non-monogamous men, when tamed, still possess their ability to not react and respond to every other thing, and please whomever wants that.
And I fail miserably.

I fail just as spectacularly as those men when they buy into the idea that they can become faithful husbands for the right woman
Sara, I fail like I have NOT, learned ANYTHING!
Just like those Don Juan’s men run into those monogamous relationships like it will save their very soul, that’s how I have behaved.
I’ve been socially all over the place, like my life depended on it.
Like I was a completely different person, than the giant in the castle.

I completely betray myself in these social connections, in a way that would totally repel me in a love relationship.
I am not just a shadow of who I really am; I feel like the qualities that were completely natural and desirable as the Giantess of the Castle, are now only available to me in a mutilated form that even I do not want to touch.

Here is a list of the things I do, I would say “for love”, but it is not love. Here are the things I do because I am displaying socially acceptable behavior, and completely betray who I am.

-I take responsibility for making people feel at ease
-I am emotionally available to hear what people have experienced in their contact with me
-I respond to passive aggressive silences, thinking I have done something wrong, even though I know cold-shouldering should always be ignored as a principle
-I try to find connection where clearly, the other is NOT communicating:
“Hell yes! Would love that!”

WHY Sara?
WHY?

I want my gateway to the world to be set just as tight, as it is in my love life.  And I want to be the giantess EVERYWHERE.

You only get in communication with me, when you take full responsibility for what you want, and you leave space for me to say No.
You never, have a right to go through that gate.
You need to seduce me.

In all those years, I failed to see that it was never the practice of monogamy, I rebelled against;
It is the underlying principle.

It is that two people even NEED the other to be faithful, in order for them to be okay with themselves and feel safe-
it is THAT, that needs addressing.
It is THAT, that I resent.
It is THAT, I will never allow to exist in the area of my love life.

But from now on, it is also THAT, the principle of needing things on an emotional level, from someone else, in order for you to feel safe;
It is THAT work, I no longer want to do.

Ever.

If I need to be someone, or something, in order for that other person to feel loved or seen, or safe?
I should not respond.
The gate should stay closed.

I would like to understand why that giantess came out of her castle and tried to make herself fit into the smallest of towns;
When the lady has a fuckin’ fortress.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

The picture of the painting is one from before your time. When I made business cards for my alterego LS Harteveld I used this painting.
At the time I remember thinking it was okay, that it was public domain because it was so old.
But I could have been wrong.
Just like Little Red Riding Hood’s risk assessment of the forest was not entirely accurate either.

It must have been in the year of our Lord 2018 I think, when I selected the Little Red Riding Hood painting for my business card.
But as fairy tales go, her story, and my identification with her, had been much older.
Bringing it into print, was just a confirmation of her significance, not the birth of her existence.

And although over the past few weeks I have talked often about the current status of my lover and me
–
Which is our permanent status, which is there is no status! Just varying degrees of uncertainty and feeling new women enter his life.
Feeling varying degrees of interest and energetic commitment, rise and fall like the waves.
And I found myself talking about how I can see it is a dryer season for me, yet the flow going somewhere else has been almost tangible.
So arousing, so exciting, that it is almost as if I, and not this new woman, is having an affair with him.

And I told this story often, and it started taking its shape. And although the first time I told it, I still thought it was the story of me being sidelined and on a slippery slope of being broken up with;
The more often I told the story I realized that I loved telling it. That it gave me pleasure, even if I technically no longer was the main character.
Or at least not the one getting the juicy bits!

So I was starting to have fun telling the different aspects of it, or to share new developments where I always excused myself for not going into detail about the specifics because I found that for the sake of privacy those things were  best left unsaid. Instead I described the meaning they had.
“He really made an effort to keep me there.”
“He sent me something sweet.”
“He gave me something that symbolized both new hope, as well as a goodbye present.”
–
And although the story had been unfolding for a couple of weeks, it wasn’t until last night that a friend reminded me of how deliberate and cautious I had been from day one, in dealing with him.
That I had had a deep understanding this was the type of man that can take you down. And the danger, I was in.

It had been a moment of awakening!
A call, like you find in the Hero’s Journey.
The moment you know this was what you were waiting for. THIS is your quest: To be challenged by the most difficult of men.
To learn, how to stand your ground.

Right there and then, had been when the parallel of me being Little Red Riding Hood and him being the wolf, had clicked.

Yet it wasn’t until last night, when a friend reminded me how aware I had been I was playing with fire, that I remembered the wolf/ Red Riding Hood analogy from back in the heyday.

And how fitting a new analogy had been!
An analogy I used telling the story as it is today. An analogy of the sexual treats basket or the basket of desire.

