I could keep to facts about movement planes and why teaching flow that gets on and off the ground in the middle of it is important and how to cue in a clear and direct way. I could talk all day how the words you use matter, the way to be with your students and not just before them, and the power of your stories to draw people to you, not push them away.

(If you like reading with music, this is the song I listened to on repeat as I was writing.)

When I say “I help you own the hell out of your voice,” I’m automatically called into doing that myself.

This is gonna get personal.

In this past year I’ve cried more than the 5 years before combined.

Owning your voice isn’t something that happens once.

It’s not easy or pretty, but raw.

It breaks things open. It breaks you open. It changes the direction you thought was “the way.”

You can do this in layers, you can try to do it gradually, but the truth is if you really want to own yourself, it’s gonna rip into everything.

I think it should.

Last year I declared it a death and birth year. I died in several ways and been reborn in just as many.

When my mom surprise died 11 months ago, it added a layer onto my life that feels like orange juice left in the fridge for 5 months and a Montana storm with rolling gray clouds bubbling across the sky. Neither can be ignored.

(actual Montana storm I watched roll in)

Everything mattered more and less in a single moment.

The poetry “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves” and “rage, rage against the dying of the light” immediately were in my head the day she died.

This is a story about a break up with a man that I thought would be a lover for a long time and a love for a woman that I didn’t expect.

This is a story about breaking my own heart open.

Do I have to tell it?

No.

Did I share it while in deep emotional chaos?

No.

Am I centered in my own body-home, not asking for you to hold me, and able to hold your response?

Yes.

Does this have to do with “owning the hell out of my voice”?

Absolutely.

Everything changes.

For four years I was with a man that helped me rewrite stories about myself in ways I didn’t know possible or needed. He was a lover, a partner, a friend, someone who believed in whatever I touched, and said yes to creating art together, even if it was wild and big…especially if it was. The things we made together remain. I love that. He was in no rush. He loved my kids. He opened me and saw me and celebrated me. He held me. He made me feel like the queen. He was not afraid of me being the queen. He would learn from me and I would learn from him. It was beautiful and I knew from the very first FaceTime date that my life had changed.

When he lost his job, I extended the invitation for him to live with me. This wasn’t what I wanted. He knew that. Having been married previously for 16 years, I was stoked to live on my own with my kids. But loving this man in this season was extending this offer. Now, I think it was part of what helped us create so much beauty and part of what made it hard to keep growing together.

I love my own space. I need room to flow, to be unperceived, to feel free.

Being so visible on social media and in real life requires my own refueling alone time.

With kids that’s hard.

With a partner that’s living with you that also has a freelance schedule, that’s hard.

Top this with my forever question of “what’s possible in partnered relationship” especially after my past exploration with non-monogamy, a long-term marriage, and growing up Mormon. Add on my desire to be with women.

Over the years when the topic would come up, I can remember shutting down, feeling shame about my desire, unable to say words for fear of being wanted still, of being loved for all of who I was. I didn’t want to be the cause of pain and discomfort. The stories in my head that made me feel small were strong.

I deeply want others to feel free in my company, but that means I have to be free first.

By free I don’t mean there’s no work. Being free to choose and free to move means that you know your options and have the ability to direct yourself. It means you take responsibility. It means you give a shit about others even while tending to your own desire. Timing and location and community and resources have their roles in it. But ultimately, we each choose the yeses and no’s in our lives. When you are really choosing, there’s a different way you show up. There’s a different way you stand and walk and talk and lead. It’s not apologetic, but deeply embodied. This is what my experience has been and this type of freedom requires a reckoning to look at how you live and what you want and create change to have your insides match your outsides. It demands that you’re fully alive.

Last spring I was still experiencing low back pain. It was chronic going on 1.5 years. But in a moment I told myself “my pain will go away when I’m honest about what I want in relationship.” I didn’t share this idea with anyone. (Spoiler: I no longer have back pain.)

Looking back, I think there could have been several paths walked over this past year. Some of them could have been softer. And also, I am this person today because of where I have been.

We love love stories.

Our lives are built around people and belonging.

I did not mean to fall for her.

I did not mean to start asking myself the question “could it be her” that could weave into my existing relationship with him.

I did not mean to not walk with him in my question asking. I wanted to be sure about it before I said it. So I stayed quiet in my questions…for too long. I was afraid of his response more than I was afraid of not owning what I was curious about. Maybe a huge lesson in all of this is when we silence our own desire, it harms not only ourself, but the circle of those around us. If we believe that there is a ceiling to love, this would be an appropriate way to live. But there is no ceiling to the amount of love we’re able to receive and give.

There were unexpected situations that made me get honest about my feelings. Even though I was honest, our relationships to each other remained as was. Nobody was trying to go anywhere.

Then my mom died.

There’s nothing like a dose of the fragility of life to wake you up.

In my own grief and figuring out how I’m adding to the collective whole, my kids, and my relationships, I felt washed by the need to own the direction I was heading.

I was afraid to be loved less.

I didn’t say as much as I should have.

I shared what I desired.

In conversation, I understood that he didn’t want to hold the dynamic of me with her. I could feel all the tension building.

That’s okay.

Truly.

I so respect and admire his knowing of what he wanted. And I know that he wanted me. I wanted him. I also wanted her. It’s complicated.

Her and I had connected the beginning of the year at random. We had known each other for five years. She volunteered to help me write a yoga book I was working on. She got added into the dream team that was building with me. She showed the fuck up. She wasn’t asking for anything. She never said she wanted more. Her and I never talked about relationship bigger than friendship, but it felt damn good to have her there. Our conversation was easy, she wasn’t shy in caring. I didn’t feel pressure to go anywhere with anything.

