I'm moving for love.

Post-divorce, I said I was done making major life changes for anyone but myself. But I'm learning that choosing love is choosing me and my contentment.

Hi. I’m Katie. This newsletter is a place for the woo curious to explore spirituality, culture, and humanity in an intersectional way. Here’s what I’m thinking about this week…

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Writing this was hard for me. I worried that I would sound like some cheesy self-help author who’s spouting patriarchal nonsense disguised as a cute love story. But as I wrote, I realized that I was exploring yet another sweet spot: one where I can make room for love and my needs…and how they’re often the same thing.

When Hilly came into my life, it felt like a plot twist in the best possible way.

We met for the first time in July of 2020 on a muggy Missouri morning. I had been divorced for five months.

He showed up at my door wearing a tank top with plants on it, swim trunks, and a huge grin. He immediately hugged me. It felt like we already knew each other intimately, and in some ways, we did.

We had spent the last week constantly on FaceTime, he from his parents’ basement due to a pandemic-related evacuation from the Peace Corps and me from my new, post-divorce apartment. We stayed on calls for hours, asking each other questions and eating Twizzlers (we mutually agreed that original strawberry is the only flavor worth acknowledging). My face hurt from smiling. And probably from all of the Twizzlers I ate.

We drove two hours south to a natural shut-in, a place where water runs through rocks and forms pools to swim in. He cracked jokes and I was the DJ, alternating between Whitney Houston and the Spice Girls. We both sang at the top of our lungs like this was the thousandth car ride we’d shared, not the first.

Along the way, we stopped at a roadside rummage sale. I bought a weird embroidered picture with the words “Wine Country” stitched over a rainbow and rolling hills for $2, and we laughed when the lady who sold it to me inexplicably threw in an eggplant with purchase. It rolled around on the floorboard of the passenger seat as we drove deeper into rural Missouri, where the roads wiggle like a dancer’s hips.

At the shut-ins, we donned goggles and fins (I made Hilly leave the spear gun in the trunk) and tried to touch the bottom of the deepest pool. People stared, but we didn’t care. We were having fun. The most fun I’d had in a very long time.

I’m not sure when I decided that what we had was something significant. Maybe it was when we sat in the shallow water that day, his arms around my body, my back against his chest.

Or a few months after that, when he began loudly singing the opening notes to the Lion King while I was virtually teaching my seventh graders…and not on mute. I’ve never seen cameras turn on so quickly.

Perhaps it was much later, when we held hands and sat on the sun-warmed rocks of another body of water, a deep blue pool in Puerto Rico.

It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that at some point, my head caught up with my heart, and I decided that I wanted my story to merge with his.

Something you hear a lot when you get divorced is that you have an opportunity to truly discover yourself. To do the things that you felt you couldn’t do in your marriage. To seek out the “real you,” divided from the influence of a partner.

And I wanted that for myself. Divorce had made me feel weak. Instead, I wanted to step outside of my body and nod admirably when I took in the choices I made. I wanted to be able to say that I did it for myself. Just Katie. No longer would I try to please others or gain their approval. I would choose what comes next based on whether it would bring me closer to the “real me.”

So I traveled. I got one tattoo. Then another, bigger one. I cut my hair. Pierced my nose. Got certified to teach yoga. Sold a house. Bought a car. Bought a scooter. Adopted two kittens. Started a business.

I balked at factoring my growing relationship with Hilly into any big decisions. It was my story. Mine. I didn’t need a ghostwriter. I certainly didn’t need an editor. If I was going to write in a plot twist, it would be one that I crafted myself, from beginning to end.

And it would have to be for me.

The first time Hilly and I salsa danced was almost our last. He grabbed my hands while walking outside one warm afternoon after we’d been dating for a few months and begged me to dance with him. He tried to teach me the three steps that make up the core of salsa: a step back with the right foot. A weight transfer and step with the left. And stepping back together with the right.

Simple. But I wanted to learn by myself, without his help and in my own time. He had more experience, and it irked me to be the one who needed practice.

Despite his best efforts, we stepped on each other’s feet, bumped hips and bickered. With the backdrop of the trees as my witness, I refused to dance again with him until we got “real” lessons.

So, a few weeks later, we went to a local salsa club. Steep stairs led us down into a dimly-lit room peppered with couples. I listened intently as a trim man lead us through the basics while wearing a headset microphone that would make Britney jealous. Back, rock step, together. Forward, rock step, together. After our brief lesson, with colorful lights reflecting off of the mirrored walls and the infectious beats of the music filling the room, Hilly and I began to dance the salsa.

And it still wasn’t great.

I wouldn’t let him lead. Couldn’t let him lead. My body actively resisted the guidance of his. My brain was in overdrive as I tried to anticipate his every move instead of trusting him to lead me through it. Other couples flowed seamlessly from step to step, like water coursing over rocks, but we were choppy, tentative. Stiff.

I couldn’t relax into the rhythm because I was too busy trying to control it.

In August of 2021, Hilly left St. Louis. He made good on a plot twist I knew was coming from the moment I met him and moved to the U.S. Virgin Islands for his career in marine biology.

He asked me to come. I said no. Life on a remote island was not a setting I would have chosen. I told him, “If I’m going to move, it will be for me.”