Without remembering our Little Red Riding Hood/ Wolf history, the symbolism of how we started, I had picked a new symbol that could flawlessly be edited into our story.

The story of the baskets of desire.

.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a little girl named Red Riding Hood.
Red Riding Hood loved adventures and on one of her many off-the-path strolls through the forest, she had met the Wolf.
The Wolf had asked her what was in her basket, and Red Riding Hood had answered that it was cake for grandma, and that he could not have any.
She insisted every piece would go to grandma, for whom her mother had intended it to be.

The Wolf fully understood that this was not her basket to share, but he asked if she would like to go for coffee with him, at the Inn down the road.
“And they have this fresh strawberry cake there. You should really try it.”
So they went to the cafe, and the strawberry cake was the most delicious thing Red Riding Hood had ever had.
“It’s a great place for drinks too,” the Wolf said.
“Would you like to join me some time?”
They exchanged phone numbers and before little Red Riding Hood was at her grandma’s house, she had received a gif from him without any text.
But it was the sweetest thing, and she liked looking at it over and over and thought deeply about its meaning and why it was the perfect mix between something cute, and something brazen and bold.

She felt like a whole different Riding Hood after having seen the Wolf.
Like she was her own person now, and on the verge of her biggest adventure yet.

Very soon, Little Red Riding Hood became the mistress of the Wolf. And just like the first time they had seen each other, he would always know the best places to go, and the most delicious things to eat.
He would bring her to the spots in the forest where the wild berries grew, and where honey could be found.
And he would prepare meat for her, over the fire.
And although in the real world Little Red Riding Hood was a vegetarian, she never told the Wolf. It all fell under the spell of what they had together.
And she sank her little white teeth in the roast, without thinking where it came from.

He always brought her back to the edge of the forest, before midnight.
And Little Red Riding Hood never slept over.
She knew very little about him, and there were times when she hardly saw him.
Where he texted just the right amount of times for her not to grow too suspicious, but when she checked her calendar she realized it had been months since she had seen him in person.
And even longer since they had had sex.
That he had been quietly moving out of her life, and that she had failed to notice.

Once, the Wolf had broken up with her but it had changed nothing in how they related to each other.
Still together, yet never together.
But Little Red Riding Hood had not liked him breaking up with her at all. And every time he grew distant, she held her breath if he would play that card again….
The card that would end their game, at least in theory.
Until the flesh, the feelings, the attachment to being in the dance, had wiggled their way out of the social construct the Wolf had imposed upon them.

And the game would begin again.

Over eight years had passed since Little Red Riding Hood had ran into the Wolf. Or was it more accurate to say he had ran into her?
Had it all been premeditated?
And how many Little Red Riding Hoods were there?
After eight years, why was she still on the margins of his life?

But also: why did she still feel so alive, when thinking about him?
Why would she choose being sidelined, broken up with and ghosted, any day over having him at her feet asking for her hand?
The thought of the Wolf turning into a reliable dog repelled her.

And it was in that moment, that she realized it was because of his basket of desire, that the Wolf carried with him. A basket filled to the brim, and overflowing with all the adventures he had had. When being with him, he had shared that with her.
Just like he had given her the best strawberry cake, on that very first day they met.

The Wolf had a basket, with different treats, collected on different occasions throughout the forest and beyond.
And it was a mighty asset, of which few could understand the power it held.
The basket held hearty treats, some were sweet, some required acquired taste, others were completely harmless except for your enamel!
Some were perishable, which the Wolf made sure were either stored in the freezer, or consumed within hours.
The Wolf liked telling you about what was in the basket, and visibly enjoyed it when you made your pick.

The Wolf had a steady supply; Not of money, but of sensual pleasures.
And he would share them with Little Red Riding Hood and other fairy tale figures too she presumed. But the price was you never asked questions how his basket came so full.
Just like Little Red Riding Hood had never asked where the roast had come from.

And Little Red Riding Hood’s basket?
Well, that no longer contained the cake of her family. She had her own basket, and it was filled with fire balls.
Not overflowing, but until about half an inch under the top.
The hard outer shell tasted of cinnamon, and you could crack it with your teeth, after you had sucked on it for quite a while.
If you tried too soon, the ball was still hard as rock, and unforgiving.
The core was juicy and sweet, and would turn into a gum once you had chewed the juice and the remains of the hard layer out of it.

Other men had often fancied her basket, but Little Red Riding Hood never felt like sharing, except for with the Wolf.
But she did recognize it would be better if she too had other adventures and would get around the forest a bit more.
She was no longer as outgoing as she had been when the Wolf met her, and sometimes she felt she had failed living up to his expectations.

