The Orbit of Love

Hello. It is me again.

I have spent a long time within my own energy, learning how to find grounding in the present moment no matter where I am. For the last several years, I have traveled often and gradually spent less time attached to electronics, media, and the life I once knew.

What began as a desire to detach became an opportunity to listen.

Circumstance kept me away from cities for long stretches of time, and solitude taught me the value of personal security, wellbeing, and discernment. As I traveled alone and alongside my tribe, I began noticing the common threads woven through life's silver linings.

Every place became a classroom.

Every person became a reflection.

I watched how isolation, fear, spirituality, environment, technology, intimacy, altered states, belief, and the stories we tell ourselves affected the people around me. I became increasingly curious about astrology, energetic sensitivity, the body, consciousness, and all the different frameworks humans use to understand what moves through us.

But ultimately, the greatest lessons were never about anyone else.

They were about me.

The world became a hall of mirrors, showing me the places where I was grounded and the places where I still reached outside myself for certainty.

And then there was him.

A Love Without a Name

I found myself falling for my brother, knowing there might always be a limit to how deeply I could swim into his ocean.

Patience became part of loving him.

But sometimes I had to ask myself whether my patience was truly acceptance or simply expectation wearing a more spiritual name.

I could feel the vortex between us from a distance, and when I finally kissed his cheek, something opened even wider. That moment sent me further into a world of intimacy I had so often observed but had not always allowed myself to inhabit.

Then our ships sailed in different directions.

Perhaps they needed to.

We each had oceans of our own to cross and depths of our own to understand.

Eventually, we reached familiar shores again.

Our ships came to port. Our feet found solid ground. And somehow, after everything, we were reunited.

It was there, among jungle woods and familiar arms, that I encountered another reflection of what I desire most.

In his touch, I felt security.

In his presence, familiarity.

And in his embrace, I remembered how good it feels to rest in love without immediately needing to possess it.

Still, the question arose:

What kind of love is this?

Is this something sacred asking to be honored physically?

Is this a brother whose place in my life I must learn to cherish without asking him to become a lover?

Can desire transform into gratitude for the simple miracle that our orbits ever crossed at all?

Maybe I do not need to know.

I do not need to know whether I will ever experience every part of him that desire can imagine.

I am grateful simply to feel him beside me.

To see his smile.

To know the security of his friendship.

To understand that his love for me reaches deeply, even if it does not always take the form my longing originally requested.

Sometimes that is enough.

And perhaps learning when love is already enough is one of the most difficult forms of maturity.

The Reflections Along the Way

Travel has taught me that not every person who awakens something within us is meant to become our destination.

Some people are mirrors.

Some are teachers.

Some are lovers for a night, a season, or a lifetime.

Some show us the softness we have been withholding from ourselves.

Some provoke the strength we did not know we possessed.

Some teach us desire.

Others teach us restraint.

And occasionally someone teaches us that intimacy can survive even when possession is removed from the equation.

Every connection has helped me understand more clearly what I am preparing for.

Because underneath all of these reflections, there has always been another conversation happening.

A conversation with the person I have not yet met.

Hello, Love

Hello, love.

I am calling you in.

I am praying for you.

I have spent so much of my life preparing myself to meet you, although for years I did not understand that preparation was what I was doing.

I thought I was simply surviving.

Then I thought I was searching.

Now I understand that I have been becoming.

I have been working toward the fullest version of myself.

A version who is not afraid to lead.

A version who is not afraid to speak his truth.

A version who can hold a vision without requiring everyone else to understand it first.

A version who can love deeply without disappearing inside another person.

I am much less afraid than I used to be.

And I can feel myself moving toward one of my greatest becomings.

I think I am almost ready to meet you.

Not because I have perfected myself, but because I am learning how to belong to myself first.

I imagine that you are doing your work too.

As I learn to strengthen the parts of myself capable of providing structure, protection, direction, and grounded presence, perhaps you are learning to deepen your receptivity, tenderness, intuition, and ability to receive.

And perhaps each of us is learning the opposite as well.

Because masculine and feminine are not prisons assigned to bodies.

They are movements.

Strength and softness.

Direction and surrender.

Protection and receptivity.

Action and intuition.

Creation requires both.

So much of the world has conditioned us to exaggerate one side of ourselves while distrusting the other. Many men are taught to disconnect from tenderness and receptivity. Many women are taught that power or assertiveness threatens their femininity. Queer people often find ourselves navigating those forces in entirely different ways.

Perhaps part of becoming whole is remembering that none of us were meant to live as half of ourselves.

There is something beautiful about unbecoming everything we were told we had to be.

Peeling away the conditioning.

Listening more closely to intuition.

Learning to trust ourselves.

Learning to trust others with our vulnerabilities without handing them responsibility for our entire emotional world.

Learning how to stand firmly while keeping the heart open.

It is imperfect.

And somehow, it is perfect.

Rising in Love

I already feel love for you.

Not because I know your face.

Not because I know your name.

But because loving the possibility of you has helped me become more conscious of the person I want to be when you arrive.

I am proud of the work you are doing somewhere in this world.

I hope you are laughing.

I hope you are healing.

I hope you are learning what makes you feel alive.

I hope you are becoming more honest about what you want.

I hope you are learning how to receive the kind of love I am learning how to give.

And I hope neither of us rushes.

I do not want to fall in love with you.

I want to rise in love with you.

I want us to meet eye to eye.

Whole person to whole person.

Not rescuer and rescued.

Not pursuer and prize.

Not two incomplete people asking one another to fill the emptiness.

Two lives.

Two histories.

Two souls choosing to walk beside one another.

Until then, I will continue listening to the reflections life sends me.

I will honor the brother whose arms taught me safety.

I will honor the lovers who taught me desire.

I will honor the friends who taught me belonging.

I will honor those who rejected me and forced me to return to myself.

And I will honor myself for continuing to love anyway.

Every connection has carried some fragment of you.

Every reflection has taught me another language through which I might recognize you.

So thank you for meeting me through the people who have crossed my path.

Thank you for allowing me to practice love before asking me to hold the fullness of it.

Thank you, God.

Thank you, me.

Thank you, you.

Thank we.

I love us.

All of us.

And wherever you are, keep becoming.

I am becoming too.

The Beautiful Story Never Told, Jo He and Mai Taeo

"Keep flying and find your current. See what energy you are pulled to. Go into orbit with others and see what can be created."