Hi friend,

If you really desire to build a spiritual relationship and grow into your higher self through partnership, there must be a commitment to truth.

So many of us make our partner responsible for our emotions, which reinforces the belief that it’s not safe to be fully honest & expressed in the relationship.

It takes maturity to own our experience and also allow our partner to have theirs.

Sometimes bringing our truth means we must be willing to lean into the discomfort that can arise in a hard conversation and hold space for one another.

When we give space for all facets of our being to exist within a relationship, we can evolve together, heal old wounds, and deepen in commitment and intimacy.

A Spiritual Relationship requires:

  • Awareness when we are reacting from our wound.

  • Understanding that our projections aren't the ultimate truth.

  • Willingness to explore what conflict brings up for you and what you’re being called to heal.

  • Honesty and vulnerability - being courageous and sharing what’s behind the defensiveness, rage, or fear when something comes up.

  • Asking for what you need, or being willing to meet your partner’s needs for safety (a hug, reassurance, words, or space to process).

  • Maturity. Knowing we do not own our partners, and that commitment is a moment-to-moment practice.

Let’s be honest… being in reactivity all the time, protecting our partner’s feelings, or asking them to dim their expression so we don’t have to feel our own emotions can slowly erode connection.

These kinds of relationships often carry covert contracts that eventually lead to resentment and loss of attraction.

Honesty and truth can light the fires of passion and keep both people connected to themselves and one another.

Rather than a place where parts of ourselves must be hidden, the relationship becomes a container for growth, personal responsibility, healing, and evolution.

This is a Spiritual Relationship. πŸ’ž

Inside Today’s Newsletter:

πŸ•ŠοΈ From Instagram: Bringing back deep friendship + why we could all use a foundational understanding of child development + how grief changes who we're becoming.

✨ A Practice + Journaling Prompts: For staying with your truth where it lives in the body, and exploring where you hold back in your relationships.

πŸ”₯ What’s New at Rising Woman

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🌿 This Weeks Reflection

It takes maturity to own our experience and let our partner have theirs. We do not own each other, and commitment is something we choose again and again, moment to moment.

✨ Practice for the Week: Staying With Your Truth

Truth lives in the body before it ever reaches words.

We can understand everything there is to know about honest communication and still feel ourselves tighten, brace, or go silent the moment something real wants to be said.

This practice is a gentle way to meet that bracing where it actually lives, and to give your body the experience of staying with your truth, so it becomes more available to you in the real moments with your partner.

Set aside about ten minutes and find a space where you won't be interrupted.

Step 1: Settle
Find a comfortable seat or lie down somewhere you feel at ease. Take a few slow breaths, letting each exhale be a little longer than the inhale.

Step 2: Ground through touch
Place one hand on your heart and one on your belly. Feel the weight and warmth of your own hands. Let your shoulders drop and your jaw loosen. Notice where your body is holding and give it permission to ease.

Step 3: Bring your truth to mind
Call up something true that feels hard to say, to your partner or to yourself. You don't need to say it yet. Just let it be here with you.

Step 4: Notice what happens
Feel where that truth lands in your body. Maybe it's a tightening in your chest, a closing in your throat, a drop in your stomach. Stay with the sensation and keep breathing into it.

Step 5: Soften around it
As you breathe, imagine softening around the edges of that sensation, the way muscles release under a warm hand. You're not pushing the feeling away. You're making room for it.

Step 6: Stay
Keep your attention on the sensation for three or four breaths. Notice if it shifts, settles, or moves as you keep it company. If your body resists, return to your hands on your heart and belly.

Step 7: Speak it
When you're ready, say the true thing out loud, even under your breath, even just to yourself in the room. Notice how your body responds to hearing the words.

Step 8: Notice
Take a moment to notice how you feel now compared to when you began.

There's nothing you need to do with what came up here. Simply learning how your body holds your truth, and how it begins to ease, is the work. The more familiar you become with these sensations in a calm moment, the easier they are to recognize and soften the next time something real wants to be said.

Be patient with yourself. This is a practice you can return to again and again.

Journal Prompts

  • Where in your relationship do you hold back your truth? What are you afraid would happen if you said the thing out loud?

  • Is there a "covert contract" running right now, something you expect from your partner that you've never actually asked for? What would it look like to name it directly?

  • When a hard conversation comes up, what's your usual move: shrink, defend, smooth it over, or shut down? Where do you feel that in your body?

  • What would change in your relationship if you trusted that your truth was safe to share?

Truth is something we practice. One conversation at a time, one honest moment at a time. The next time something comes up and you feel that familiar urge to shrink yourself or smooth it over, see if you can stay with what you're feeling for one more breath before you decide what to do.

That pause can give you the space to make a different choice.

Love,

Shay πŸ’•

P.S.If you're ready to create deeper intimacy, healthier communication, and more conscious love, our new Conscious Relationship Toolkit is for you.

Inside The Path to Conscious Love, you'll learn how to transform old relationship patterns and build the kind of connection you've been longing for. Learn more here.

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