She would be better off with a second Wolf in her life or another figure who sported a full and varied basket.  
But the two characters that had been candidates, had never made a serious pass at her basket.
After the initial shock of the fire works of meeting Little Red Riding Hood had passed, they firmly rejected her by saying they were involved with other women. 
Which was very effective because Little Red Riding Hood did not care for men without sexual agency.
And she lost all appetite to share her fire balls with them.

So even though for her it had only been the Wolf, and he had proven to be inconsistent in dating her, she had been happy overall.
And because her fire balls did not require any maintenance, she did not have to worry in the months she did not see the Wolf.
What she had in her basket was unchangeable. 

And one day, when the Wolf would return – and she knew he would! -she would not be angry nor disappointed. The thought would not even cross her mind.
She would be curious to what new delicacies he would offer her and the smile on his face when she tried them.

She would never ask where they came from;
And the Wolf would never tell.

And in their own kingdom, a place even beyond the realm known to Grimm and Andersen;
The Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, lived happily ever after.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

I think I know the answer to this question….
And yet I have always concluded that LS Harteveld is my writer name, fully creative, and that positioning myself as a professional or even activist here would jeopardize both the integrity of this alter-ego, as well as my desire to write creatively.

So then how can the answer to a question that has been presented to me numerous times, and from different angles, how can that answer be;
Make LS Harteveld a professional.

And yet, something has been stirring, hasn’t it?
Or more precisely, not been stirring.
Because my writing here has marginalized over the past 3 years.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

My new business came to a halt, when I started setting up the second business, the renewal of my yoga career.
Temporary, of course.
But it was almost shocking how all the daily marketing and connection just flatlined, as soon as I started thinking about what I needed to set up my new Dutch yoga work.
I have pushed away the thought that this new career will inevitably result in even more marketing tasks.
More hours and hours to crunch, so that it can be done next to the work you get paid for.
Not instead of it.

I don’t get paid to be active on my socials, nor do I desire to be.
But that does come with the consequence of not being able to put in all the hours every day, as you would want to.
As I, would want to.

So I find myself in a vacuum, where my daily marketing routine has fallen by the wayside and yet the activities of this new line of work still feel clumsy, time-consuming, and overwhelming.
So little gets done.
And in the quiet of living offline, there is an unnatural amount of time to question if “it” will ever work.
My marketing routine gave me a feeling of accomplishment, and without it I feel a bit lost.

But it has also brought to light that I so deeply, deeply miss writing as LS Harteveld. The work I consider my only “real” writing work.
Under my real name (not LS harteveld) writing has fallen away too, when I started my first business late last year. I rarely write anything else than things related to that business/ website.
My creative writing has come to a stop, and without missing it.

But the writing here, that has been different. It is more a therapy, a confession. Writing as LS Harteveld, has been how I started creating a new life, in 2006.  The year my relationship would end.
Finding my voice on paper and knowing what I wanted out of life, came hand in hand.

The past 5 years I have been searching professionally what I wanted. And in 2018, my first hunch was to become a fulltime writer.
I ultimately didn’t because the loneliness was killing me, but what happened in all the years after, finding my new career the one that is now in 2023 finally taking shape-
It was not good for my writing as LS Harteveld.

I like my Lauren retro-1998 project, which I started in 2019, so then it was still my retro 1994 project.
But even those blogs and the manuscript I extracted from these posts, they all seem to be such a small payoff for all those years.
Because I wrote so, so much!
Long articles, where I tried to get to the heart of what the f was happening with me. Why I felt so bad. Why the pandemic seemed to hit a nerve with me socially, and why I was practically immobilized in every way.

Out of all the blogposts I wrote since 2020 I would say 5% of the words are the retro-project, the rest is trying to decipher what was happening to me.

Part of me was so happy, when from late last year onward I was finding my feet back professionally. Under my real name.
And now with the second company too;
It is so rewarding to know you will soon be able to say “I do this” or “I am that”. 
My career is giving me back an identity. Or identities, plural then.

But in the calm of setting up this second business, and not being online and not doing any online marketing, something else came up.
An understanding that I want this LS Harteveld work back.

Every time I thought about it, prior to this week, I dismissed it a bit. Brushed it off like “Too complicated.”, and “Don’t know how to sell it.” Even my love life slowly ending, or going in hibernation, with my lover quietly moving out of my life energetically, became a reason not to invest here.
After all;
What was I supposed to write about, when I didn’t have a lover?

The pandemic years had given me enough articles and frustrations along the lines of “I feel lonely and everything sucks”.
I didn’t want to add more celibacy to the pile.

And the business-thinking, that I skillfully apply for my real name, that too became a hindrance to take this, writing as LS Harteveld, seriously.
I felt pressed to have an answer to questions like;
Shouldn’t I be publishing my Lauren retro project books instead of writing more posts? The posts for the years  1994-1997, are already done.
Why would I write something new, it was much better to work on the manuscript.