I repeated it like a refrain, certain of its meaning. If our stories merged again, it couldn’t be because I chased him. Weak women move for men. Strong, independent women move for themselves. They don’t need to be spun through life, guided through the steps by someone or something else.

Strong women lead. And I was determined to lead.

Something you feel a lot when you get divorced is out of control. In fact, in the months after I moved out of the home I’d purchased with my ex husband, what I craved most was the ability to grip life in my hands so tightly that it was forced to do as I said.

I made budgets and checked them obsessively. I packed my schedule full. I created one routine, then another and another. I became irrationally upset in moments I couldn’t dictate: the delayed flight, the dropped call, the miscommunication. And Hilly’s departure was something I could not control. He was leading by leaving. My pride wouldn’t allow me to follow.

So he left. And I stayed.

Life moved on. I went to yoga. I grocery shopped. I purchased a painting to hang next to my Wine Country embroidery. I watered my plants. I danced around my kitchen to music I had chosen, singing into a wooden spoon while cooking for one. Every decision that came my way, I made it for me. It was fun to lead.

Until it wasn’t.

When Hilly drove away from my apartment that still August morning, his car packed to the brim, my shoulders crept up towards my ears and stayed there. I wasn’t unhappy, but I wasn’t happy either. I missed him, but I also missed who I was when I was with him. I tried to forget about the content woman I’d glimpsed, still believing that the “real me” would be revealed in this time of solitude.

We managed to see each other every few months, despite the distance. St. Croix, South Carolina, New Orleans, back to St. Louis. Each time I hugged him again after being apart, the sigh that escaped my body was enormous, like I was releasing all of the stuck energy that had gotten trapped in his absence.

Life felt duller when I was dancing alone. The shapes I could make when moving with someone else were so much more interesting. It wasn’t that I felt better or brighter or more valid around him. I just felt…like me.

Like the real me.

I stood across from Hilly on the wooden floors of St Croix Latin and Ballroom. Our feet were bare. He held my right hand in his left in an overhand grip, and we moved to the count of our instructor. “Slow, slow, quick-quick, slow, slow, quick-quick…”

It was spring now. Twenty months since we’d met. Seven months since he’d left.

We were learning how to swing dance, a first for both of us. Hilly was leading. With a press of his palm against my back, he changed the trajectory of our dance, bit by bit, rotating me around to the bright brass of the big band music spilling from a speaker across the room.

He lifted his hand and sent me into a spin, then brought me back. Our arms crossed, uncrossed. We moved hip to hip, then opened back up again. It wasn’t perfect. There were moments I slipped into my old anticipatory mindset and tried to predict where he was headed.

This is a screen grab from a video, and it was hard to choose just one. Our facial expressions are hilarious.

But bit by bit, I felt the need for control slip away. My shoulders relaxed. Once I stopped trying, who was leading and who was following faded away. We were dancing.

And it was then that I finally got it.

Choosing to move in tandem with someone else isn’t weak. Releasing the need to be in complete control does not mean rejecting myself. Choosing love is choosing myself.

When I move to St. Croix (not if), it will be for me. For the me who is at her strongest and most authentic when she is loved. For the me who can emerge with the hand of someone she loves pressing gently between her shoulder blades, encouraging her forward and reminding her that he is there, supporting her.

My plot twist is choosing to let love write the next chapter. And I have a feeling that it will be the best one yet.

Have you ever made a major decision for love? I’d love to hear about it—and your thoughts on love’s role in our quest for fulfillment.

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✨Cards for Humanity: The Lovers✨

Whether you’re into tarot or not, here’s a few things to consider about this weird thing called life.

If you’re into numerology at all, the year 2022 is the year of the major arcana card of the Lovers (2+2+2=6, the number the Lovers carries). And if you have even a passing acquaintance with the Bible, you’ll likely recognize the figures on the card as a representation of Adam and Eve, the first humans created by God who walked the Garden of Eden.

When I first started reading tarot, I thought this card simply indicated romantic love. But the Lovers is so much more than a cosmic connection between two people: it speaks of a return to the authentic self that can only be achieved through connection.

The gazes of Adam and Eve are significant. Eve looks up to the angel above in a gesture of understanding that she is here, in this moment, because of divine guidance, while Adam looks directly at Eve, signaling the importance of the lived experience. The triangle they make is the alchemical symbol of fire: when we choose to acknowledge our humanity and our divinity, heat-filled passion arises.

When we see the Lovers in a tarot reading, it can mean many things: a relationship that is divinely fated and significant, a partnership that is thriving, or a duality that is being explored.

But perhaps the most important aspect of the Lovers links with the nudity of the figures on the cards: being vulnerable enough to return to the truth of who we are is no small feat. And even more significant? Being willing to be vulnerable in this way with someone or something else.

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✨Prompts | The Lovers✨

Meditate. Journal. Pull some cards.

☀️ What am I partnering with that brings me fulfillment?

☀️ Where can I be vulnerable with others in my life?

☀️ Where am I being called to be more authentic?

☀️ How can I practice radical love in my lived reality?

A painting / a song / a poem to represent The Lovers.

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✨Weekly Mantra✨

Write it down. Say it out loud. Share it with a friend.

I partner with what brings me contentment.

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I’ll be back here next week with…some thoughts. I wish I was one of those writers who always knew what she was going to write next, but my muse is too Type B for that.

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