37 years in…..
Ya’Acov and I are taking our annual holiday to celebrate our 37 years together and our 34th wedding anniversary. As we raise our heads from all the details of our work and look into each other’s eyes, we are seeing and being seen afresh and taking stock of how we are together. I’m finding this process beautiful, demanding, hilarious, challenging and resulting in exquisite mutual healing between us for which I feel so grateful.
What’s become clear (again) is the hard-core challenge of long term committed relationship. And the extraordinary new landscapes that keep unfolding between us make it so wonderfully worthwhile.
What do I mean? Well, to put it bluntly, there ain’t nowhere to hide. My, his and our somewhat predictable (by now) shadows, fears, manipulations and self-protective survival mechanisms, have become much more easy to spot. At the same time, there is enough trust to go deeper, and so the next layers of our personal paleontology are being revealed. And the rewards? A depth of mutual soul recognition that is off the richter scale, and love beyond my wildest dreams on all levels. Nuff said.
We’re experiencing such liberation, laughter, tears and healing in the naming and the owning. And the recognition that there is so much bedrock of trust needed to get here, and it still feels like we’re just beginning the next step, which if course we are. As I wrote to friends of ours who are on their initiatory marriage pilgrimage (otherwise called a honeymoon): “the stairs are littered with ample juicy rewards for those intrepid and courageous enough to climb. Not easy, often seemingly impossible, but SO worth it”.
As luck would have it, we are soon to be giving the first workshop for couples which we’ve offered in a long time. And this is helping us to combine our awareness of the processes going on within and between us with a witness level “birds eye view” about what we are doing and how. This is both incredibly helpful to our own process and feels like it’s the best preparation possible for running our upcoming couple’s course (THE SPACE BETWEEN US: Forging Understanding, Communication & Kinship) bringing this fresh fertile humane awareness of how hard it can be and how rewarding, to the well honed structures we know so well.
So as we labour in the fields of our psyches and receive so much beauty and harvest, we give thanks to all that supports this journey, and send out respect and encouragement to everyone involved in the dance of love, be it with yourself, with others and with life itself.
Hope to see you on a dance floor somewhere, sometime!
Susannah Darling Khan
The Space Between Us runs 14-19 October 2023 in Devon, UK and currently has space for 2 more couples.
Susannah’s Embodied Listening course is recommended for anyone wishing to deepen the dance of relationship, whether intimate, friendship, colleagueship or family.