Shouldn’t I just focus on writing you Sara, and maybe a Lauren 1998 post every three months or so?

Why would I write more LS Harteveld stuff, if it would all just be more depressing, complicated, celibate bs?

The worst moments were when I considered if it would not be better to just delete all LS Harteveld websites and accounts.
Writing as LS Harteveld was all just a burden, something else to attend to, in an agenda already overflowing with desk-bound responsibilities.

But from having distanced myself from this work, from this writing, the past six months or more, the past offline, marketing-low week of being by myself and being confronted with myself, has given me a different perspective.
The perspective that once upon a time, when I was still in a relationship, when my new life as a single woman, a woman who would try new things, meet new men, and become that woman who had taken agency of her sexuality and who would have adventures others could only dream off;
That life, had started with writing.

I started over half a year, before my relationship would end.  And I would write through what seemed like a slow-turning first 18 months or so, with a kiss, a first touch, and ultimately sex with a new man.
I would write about the man after that, and the man after that.
Losing my best friend, and finding a best friend. And then losing her, again.

In this week of living offline, the realization came to me that although I will have my career back, within weeks now, the field of my love life is pretty much where it was in 2006, when I started writing.

That I am not having the love life and the experiences I want for myself.

Back then, I wanted to have new experiences with new men, but I thought it was a temporary period. I thought that ultimately, I would end up regretting breaking up, although I was ready to pay that price.
I ended up not regretting a thing, and realizing that my sexuality had been a poor match to monogamy.

That more than me needing multiple men, I needed a partner to have multiple women.
That I had felt suffocated, being the only person he had sex with. It had felt wrong in so many ways. 
What I didn’t know then, but I do know now, is that I need a partner to be free and for him to use that freedom to have adventures. Because only then do I feel  truly desired, and chosen when he has the adventure with me. 

Compared to 2006, I am guessing that my desire for a different love life, a better love life, is just the beginning, just like it was back then.
That I cannot know or see, what it will ultimately lead to.

But the situations 2006 and now are similar. Back then I had a long term partner with whom I no longer had an active sex life.
And now I have long term lover, but I think that is over for a short or longer while, or permanent. You never know.

I know something must change now, just like I knew it then.

And the week offline has brought back to me how change started. How I found that life I was looking for but also, how I had found myself back;
Writing.

In the beginning was the Word.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

This email is going to be even shorter than last, because I only have 45 minutes at most. 
My late hour for this email (I usually write you over the weekend, and it’s Monday evening here now) is symbolic of the absence of writer energy as a whole, in my new life. Now that I am actively an entrepreneur.

I have put writing, in particular writing under this alter-ego LS Harteveld, at the top of my priorities half of the time; 
And in the slipstream of that, to live a life worthy of writing LS Harteveld stories about. A life with sex and fun and adventure.

And the other half of the time I have put my body, picking up my yoga practice, recreating my yoga teacher body or even teen or 20s body, at the top of my list.

But I can put at the top of my list all I want;
The past half year all that I have really done is setting up my business.

And it is now that the daily rhythm of marketing, selling and working in my business is finally taking shape, and the smoke of the startup is clearing, that the reality of the rest of my life, and those top two priorities only deeper buried in dust than they ever were, covered with more guilt than I had 6 months ago:
It is now, that I both feel intense sadness for all the lost years, and the understanding that I never stood a chance to begin with.

That my social life, my friends, my love life, all hung by just a thread that losing my business in 2020 cut like a knife through butter.
That my entire sense of normalcy, was wrapped up in that simple local identity of I am a yoga teacher.

My business was still in transition when Covid hit;
To this day I am convinced I could have rebuilt a profitable business back. There was a lot at stake, but I also knew a lot, including how to built a healthy business.
Spoiler; It is never, to just blindly take on the business model your industry has come up with.
Maybe there was relief when late 2020 I ended the lease of the yoga space and gave up.
I have been carrying the grief of not being able to build a profitable yoga studio, for a while now.

But now I am at the phase where I realize that my not-profitable-enough studio, was precious. The people, were precious. And now that I have felt loneliness for years on end, so intensely, so dramatically, and can see more than ever, that maybe even if it had cost me money;
Maybe I should have kept it on.

Teaching yoga as a social club for others, and as the foundation for my own social life, was an idea I never took on.
I didn’t allow myself to.
Also because I felt frustrated for it not bringing in what it should, to call it a career or a healthy business.

