Love: My Story (PART 1)

How love unexpectedly found me

Soul Wisdom is a weekly newsletter. Please feel free to share parts of this letter that connect with you, or send to someone you love. A special shout out to all the new subscribers who joined since the last newsletter. Thank you for valuing my work when there are so many things that can take your attention online. I appreciate you. It means everything. 🖤

Image by Kilimanjaro from Adobe Stock

A song I listened to whilst writing:

A New Love Story

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” - Rumi

The idea of sharing my love story has been on my heart for a while but it didn’t feel like the right time to do so.

Well, now that time has arrived.

This is the story of how two old souls met when they least expected it.

I’m gonna break this story up into two parts.

Part 1—In this letter I’m going to share the story of how I met my life partner and cosmic best friend,

Hannah Wallace

🩵

Part 2—Next week, I’ll share the wisdom I’ve gained about love and relationships these past couple years.

Let’s begin…

At the start of 2022 I was on the cusp of a new chapter in life.

Things changed in the most unexpected and beautiful way that I couldn’t have dreamt of myself—but I couldn’t see it in the moment.

Life blessed me with a spiritual gift that didn’t seem that significant in the moment. Sometimes a blessing may even seem disruptive but in reality, it’s a gift waiting to be recognised.

There’s a few things that happened simultaneously that were all important at the time which I am only now appreciating.

I was preparing to leave my corporate job in April 2022.

In February I booked a retreat for a medicine journey in Austin as a way to begin my new journey. It would happen mid April—a couple weeks after my job ended. I had also planned some travelling to see friends.

I was excited to finally have space to see what magic would appear next in life.

As part of the intake form for the retreat I had to write my intention. I wrote:

What would my life look like if I fully surrendered?

To me surrendering doesn’t mean giving up on my life, it means giving up my existing ideas about life.

I was thinking about all the incredible experiences I might have in relation to expanding work opportunities to enhance my ability to coach and hold space. I also wondered about all the spontaneous random adventures I might have whilst travelling.

I didn’t for a second think about how surrendering would impact my love life.

Anyway, around the same time a guy called George Lizos slid into my DMs and asked me to do a podcast with him.

Shortly after his message we recorded an episode where I shared parts of my spiritual awakening story. If you haven’t heard it already you can do so here:

After we finished recording, I asked George whether he knew anyone else I could be introduced to that would also enjoy having me on their podcast. He didn’t have anyone immediately in mind and said he would get back to me.

A couple weeks later, on 15th February, I was feeling excited about the future so I decided to use that energy to write a thank you letter to the Universe. I wrote about the ideal things I wanted to happen in every area of life as if they had already happened. Some of the things I’d written I was more eager to experience than others.

Love was at the bottom of that list because I was truly happy being alone.

Quick backstory…

I mutually parted with my ex around Feb 2019. Although we were perfect together on paper, after around 7 years of dating, we were simply two different people wanting two different things from life.

We’d known this deep down for years but kept kicking the can down the road hoping something would change. The truth is, I was no longer feeling the connection but was bullshitting myself that things would eventually change.

Deep down I was afraid of being on my own, so I kept holding on.

Eventually, I realised it was unfair for me to keep her in the relationship with false hope that one day we’d get married when I knew I didn’t want to.

By mutually parting we served the highest good—I got the space to figure out who I was becoming in this new chapter, and she was free to get married and start a family with the right person.

My first longterm relationship started around 16. Before that, I felt like I was falling behind the other guys in school because I didn’t have a girl. I wasn’t really content within myself. I felt like something was missing because I wasn’t dating. By 2022, I was finally coming to peace with who I was and who I was becoming.

Now back to the letter…

Here’s an excerpt from the part I wrote about love:

“Thank you for connecting me to my beautiful life partner. She is funny, sensual, spiritual, nourishing, soft, creative, tender, fierce, open, adventurous, loving, caring, has brown hair, committed to healing, connected to Earth, beautiful smile and laugh, kind.”

I had written it and left it at that.

I didn’t care when or how it would happen.

Remember the podcast I did with George?

Well, a few weeks later on 2nd March 2022 he introduces me to his friend

Hannah Wallace

who has a podcast called Finding Grace.

Love At First Sight

“It wasn’t love at first sight exactly, it was a familiarity.” - Mhairi McFarlane

I strike through the title ‘love at first sight’ because it wasn’t.

The first time we met was on Zoom to record her podcast. As soon as the camera turned on, our energy clicked instantly. We talked so much that we had to eventually cut the conversation and hit record before we got carried away!

After we recorded, we continued to be friends and talk every day. We were both genuinely happy being single and didn’t view each other as anything more than just friends.

Besides, in my letter to the Universe, I’d asked for brown hair, she’s blonde. So I didn’t think she could be my person. We laugh at that now. She says to me, “you got everything on your list, except brown hair!” 😂

In August 2022, when I got back from my travels I met Hannah for dinner. We talked for hours about anything and everything. One thing led to another and we slept together. We talked about it and were clear on our boundaries because neither of us wanted a relationship.

Fast forward to October 2022, I was involved with a new woman who I’d met at the time. For the sake of anonymity let’s call her Leah. It was sparks and butterflies. She was super into me. I was drawn by her magnetic seductive energy. I was hooked on the love she was showing me (or what I thought was “love”).

I didn’t feel that way with Hannah at the time so I thought maybe there’s something serious here to explore with Leah.

Within weeks of meeting we’d be on the phone for hours. Our first chat was nearly 8 hours.

Right around the time I met Leah I had a tarot reader email me:

A deep love in my life?

I’m thinking he’s talking about Leah.

