This is Me
Well, I wasn’t planning on taking that little break from blogging. I was just feeling overwhelmed with things to do and felt like I had no time to do them. My priorities shifted and my stress rose, I felt like I had a ton of things on my plate, then Mike and I went off grid to Burning Man for a week. That was a magical experience that I not only learned more about myself, I was inspired, and I fell further in love with Mike and I will tell you about it in a future blog.
I digress. After we got back from Burning Man, we started to clean and put away all of our dusty, dirty clothes, bikes, coolers, carpet, and other stuff and another week got away from me, but I’m back!! Hopefully better than ever!!
I feel when you step back from things, you can look at things with fresh eyes, you can figure out ways to make it better, and you can come at it with renewed vigor and passion. That is what I am planning for Koru Life Coaching.
The first thing I am going to improve is your relationship with me, so let me tell you more about myself.
As my bio hints at, I am from Pittsburgh, PA. I’m not really from Pittsburgh, but a small town, southeast of Pittsburgh called Somerset. My family is close and supports one another. When I was growing up I always felt loved but rarely heard those words. We talk a lot, yet rarely have a deep, intimate conversation. I can’t tell you the last time I saw my parents really fight, though. I absolutely loved my upbringing. Was it perfect? No. No one has a perfect childhood. Standing where I stand today, I can say, I had a childhood that was perfect for me.
As I said a moment ago, I never really had deep, intimate conversations growing up. Along with that, my family really didn’t talk about feelings or emotions. I didn’t learn to fight for or voice my opinion. I feel like I didn’t really learn how to use my voice growing up either. I didn’t date anyone until I was in my 20’s, so I missed another period of time to practice relationships, communicating, and feeling and showing emotion. I did get married when I was in my early 20’s. We were engaged and my ex wanted to quit his job and get a part time job while he tried for his dream job. He wouldn’t have insurance so we decided to have a friend, and town mayor, marry us so he could be on my insurance. I always felt we would have a real wedding someday so I never can remember when or how long we were married.
While I was still with my ex, we moved to Colorado. I. Hated. It. I know partially because of my inability to speak my needs, our relationship crumbled. A work contract kept me in Denver for the next year, so I decided to make the best of it. I moved to Denver properly, one block off of Colfax, in the basement of an old mansion with little natural lighting. It was perfect for me at that time. I was working overnights and stayed out way too late, way too often.
Then I started pushing my boundaries. When someone asked me to do things, I said yes. I started to figure out how much fun sex is (I had sex with 2 people up until that point). That is when my inner slut came out.
That is also when I met Mike.
At the beginning, we were just fuck buddies. Neither of us wanted more as we were both going through our own divorces. Well, neither of us wanted more, until that one day when he was leaving my apartment. We both stood at the doorway looking at each other, not saying much, yet neither one moved. We stared into each other’s eyes and sometimes looking away anxiously. Until I said, “yeah, me too.” I knew I had fallen in love.
I struggled a bit, as I didn’t want to give up that inner slut, but I wanted to be in a relationship with Mike. He was the one who suggested we continue to have sex with others and still date. It was a relief, but also very confusing as my relationship knowledge came only from a monogamous upbringing.
So, just to put this in perspective, I went from starting to date, to married, divorced, and in an open relationship in less than 5 years.
I knew so little and I made so many mistakes. I still do make mistakes.
Our open relationship had it’s share of ups and downs. We pushed each other’s boundaries; sometimes we supported each other, sometimes we dropped each other. In the beginning, I didn’t have much self confidence and I didn’t know how to use my voice so we had some rough times. In the end, we always came back to one another.
In our open relationship, we really only wanted to have sex with other people and a rule of ours was “no boy/girlfriends.” With our inexperience, we forgot to take into account that our hearts can sometimes run the show no matter what our brains say. Might I remind you, I still didn’t have my voice, so I couldn’t even talk with Mike as I watched him fall in love with someone else.
We tried to allow him to follow his heart, but again my inability to speak my mind in a calm, clear way that could be understood, prevented this. The break up was hard. Mike was heart broken and confused because I didn’t know or trust myself in what I wanted and would give him conflicting messages. I was sad and scared that I would lose everything if I lost Mike.
That is when I saw the patterns that I kept repeating were ruining my happiness. Not being able to know what I want and how to speak them was hurting myself and my relationships. I knew I needed to get better at communicating to improve my relationships.
I feel because of all of that, and my eagerness to learn and improve myself, I began to learn about relationships and communicating. I would take courses and read books. I would practice and try new things and wait for Mike’s reaction to see how it landed. I started doing things that felt right to me. My confidence grew and I started to talk more.
With my natural helper personality, I decided to take all my struggles and successes and combine them to help others, so I became a relationship coach.
So, that is how I ended up where I am today, here, blogging on my website, trying to make this world a better place.
I hope this gives you a bit more insight on who I am and why I feel like I would be a good relationship coach for you. As I come out of my couple week hiatus and want to improve for you, if you have anything you want to know or that I can help you with, please drop me a line. I would love to hear from you. You can reach out to me on social media or at Steph@KoruLifeCoaching.com.