But now that I have my new business, that is designed in a way that it generates money in a much more straight forward, sustainable way than being a local yoga teacher could ever be, I find myself thinking;
“Damn. I wish I still had those Tuesday night groups.”
Tuesday was the night I rented a big venue, so it cost me extra, hundreds of euros per month.

I quit that venue in 2018, a month before I started working with you, and had lost almost everybody from that night, because few transitioned to my inner-city studio.
But now that I don’t have that inner-city studio anymore, I fantasize about how wonderful it would be to have such a rich social life, of those big groups.
Meeting people at the supermarket who take your class.
That sort of thing.

I realize that as a social activity, it was precious to me. But that I did not allow myself the luxury of indulging in teaching yoga as a hobby.
I needed more.

And I get that.
Even today, I will not start anything like that until I make a solid amount (I know which one) per week.
That just like in 2018, I am frustrated but unwilling to put pleasure and leisure before building a business.
And a big one.

Just that five years later, I see what I have sacrificed.
What I have already lost, in pursuit of owning a business that makes enough money so that I, a single woman, will be able to buy an apartment and sustain myself into old age.

I want a business that keeps feeding me, my retirement fund, my savings account and my investment portfolio for decades to come.
Put the big bricks first, and that is mine.

So there is that, the sadness of seeing I have not been able to hold on to those groups, to the yoga studio, and that in a way I have destroyed that social structure that was also a lifeline to my normalcy.
To feeling I belonged.

And then the title of this blogpost, the missing piece;
I feel I have lost my lover.

I have seen him, and we are still precious to each other. I know that. Nothing has changed between us. But I imagine his circumstances have changed, he has moved away from me energetically and we are no longer sleeping with each other.
I suspect at some point he will tell me we will no longer be having sex, as if I cannot see that myself.

Like the yoga groups I feel I lost him, because I could not focus on two fields at the same time. I could not invest in our beautiful affair, our amazing sex life, the sex life of LS Harteveld, and also build a business.

And I could not invest in my yoga practice and in my body; The body that I had  when year after year, we had those exciting, intimate encounters, that nourished us both so much.
That were valuable, like my yoga groups were valuable just not from a capitalist, financially independent woman perspective.

My body, my yoga practice, my life of fun and adventure and my writing;
My social life, my life teaching yoga, my identity as a yoga teacher;
I put it all on the backburner, for the dream of having the business that will be able to sustain me, when I grow old.

Because I don’t want to be dependent on a man, nor on a community to sustain me, when I am older.
I want to be financially free, and feel it is my responsibility to lay that foundation not just for me, but also for the people who socially or sexually have a relationship with me.

I don’t want to be anybody’s pity case.
Not now, not ever.

But the price, is high. 

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

I know that every time I announce it’s going to be a short email, it ends up being a not-so-short email.
But this time, it’s really going to be a short email.

Because everything is just so sweet, gratifying, and above all expectations.
It is of a perfection, that I had no idea was possible. Even though I sacrificed, let’s be honest, five years of my life if not more.
And a fortune in missed income and opportunities, because I knew I needed to get all the way to the bottom of why my life and career had ended up in shambles.
Why, I had been so intensely unhappy being a yoga teacher, even though I loved being a yoga teacher.

Yet still;
What an unexpected and sweet reward to then see what you created, working. Rolling. This show, my new company, is on the road.
A coaching company for business owners, artists and the biggest rock stars of the world.

And I could not have done any of it, if it had not been for all those so called wasted, unhappy years.

I used every bit of knowledge I acquired, every experience that enriched me, every tear I shed and every love I cherished; I took it all and built a three-layered company, that will satisfy me financially, spiritually, intellectually, socially.
And that now that it’s done, actually requires me to actively focus on my body, health, and sexuality; The areas I have neglected and have established so very little . Although as recent as first half 2022 I had the best sex life ever!! But it seems so long ago.
And I do know that in those areas, I have been trying to make headway for years, since I stopped being a fulltime yoga teacher. 
Nothing takes care of your body like teaching 10 classes a week.
And I didn’t have the discipline nor the inspiration, to replace it sufficiently.

Considering the firm body-care foundation of teaching yoga dropped out, and being middle-aged, I got off lightly.
I’m not sick, I’m hardly overweight, my condition is good, and I still move around by bicycle and take long walks frequently.
But it’s not consistent, and it’s not enough.

In my last letter to you, I announced to drop the idea of doing yoga privately and to start teaching yoga on YouTube.
That is still the plan.
Maybe I will add a private yoga practice, but only for a limited time, like 100 days or so, and then switch to teaching privates or one-off workshops.
So to monetize the practice, instead of trying to timeblock for yoga in solitude, which I know is not my future.

The past five years, I’ve had more solitude that I ever hoped to have in my whole life.

So the future is social: And I know my company has got that one covered.

