hi, yes, hello.
i’ve been away from this space (again), because i’ve been recovering from love. or the absence of it. or the all-consuming nature of it when someone you love is suddenly no longer in the earth realm.
if you follow me elsewhere on the internet, you probably know that last fall, my beloved soul dog, Bella, suddenly became very ill, and less than two weeks after her first emergency vet visit, i had to make the gut-wrenching decision to allow her to return to the stars. tears are streaming down my face as i write this, and even though my heart/mind/body ache for Bella’s absence, i can’t help but think, how lucky am i to have known and loved her? i would accept this heartbreak and her absence a thousand times over if that’s what it would take to know her sweet soul for even an instant.
i think by now, whether or not we’ve read the bible or regularly attended church (i have done neither, save for my frequent visits to my local silent Quaker meeting over the past few months), most of us are familiar with these words from 1st Corinthians: love is patient; love is kind. i was introduced to these words by the 2002 film, A Walk to Remember, which i watched countless times with my middle school bestie, Cait. we became obsessed with being in two places at once… but i digress.
yes, love is patient, love is kind, but love can also be messy. when i first got Bella, i didn’t know how young she really was (shelters will often tell you that an older rescue puppy is a bit older than they are so as not to scare you off of the puppy stage), and we had many wrestling matches in the hallway of our apartment building at the end of walks. Bella was overstimulated, didn’t really want to go home, and she was fucking sick and tired of that leash, damnit! so she would jump on me, attack the leash, and generally raise hell. to subdue Bella and get her to stop biting the leash (and subsequently, me), i would often end up on the floor, holding her in a firm embrace. many times i’ve regretted this approach (could i have done something differently? could i have been more patient?), but in an odd way, Bella and i were bonding. she was learning that no matter how wild she got, i’d always love her intensely.
the night before Bella got sick, i started drafting a post for this space titled, “a letter to my younger self,” which turned out to be strangely prophetic. an excerpt:
you don’t know what you’re doing right now. but there are greater forces at work, shifting the tectonic plates of your life so you can rearrange the pieces that remain (over and over again), and the pieces you miraculously find along the way.
i’m sorry to tell you that while many things will begin to get better, many things will also come crashing down around you. after all, what’s an earthquake without a few broken plates?
i’ve got some good news, though. believe it or not, you’ve been training for adaptability in one shape or form for most of your life. you’ve got this, i promise.
but to bring it back down to earth… you think you know heartbreak now, but i promise you have no idea.
in the lines that follow, i told myself of how i would find Bella on my 29th birthday. i didn’t know that just a few days later i would be living the story of how i lost her, and learning what true heartbreak felt like all over again.
Bella left the earth during eclipse season, a week before the solar eclipse in Libra. sometimes i wonder if she had simply grown weary of the relentless heartbreak that is being in this world.
although Bella’s illness appeared to spring out of nowhere, she spent last summer telling my mom and i that she was “old,” which we dismissed as a sort of doggy existential crisis, because our boxer, Gustav, was very old and departed earth squarely on his terms last January. Bella was about five, so she was also definitively leaving behind puppyhood and entering adult doghood. now i understand what she was really saying: she didn’t have a lot of time left. Bella was trying to prepare us, but she didn’t want us to know she was sick, because she didn’t want her last summer of adventures to be interrupted. i know, because i’ve asked her about it multiple times.
so, what about love?
Bella taught me that love is not always patient, as she screamed while i prepared her dinner each and every night (Bella loved food more than anything, maybe even me… she insists that last bit isn’t true.) Bella taught me that while love is kind, it can also be fierce, like the way she didn’t take kindly to the other animals in the house coming close to her food.
Bella also taught me that love is weird, in the best sense of the word. when she first came home, she was, as most adopted dogs are, timid and sweet. the more comfortable she became, the more her weird side came out. she was a goofball. my coworkers at the time started referring to her as, “[me] as a dog.” she taught me that love really does make space for all parts of us.
10 days after Bella passed, i wrote this in my notes app:
Bella and i never took our time together for granted. we cherished every moment we had together because just the fact that we found each other was a blessing in itself. that was enough for us. in many ways, knowing that i treated (nearly) every millisecond i spent with her as a precious gift has made it easier to cope with her passing. i knew what i had, and i didn’t consider myself entitled to any of it.
this too, is love: reverence and presence.
i’ve spent a lot of time over the past ~4 months disappointed in my inability to show up fully in the ways that i’d like to for myself, my business, and my community; my inability to sit down and let words flow, to share this story. but today i realized that i’ve needed this time to process, to cry, and even to disassociate a little bit. in hypnosis, disassociating actually isn’t a bad thing; it’s what allows us to step out of old stories and timelines to make way for new ones. in this case, disassociating was a necessary experience for my survival. it was necessary to move through the threshold of grief onto the other side, where life grows around loss, like flowers out of concrete.
at some point between October and December, i began to consider choosing a word of the year for 2024. ironically, the word chose me, and not the other way around. i really shouldn’t even call this ironic, because as an animist witch, of course it did. i’ve been sitting with love a lot over the past several months. how can i remember it more? how can i remember that it is always available to me, no matter the circumstance? how can i act in love? that last one is the trickiest to integrate. it can feel quite difficult to feel love when someone cuts me off in traffic or i’m dealing with the interpersonal politics that come with my day job.
nonetheless, i’ve had love on the brain, and last week i received some inspiration (for the first time in MONTHS—hallelujah, it does return). so without further ado, here’s your invitation: on sunday, february 25th, at 3pm EST, i’m hosting a donation based community hypnosis event: THE LOVE PORTAL.
the love portal is a space to connect with the essence of love that is within and around us at all times, always available. it’s a reminder that we are never not connected to love, and love is never not connected to us. the love portal is an opportunity to soften, expand, and deepen into love. it’s an opportunity to make friends with love, and at the very least, tap into the frequency of love. we are in the month of love, after all, so why not bask in love?
we enter THE LOVE PORTAL live on zoom, but if you can’t make it live, a recording will be sent out afterwards. i do encourage you to attend live if you are able, so we can all shower each other with love *~in real time~*
this is a sliding scale donation-based event, but all are welcome. pay what you can or nothing at all, no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
finally, a note on what this experience is, and what it isn’t:
THE LOVE PORTAL is: a space to connect with the love that is within you and all around you, a cozy space to soften into love, a space where you can expand your capacity to experience and receive the love that is always available to you, and a dedicated space and time to let pure love wash over you.
THE LOVE PORTAL is not: the space to manifest your next lover, or the love of a lifetime. (unless “the love of a lifetime” means exploring deep love for yourself and the world around you.)
so there you have it, you are officially invited to THE LOVE PORTAL! you can save your spot here. instructions on donating will be delivered in your confirmation email. i hope to see you there!
thank you for being here, for witnessing me, and for allowing me space to grieve and process.
with abundant love,
marta
p.s.: i wanted to include a photo of Bella in this piece, but something funky happened and my iCloud between January 2019 and October 2023 is in a strange void space. i was going to get my phone to airdrop some pics, but Bella gave me a firm no. if you’d like to see her in all of her glory, you can head to my instagram, where i have a highlight titled, you guessed it: Bella <3