She showed up like a potential lover would, but she wasn’t a potential. That’s not what I was thinking. I had never had a woman in my life show up so much. It felt lovely, and at times, confusing. Would someone really care that much and not want more? I still trust that she was satisfied with our friendship and could have been content to navigate just that.

I liked her. I liked the way it felt easy. I liked the way she played and brought a different perspective and saw beauty.

There was a lot left unsaid.

I have learned to say more sooner because of it.

Years before I’d had a brief experiment with a woman. It was erotic AF and lit something in me that I wanted to learn more about, but it hadn’t been something I’d had or created space for yet. Growing up in a high-demand religion that centered man+woman and was very anti anything else was a layer in me.

Being with a woman is the feeling of “Oh she’s like me! This is what if feels like to be with me!” and erotic because it feels like breaking the rules, while being turned on by how fucking soft everything is, the sounds, the laughter, and the permission to desire. It feels like being understood in a different way than anything else.

By the end of last year, I understood that I could not be with both him and her at the same time.

I was grieving my mother, felt torn by personal relationships, had just sent my first kid to college, and both my grandparents died. My identity as a mother, a daughter, and a lover were all being upheaved.

If am gonna have this one life, this today, and no promise for tomorrow, what did I want?

The story of him and the story of her will never be without the other.

This is both beautiful and painful.

He and I celebrated four years together and then I left to be with her. He knew I was going. It broke everything open…the kind of open where you feel flayed, buried, and remade all at once.

It was brutal.

It was wonderful.

It was terrible.

It was life changing.

I was free to choose and I chose.

I walked through it and am a different human because of it.

Softer...and stronger.

There’s so much that’s not being shared here. Maybe someday it will be told in a longer form.

But one conversation after he said, “love is a force bigger than all of us. It’s outside of us. We can’t control it.”

And from my journal:

“He said that we’ve loved these four years and this marks the end of how we’ve been. Is it worth it? I asked him if he was asking for me or him. He said both. We didn’t answer more. But I’m thinking about it now…and yes. And also no. And also this is the exact question in my own head. How can it be so good with him and I still choose including her with the possibility of losing it up with him? Is it worth it? But if I don’t is that worth it? What’s the cost of that to me? And really to him as well?”

It is a privilege to love and be loved so much that it hurts.

I only want love that leaves me changed.

Maybe he will read this. Maybe she will. You are. It's all kinda terrifying to me...but the kind that makes me know I have to share it. I’ve written other things in the past and been criticized for my truth. But I have to tell the truth. This isn’t all of it and of course just from my point of view.

Teachers who come to Flow School often ask me what it’s like to have people show up who know so much about you but you know nothing about them.

I tell them that “I feel free.” If you can read this, follow me on social media for more than 10 years, listen to my podcast that I’ve been recording for almost 6 years, take over 400 class in my online studio, and then sign up to learn next to me in-person, then I have nothing to hide. I get to be my full-ass self. AND if you choose to be in the room with me knowing all the things, knowing that you can be more than one thing and that it's part of what makes you an impactful leader, then I want to know you.

I’m not interested in hiding.

Hiding makes us small and afraid. I can’t afford that.

Because of how long I’ve been sharing, I’ve found that telling my stories frees me. I did not expect that they would free others too.

So where is everything now?

He is building a life outside of mine.

I celebrate the fuck out of him. We are not lovers and have a journey to figuring out how to show up as friends. I was listening to the song “Awards Season” by Bon Iver and love the lines at the end:

“God, my heart

Why do things gotta change?

We were on our way

To be best to face

All that comes in gray

It’s so hard to explain

And the facts are strange

But you know what will stay?

Everything we’ve made”

Everything we’ve made.

Fuck. That’s so much. I’m in awe and gratitude of it all. I’m glad it gets to live on. I love how big our love was. I love how I still love him.

She is building a life next to mine.

We are not living together. I love how there is no room to hide. I love how she is different and how we are the same and feel the thrill and discomfort of something new. Time together is a deep flow state of timelessness. We are being conscious AF especially because of our journey to now. I believe we have a lot to create together and also nowhere we have to go. I am being shown a different way of being perceived by being with a woman for the first time. The feeling of her is like nothing I have experienced. I am learning more about being me by being with her and better because of it.

Fletcher dropped an album recently with the song “Boy” on it. She’s been considered a lesbian and made music for women, but these lyrics feel big right now:

“I’ve been sitting on a secret

And I don’t think I can keep it anymore

I’ve been hidin’ out in Northern California

Where nobody knows who I was before

Where they won’t judge me in the morning

We were countin’ down, the music stopped

We were waitin’ for the ball to drop

I closed my eyes and I leaned in

I kissed a boy

And I know it’s not what you wanted to hear

And it wasn’t on your bingo card this year

Well, it wasn’t on mine

I fell in love

And it wasn’t with who I thought it would be”

I couldn’t have predicted I’d be here and I love that. I love the way loving her is changing me.

I own the journey it’s taken to be here. I will be learning from it for the rest of my life.

I know the effort behind something appearing effortless. Grace is not soft, it’s a secret kind of strong.

I know I’m writing this for me, but maybe you too. Maybe we can let joy and grief hold hands, cause that's really how it works. Love does not exist without loss.

If I’m gonna keep showing up and help you “own the hell out of your voice,” I need you to know that I know what it’s like to be in the journey of it. You are a leader not just for the facts you know and your years (or not) of experience, but because of who you are.

We have today.

I have today.

I want to make it worth it.

When we each own our voices, we expand what is possible. It’s bold and it changes the world. It is not easy, but we do not do it alone.

Sending love to you in your journey,

B