But the future is also physical;
An area which I feel I need to reinvent first!

In my new professional life, my company, I use all the knowledge and experience;
My business degree, 15+ years as an independent yoga teacher;
Studying marketing and sales intensely;
My love for writing, pop-art, and personal development. 
And all the things I thought, the things I did, and everything I found out being a woman who had to get her sex life and sexual identity on track and on point, after being knocked off-track so hard in the 80s, by the aids crisis;
And it all led me to this point where I can see nothing was wasted, because it all led me to being able to build the business I built this year.

The show is on the road, and I can see this running for the rest of my life. This show, this company, is what will take me around the world, bring me places.
It is how people will know me, and will work with me.

But now, the time has come for that final area, body.
Or two areas; Body and sexuality.
The next level of sex.

It is time for the star of the show, to step into her power.
And become the Rock Star she came here to be.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

Initially I thought I had forgotten all about our last conversation.
That I had made a fuss about having to recover from my personal early- and late Dark Ages, respectively January 2018-February 2020, and March 2020 to March 2023;
Only to then forget all about it.

The very last of the C. measures were lifted last week, on Friday 10 March. The official ending, both of the pandemic as well as of my personal Dark Ages.
Two eras that seemed never ending, until just like that, they did.

I still praise myself lucky I am a middle-aged woman, when these darkest years hit me. That I have decades and decades of normal, healthy life to look back on and to get back to.
I have an understanding of what went wrong these years.

What went wrong, partially due to personal circumstances, but predominantly through global ones. And that what went wrong was in all probability inevitable, because life could not have unfolded in a different way.

Just like when I was 30 and became a yoga teacher; A profession that at the time was not taught to young people.
You had to be in your late twenties to start the education.
Had I known I wanted to be a yoga teacher earlier, it would have been hard to start training and none of it was government funded.
So spending my early twenties at university was a great choice both socially as well as professionally, because it gave me the foundation for my life as an independent because I studied business.

But in terms of career, I had to start all over again, in my late twenties. Professionally, my early twenties had not computed to anything lasting.

I try to go about my Dark Ages in the same way;
They were not wasted, just that they did not lead into a clearly defined career  or skills, anymore than my university degree did.
And they lacked the renaissance spirit of college years, and were indeed more like Dark Ages, where life went around in circles.

Yet ultimately those 5 years were inevitable or necessary, none the less.

So the past weeks I got a new perspective on them, which was already helpful.
But I also did something that came so naturally, I almost forgot it was something that was in sync with the intention to mark The End Of The Era, to heal, integrate, and most of all;
To get the f on with my life.

I dated and organized all my cds, dvds and all my 20th century books. They are now visually dedicated to my Lauren 1998 project;
To living 25 years ago. 
At a glance, I can see all materials I, Lauren, would have had access to at the start of 1998, and I have marked anything being issued in the year 1998 itself, with the date it was released and Lauren 1998 would have been able hear it, read it, or see it in cinemas.

And furthermore, I have split these collections into two separate time capsules;
One for my Sweet Sixteen self, to bring back the remarkable productivity, the stunning health, and the tremendous calm of the 80s. 
And one for my 20s self, for Lauren 1998, who is still struggling to juggle her ambitions as a diarist with her freelance work.

There are still hurdles to take, because just like Lauren 1998 I  struggle keeping even more balls up in the air, starting my new online business (I’m back to fully online, and will write off the money I spent on three months at the local business center. It was driving me nuts to even think about real life networking) and setting up a sustainable marketing for ALL my creative outlets.

I can’t post a few inspiring memes, and start selling my online coaching. I am NOT that kind of business owner.
I will always be a creative because I coach creatives and am creating a whole Rock Star Universe for decades to come.
You don’t Content Calendar yourself out of that, I need to keep creating!
I need to keep writing.

And not just for my real name, but for this name, Lauren, LS Harteveld as well.

But one ball didn’t make it.
It slipped and I know I cannot pick it back up;
My yoga practice has completely flatlined.

It is just undoable to be a writer under two names, run a company, do my marketing, make yoga videos and other videos, get daylight, exercise, and do interesting things to live a life worth writing about-
And to also have a home yoga practice.

I need to give it up, and move to “All yoga is for video”.
I need to be an online yoga practitioner, not an online teacher.
Which feels more vulnerable, yet in a strange way, also more exciting.
But it was not how I had envisioned it. I thought this year I would become a strong, offline, yoga practitioner again.

Now I know that all yoga will be teaching it.
Period.

The coaching company which I started in February, has been an incredible blessing, I feel that is what is the biggest difference between the Dark Ages and now.
That I now have a monetizable purpose.

