Love in Real Life: Beyond Mantras, Mood Boards and Spiritual Glitter
When growth looks less like enlightenment and more like farts and forgiveness.
As I contemplate my elopement anniversary this weekend, I have a few thoughts about love and how it shows up and grows us up in the milieu of human being-ness. It is especially interesting through the lens of current spiritual trends.
Beyond the mantras and the mood boards, the performances and the practices, the work through the chaos, there are some words I avoid like I should avoid sugar - the bellyache is not worth the indulgence. Self-love. Shadow. Authenticity. Integration. Alignment. Resonance. Goddess energy.
All lovely ideas until you realize you are still living in the current 3D matrix and the 5D world has not cancelled your bills.
In other words, the language that can sometimes come from spiritual bypassery, tossed around like glitter, so easy to talk about from a holier than thou mountaintop perch, a far cry from the middle of ordinary, messy, human life.
The Shadow-Work Version of You vs. The You Version of You
It is one thing to love your shadow work version of yourself, the deep excavation, the phoenix-rises and walks-on-coal moments in the spotlight. And it is another to love yourself after you have lost your temper or patience with those you love, like the forgotten password to life, when your child needs a form signed and rolls her eyes at you for forgetting it again, or when you are staring down imposter syndrome while building your dreams which look like half built IKEA furniture at Ethan Allen prices.
Sure, shadow work is powerful and gritty and meaningful. You know what is more transformative? Making up and making love after a disagreement. Choosing to breathe instead of yell when you are tired and spent. Laughing at your own follies and farts when you would rather clench and armor up. When it comes to love, loving like a badass is saying I love you when your feelings are bent, consciously cultivating respect and trust, choosing peace when you want to throw a fit after a long week of family drama.
Life School: Ups, Downs, Squishy Middles
The peaks and troughs are holy. They are part of the human experience. They all count as coins in the karmic bank we draw upon in life school.
I am less interested in spiritual performance and more interested in spiritual presence. Less perfection, more intention. Badassery over bypassery. So be here for the whole rollercoaster ride, the turbulent corners and the coasts with a view. Cultivate the bigly love for the times when GUS has lesson plans that test the tender bits.
Sometimes love is fireworks and breakthroughs. Sometimes it is groceries and inside jokes and choosing each other after another fall from relationship grace.
Growing a Garden of Love
Maybe that is what I am learning most as I create The Badass Arts. Love in all its forms is a garden you keep watering when it is sunny, offer shade to when it is hot, weed when it is messy, and watch with awe when it blooms.
Life and love and growth are daily practices and daily choices, not a pedestal up high but a river flowing. And the Divine, GUS, God Universe Source, whatever name your heart uses, is in every bit of it.
Not only the shadowy excavations, but the giggles, the screw ups, the gentle try again tomorrow grace. Anyway, that is where my heart and mind are synchronizing today, i.e. kind of badassery, sass and soul that lets everything exist and still makes room at the table for bigly joy.
Your Turn
If this kind of humanness and holy mess resonates, share it with a woman who gets it. And if your chest whispers yes please to big love, everyday grace, and connection that grows you up, join me for Love Like a Badass, beginning January 28, 2026. We are making room at the table for more joy.