Shortly after, I had a psychic reading from another lady.

“There’s a close physical connection in your life right now. Nourish it. The ocean came up in relation to this connection too. Don’t be afraid to do something different to what you originally wanted something to look like. I can see a deep love there waiting to unfold. It’ll take time, but it’s there.”

I would’ve also thought this was about Leah, except she said ocean.

I knew Hannah felt really connected to the ocean and all its animals like whales, seals, and dolphins.

“No, it can’t be. We’re just friends. She’s not even my type and she doesn’t want a relationship anyway.”

In hindsight, I laugh because the psychics were right all along.

Although I gained much wisdom and insight about love and relationships with Leah, my mistake was thinking the constant praise and acknowledgement I was receiving was a good thing. That the butterflies and sparks meant something serious. I felt Leah put me on a pedestal (knowingly or unknowingly). It was like an unhealthy guru and student relationship where the student falls in love with the guru. She idolised me. My ego loved it, but I didn’t see it that way at the time. In hindsight, I feel like my role in that relationship was to learn to hold space in a deeper more compassionate and passionate way than I’d ever done for a woman before. Women lack that emotional leadership from men.

Question:

What version of me was she really speaking to?

Answer:

The version of me that had been neglected and hurt. The one that lacked love. The reason Leah’s behaviour resonated with me is because on some level I still identified with that hurt version. This is how codependency begins because you need that person to continue to show love for you to be happy. They’re filling the wounded void within you. They’re not healing it, they’re temporarily filling it (only you can heal it). As soon as they stop, you’ll feel the pain of neglect again.

Then one day I come across this quote and it shifted my idea of love:

That’s exactly how I felt with Hannah, calm. No anxiety, no agitation. It felt effortless and easy to talk to her. Flow.

A quiet voice began to speak in my mind, “maybe your idea of love has been wrong all along”.

I didn’t recognise love as calm. I saw it as volatile and high energy all the time.

By December 2022, me and Leah realised the chemistry wasn’t quite right and broke up.

Around the same time, Hannah had a dream that I was dying and that I was annoyed with her for not telling me how she really felt about me. She tried to brush it off as unimportant, but eventually realised it was truer than she’d like for it to be so she shared her dream with me with no intention other than speaking her truth.

I was reluctant to believe I had any feelings for her at first.

A few weeks went by and we didn’t address the conversation again and we met up. As usual, we talked about anything and everything. Before she left this time though, I felt compelled to share my sexual trauma with her. I was nervous because it was the first time I had ever shared it with a woman.

She received it with such grace and kindness that it made me like her even more. After that conversation I felt we’d gone to a different emotional level in our connection.

It was healing.

Love As Medicine

“All healing is first a healing of the heart.” - Carl Townsend

2023 arrives.

We thought ok so if we’re gonna be in a relationship then we need to talk about the elephants in the room that would prevent us from fully leaning in.

Let’s get any doubts/concerns on the table.

We had 3 areas to discuss and work through:

1. Race (She didn’t see herself being committed to someone ethnic because of her horrible past. I never considered seriously being with someone who wasn’t Indian).

2. Age (There is nearly 10 years difference between us. I’d never considered being with someone older than me, and she’d never considered being committed to someone younger. At the time of writing I’m 32 and she’s 41).

3. Disability (Hannah has a condition called EDS which means she’s a wheelchair user. I wasn’t sure how that might affect our relationship).

As we talked through stuff over the months, it was clear that there was friction within me between my old belief system about love and this new love that was clearly blooming in my life.

I was invited to challenge my limited perspective of love.

I was being guided to move from one identity to another.

From hurt to healed.

From heart closed to heart open.

I always felt Hannah loved and respected me, but never did she put me on a pedestal. We were two old souls on our own spiritual journey who met along the path.

When two souls are meant to connect no one can stop it from happening because the whole Universe is making it happen. The magnetic force of both their hearts are so strong that no other force can repel them.

This love came packaged in a way that I didn’t recognise.

I had this idea of what my partner would look like in my mind. It’s interesting how we have convictions about who we should be with and when, about what love should look like. By doing so we can miss the magic in front of us because we’re closed off from any other possibility other than the idea in our mind.

Like I said before, sometimes our gift comes in wrapping we don’t recognise or expect.

I feel a deep sense of safety and trust with her. Like I’ve known her for years. Like we were continuing this journey from where we left off in the last life.

In fact, we were.

In the summer of 2023 I did a medicine journey that really blew me away. It unlocked a series of memories that would change my idea of love forever.

After that experience it was clear to me that we were together this time to help each other heal and to heal society’s idea of love.

My heart came online in a new way and an abundance of love began to reawaken. It was an ancient eternal love. A love that transcends time. A love that feels like the very fabric of life.

I’ll tell you exactly what was revealed to me next week.

But for now here’s a couple of pictures and a final message…

Picture of us at our favourite restaurant, Farmacy.

Picture of us at The Weeknd concert.

I can’t imagine life without this angelic woman now.

Remember the date I wrote the letter to the Universe?

15th February.

Turns out, that’s Hannah’s birthday.

You can’t make this shit up lol.

Love doesn’t look a certain way. Love has so many faces and forms. Nature is a love story. The way the roots of a tree weave together. How the water is absorbed by the soil. The way the edge of the ocean kisses the sky. The way a tree gracefully produces fruit that nourishes the human body. How the sun and moon dance in the sky. Different shaped clouds hold hands in the sky. The soul doesn’t know difference. It sees another soul and it wants to dance. It is only the mind that has stories that separate us.

See you for part two next week.

Love: My Story (PART 2)

One love,

V