But because I also want to build my yoga channels, and do all my writer and storyteller work, under two names, it has also revealed something has got to give.
And I know this is the offline, private, non-monetizable yoga practice.

I know not having a yoga practice is risky.
That after a 5 year midlife crisis of strain, stress, tremendous losses, frustration and major changes in every and all areas of my life (bar my love life, which has been surprisingly stable considering its “loose” setup! 😂) something that can serve as a physical form of therapy, would be the wise thing to do.

March’s changes of having a company and building yoga channels, two things I would have loved to have had over the past 5 years, will come with a sacrifice of my personal yoga practice.
There is no other way, since I prioritize writing under two names, marketing, publishing books and giving Lauren an offline, 20th century life worth writing about.

So from my previous letter to you, a realization that I need to implement something to undo the damage of five years of Dark Ages, I am moving to an understanding that my way of getting over my 21st century Dark Ages, is not by moving forward. Nor by moving inward.
But by moving outward, into the world.
And back, into creating an offline 20th century life.

Which makes sense, because despite all the drama, what I experienced more than anything in those five years, was being forced to stand still.
To stand still and to see what I called a life, crumble away, die, move out, or otherwise slip between my fingers.

It was the hell of seeing my whole life disappear into a five year void. Leaving behind only loneliness, and old age.
The year I turned 50 was the worst year of my life.

Therefor my path out of the darkness can never be contemplation.
Not the solitude of a daily yoga practice.

I need to run this new, 21st century online business; Yes.
But all my free time will go to giving Lauren 1998 a richer, fuller life!

A 20th century offline life;
FILLED with professional, personal and sexual adventures.

Adventures, worth writing about. 

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

The good news is I haven’t changed my plans, or what I want for weeks now. Just details, but nothing big. I feel secure in the commercial or official company I will be starting tomorrow, and in the understanding that I will bring teaching yoga and writing under the umbrella of the company, in future years.

It is doable, it is clear, and I like not having everything in there at this phase. I can really focus, on monetizing and selling just a selection of services, and it is breaking the cycle of loneliness.
It is a first step to recovering from what I will call my personal dark ages.

Like the real dark ages there is an early dark ages and a late dark ages. I think you don’t really see what the early dark ages are, until you are sinking even deeper.

I didn’t recognize any part of the dark ages, for the longest time, because the early period was set off by my little cat Maxie dying in January 2018.
I lost all my joy or interest in my work of teaching yoga and quit teaching that summer.
I picked it up early 2019, after my renovation was done, and I started teaching yoga to friends.

Late 2019 I had started developing Rock Star Yoga, and I am convinced that would have been how I would come back to teaching, if it had not been for the obvious 2020 reasons.
I ended the lease of my yoga space late 2020.

All in all I thought my misery was circumstantial.
That it was the result of not having cats for the first time in 15 years, and of a renovation in my building late 2018 and early 2019.
Workers coming into my house, the heating being turned off numerous times, and two weeks where I had to leave the house because it was unlivable and then the alternative housing was hardly better because they had started renovating there too, and everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

By the time it was all over I adopted two cats and 2019 was the year I started designing my new life!
There were some major changes but I knew it was me getting back on my feet.

So when in 2020 I started feeling miserable I didn’t think much of it either because everyone was miserable.
And because I was healthy, lived alone carefree and didn’t have children that needed homeschooling, I did not have the heaviest burden.
But I found the pandemic magnified the inter-human expectations that it was my task to make sure somebody feels safe with me.
A fear at the heart, of my social phobia.

I feel I still don’t trust people the way I used to, because in the past at least I thought it was me.
That I was exaggerating, and too sensitive or even seeing expectations that were not there.
But now I believe it is even worse than I imagined.

During the pandemic I saw a wide array of blaming, of not taking responsibility that we live in a free country and this entails several rights and risks. Our government demonized people who did not behave the way they thought was appropriate, and judging by the lack of protest that was apparently okay.
When now, the people who are vulnerable are still vulnerable, and everybody moved on and no one talks about what the vulnerable people are supposed to do.

So they all felt really good about themselves, being the good guys and blaming the bad guys, only to just leave all those who actually do have reason to worry unprotected after.
The silence is deafening.

The loss of my last cat, became a switch in careers,  became a year long void where I waited for the renovation to be over.
And when the upwards going curve of teaching yoga and new cats, was finally taking off, and I knew where I was heading;
It was 2020.

With my new company, and knowing exactly what I am going to do, I feel the grief of all those lost years, requires attention.
That I have been carrying this around since January 2018, when my cat died in my arms.

So much has happened since.
And nothing has been processed.

It’s all still raw and painful.

And I couldn’t help but wonder;
How do you recover, from the dark ages?

