The Key to Emotional Intimacy

The Key to Emotional Intimacy
Ironically enough, in the digital age of oversharing everything about our lives, we avoid the authenticity of genuine intimacy. We share what we ate an hour ago, the silly things our kids do, the highlights of our weekend trip, and shutter to give voice to any real meaningful conversation that needs to be had in our most significant relationship.

So what does intimacy look like in a relationship and how do we attain it? Knowing someone on an intimate level is understanding them to such depth you can feel them. You can anticipate their thoughts, emotions, and actions. There’s a conscious awareness of how they’ll feel in any given situation or event. This uncanny ability to know someone like the back of your hand transpires in the presence of vulnerability.


Vulnerability is created when we allow others to see us without the veil of our ego when we can share our emotional joys and sorrows. It’s the fearless ability to tell someone you love them for the first time as well as express your grief by their actions. Vulnerability also manifests when details of your life are shared. Knowing the roots of your childhood, other relationships you’ve had and life experiences all create a bond when disclosing intimate information. However, it’s not all in the facts, it’s communicating how people and events have shaped your character, personality, etc. allowing the other person to comprehend how you tick.

If you’re feeling emotionally unfulfilled in your relationship, odds are one or both of you are not opening up emotionally. Real intimacy requires both parties to be vulnerable and open or fulfillment is not satiated. After my divorce years ago, I developed a friendship with a stranger whom I would confide in over two years. I felt so close and intimate with them yet simultaneously felt alone and abandoned in the relationship. While they knew my life story and then some, I didn’t even know basic information about them. I didn’t know how many siblings they had or what specifically they did for a living. I realized one day that I was the only one that had feelings of closeness. When only one party is vulnerable to share, that party develops a false sense of intimacy. The non-vulnerable party remains emotionally detached. If neither share, the relationship never deepens beyond a superficial connection.

Emotional fulfillment can only be acquired through genuine, mutual emotional intimacy; which requires consistent effort to be both created and maintained. If you’re in a relationship that you want to foster for the long term, make daily contributions to the relationship whether it’s opening up or asking questions that encourage your partner to do so. The emotional health of your relationship should never be ignored or taken for granted as that is the core issue behind the deterioration of an existing relationship and the cause of a faulty foundation of a new relationship. On the other hand, if you’re in a relationship that you want to take to the next level and your partner refuses to emotionally open up, consider this to be a significant red flag. Remember, red flags aren’t decorations…


Life After Death

Life After Death
Recovering from a break-up in a relationship is not for the faint of heart.  Time is not the only answer but more critical is how you heal from such a wound.  There are as many ideal steps to take to move forward as there are behaviors to avoid.  Discover the three biggest principles one needs to implement when faced with healing after the ending of an important relationship.
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The Rise of the Goddess

The Rise of the Goddess
I lay there, shaking uncontrollably on the ground, the medicine was working. Thousands of miles away from home in the middle of the jungle surrounded by a small group of people, I knew no more than strangers, but we were all gathered for the same thing. We were all in search of healing. Healing our hearts, minds, and souls. Each carried with them their baggage of emotional pain and trauma from life experiences, each frothing at the mouth for the sacred, healing elixir whose reputation was known to kill the ego and resurrect the voice of the forgotten soul. This powerful cocktail is said to accomplish in one night what ten years of therapy can do and I was simultaneously elated and scared to death. Was it really this simple? Could I truly emerge anew after consuming the tincture? Would the effects of childhood trauma and abusive relationships really disappear? A lifetime of pain worthy of a depressing Netflix documentary and a story that only Oprah could justly capture. I wasn’t sure, but it was worth the risk. It was as if the archetype of my being, past present, and future existed for this moment in time, this defining juncture known only by the keeper of the Akashic records, I was being propelled on a path unknown to my ego but designed by my soul.

It had been exactly twenty years since I dedicated my life to healing after a suicide attempt. I was one of six children who had experienced generational and systemic abuse throughout childhood. Years of my father's violent rages and emotional atrocities left us all no more living than a walking carcass. Growing up, emotional support was a privilege we weren’t privy to. My mother had suffered greatly at the hands of her father and that agony was carried on by her husband, my father. She lived in a continuous state of fight or flight where her only focus was held on keeping her children alive and protecting our family’s image. Boundary beaten and hemorrhaging, I became easy prey to every predator within a thirty-mile radius who had a taste for blood. At nineteen, my existence became unbearable. I felt worthless. Invisible. Unloved by all. The depths of emotional repulsion I had for myself screamed through my veins of self-hatred, violently pulsating blame and disgust. There was no escaping the hell I endured with each passing breath. Desperate to free myself of misery, I took action on a permanent exit strategy. Emerging from the fog of my failed suicide attempt, sitting alone in the dimly lit hospital room, I broke down and wept in my hands. I was still here, I was going to have to face my demons. I knew in that moment I needed to take swift and massive action towards healing. From that point on I engaged in various therapies, studied psychology, Eastern medicine, and learned numerous energy medicine modalities. I was committed to healing, becoming whole, loving myself, loving life, and thriving.