 .
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

In our last correspondence I announced that I had once and for all quit being a yoga teacher.
And Boy, I meant it!
Still do.
And yet, quitting teaching yoga is not turning out as actually quitting teaching yoga. And for reasons I absolutely did not see coming, but that have persuaded me immediately.

Not to start teaching again, I would not call it that.
But the reasons persuaded me to go in and save my work, because it has all my heart and soul in it. And that work is not teaching yoga;
It’s the books that came from it.

A few years ago I have reissued the White Tigress Yoga Workbook, originally from Lauren Harteveld, under my real name.
The name where I also used to be a yoga teacher.
I also have a public online, collection of 52 (!) yoga schedules there, a ton of schedules still on my computer, about 15 early 21st century dvd’s I’d like to watch and make schedules for, and 5 vintage yoga books I’d like to study.

Yet perhaps I could have turned my back on all of it, if it had not been for the fact that I wrote those 52 schedules in my cute baby-handwriting, which I attribute to notes my dolls write, or the cats. Or as written by my cartoon character Love Duckie, which is what I did with these ones.

The 52 schedules are actually a yoga book written by Love Duckie.
And there is no way, and I mean none, I can turn my back on Love Duckie…

To be fair, it did start with the White Tigress.
It did start with realizing that if I no longer taught yoga, I would never be able to bring these 7 schedules that are the result of 20 years in yoga, to the public.
That was the first, that made me want to save yoga.
I thought about starting a website, just for the White Tigress yoga and lifestyle as described by Hsi Li in three books, and start making yoga videos again, just for that.
So that came first, and it still felt very partial. Very doable, non-threatening, to pick just that one booklet, and say: “This is all the yoga I will be teaching for the rest of my life.”
But then I shrieked, like the parents in Home Alone, not: “We forgot Kevin.” but “I forgot Love Duckie!”

Love Duckie could not be left behind.
And even though I was not abandoning the cartoon itself, I loved Love Duckie so much (who wouldn’t?) that abandoning the 52 schedules in his baby handwriting was unthinkable.

I don’t make a habit of connecting my real life work to this site, but since this blog relies so heavily on that work, I will happily share it, in case you want to check it out:
Book page under my real name, including the reissue of the White Tigress book. 
Love Duckie’s yoga book
And I once made an English translation of a Love Duckie cartoon.

So I am picking up making yoga videos on YouTube: The “Love Duckie yoga” on my Dutch channel, and the White Tigress yoga on my English channel.
And the third yoga-from-the-heart concept was Rock Star Yoga:
This too will return, on my English channel.

The above is just one version of the story. Another version is that I realized that I need yoga, just not as the tool of self-expression I thought it was.
The yoga itself is normal, not unique. And me making yoga videos is nothing special either. I even no longer consider giving public classes with rock music, mixing theatre with yoga, nothing of the sort.
So no, I don’t need yoga as a tool of self-expression. I was right about that, in my last post to you.

But I have used yoga in the past to express myself though: Through writing. Through making schedules.
The expression was there, just that the heart of it was not in the actual teaching.

And I have tried to express myself in the teaching too. Through using class themes, themed series, cards, blog posts, long relaxations, and video talks on YouTube, I have tried to weave storytelling into the yoga.
But I did it backwards because I tried to put the storytelling into the yoga, for as far as yoga allowed it. 
And that is what will be totally different now:
The storytelling will go first.

So instead of a yoga teacher, instead of a TED-talk like speaker, instead of a blogger, instead of a writer and instead of a mentor and business owner, I am just that;
A storyteller.

The stories come out, as they come out. Perhaps there is yoga, perhaps not.
I’m even thinking of ways to take the word yoga out of the videos to simply a story, and than the second half of the story is on your mat.

But whether I explain the past three weeks with finding back my White Tigress  work and Love Duckie, and not being able to leave them behind;
Or with my love for storytelling finally taking the main stage (optional link to my Birth of a storyteller post, a very longread under my real name);
Of course I’m scared.

Scared because the profession of being a yoga teacher brought me harm and took me out for 20 years plus.
I always thought I had one chance left. One chance, to get it right this time.
But with yoga on board it feels I decimated the chances of success.
Like I’m sailing with a bomb on board.

So in our call, I would like to talk about how to change that story and how to stop being scared.
How to dismantle the bomb, so that it becomes something I love. Just like I love yoga books, yoga videos, Love Duckie, and the White Tigress work.

There is a rule in film that if you show a gun at the beginning of the movie, you have to fire it before the end.
So I can’t depart with a live bomb on board, because I know it will blow. I know how the story goes, and to be honest, I would set it off myself if I had too.

I can’t depart with me failing being the most spectacular story..