I wish I could tell you that my journey was linear without setbacks and I never fell prey to another abusive or tumultuous relationship. I wish. However, each time I walked away, I gained three things. I gained wisdom, a little more self-respect, and a little more self-love. My toolbox was getting filled with a fresh perspective to create healthier boundaries and I was gaining confidence to know not only what I didn’t want, but defining what I did want. Shadow work, and personal development, became a favorite pastime in the stillness of my mind. I was healing and growing. Things were getting better, guys were getting better but I couldn’t shake something. No matter how perfect things were, there was always something very wrong at the core of every relationship that left me feeling like the same unloved, uncared-about, five-year-old, little girl. What was wrong with me? Why was this still happening? The truth was revealed to me through the loss of the most profound relationship I had ever had. My soul was damaged. I needed spiritual repair. And there I lay in the midst of the jungle, terrified about what was to come yet an anticipation of exhilaration only a child waiting for Christmas could comprehend.

My body trembled, shook, and even convulsed for a duration where neither time nor space existed, freeing the remaining trauma I had previously failed to release. Tears of immense gratitude poured down my face like the cleansing, nurturing water of the rain as I whispered my perpetual appreciation. The infinite source of her power was felt as she swept over me in waves of deep, penetrating healing that left me incapable of movement, sweating, and cold. This intense metamorphous was cyclically succeeded by a resting period where my physical body was liberated from her potent grip and I collapsed, energetically sinking into the ground below my physical body. She left me there, allowing recovery and recuperation to prepare for another round, another layer deeper, surgically removing all of that which no longer served. This cycle of shaking, working, crying with rest, and perfuse perspiring went on endlessly. Then suddenly, I felt something. A tingling and warm fuzzy feeling gained momentum at the base of my spine in my sacrum. It was the unmistakable sensation of eroticism typically associated with genitalia. Slowly I felt the energy inch up my spine gaining in strength. Familiar with the spiritual and esoteric discipline of Tantra, I lay there in utter disbelief. Was this really happening to me? Was my Kundalini awakening? The energy continued to escalate as it crept up my spine, clearing each diseased chakra in its path, creating a burst of fireworks in my vertebrae. Attempting to be modest, I held my breath in an effort to control the screams of pleasure. It became physically impossible, as each chakra cleared, the energy of self-love exponentially gained velocity and I began to release this piercing, screeching sound. As this magnificent and extraordinary energy made it to the top of my spine, it exploded through my third eye and immediately following, shot out from the top of my head through my crown chakra. In an instant, aware of my ego’s insecurity and desire to disallow and impede my voice from being heard, I made the conscious decision to let go. Let go of all the fear, the fear of judgment, the fear of my own truth, my voice, my fear of letting the world see me in my real and raw, authentic form. I took my power back, embraced the energy, and unapologetically screamed in sheer, erotic delight. Barely breathing, my body was stiff and taunt with my back still arching in memory of the cascading fireworks that had blown off with such fierce intensity. It was unlike anything I have ever encountered and mere words give not the brevity required for one to grasp the essence of such enlightenment. Bliss and love were the only two things I felt. The powerful orgasm of illumination had been the totality of procuring more love of self as each chakra healed from emotional trauma until the escalation of love grew to an augmented form and created wholeness that resonated with the vibrations of utopian bliss few will ever experience. Shock waves of electricity sparked within every cell of my body. I was in complete union with my soul, my divinity, the Goddess within me. She had emerged. I felt powerful. Beautiful. Unstoppable. Capable of moving mountains, parting seas, and lighting cities with the massive amount of electricity that raced through my body. Most of all, I felt the quintessential essence and vibration of love. I was love. I, Helena Klassen, had regained my pure, vibrational form of love. I had transmuted my pain and suffering and harnessed it to give rise to my power, my authority, the Goddess within me.

It's been two years ago and my unwavering love for myself has not faltered or diminished. No man or woman can take what is within me, what I possess, and who I am. No man or woman can define my value. I need no one’s approval or acceptance. I approve of and accept myself. I need not be enough for anyone, I am plenty. I do not require accolades or compliments to soothe a wounded ego, I am fiercely confident in my skin and am all-knowing of my worth. I need not another half to be whole, I am whole. Physical engagement is no longer required to bring me to rapture, rather it’s in the presence of agape love that brings me to my knees. Moments with kindred spirits or in the solitude of meditation and breathing. My lover is a tool I can wield for mutual pleasure; however, only the keeper of my soul shall ever possess the power to wield my body and stir my spirit. A man who is strong enough to love with unconditional bias, gentle enough to nurture all that is good within me, and bold enough to prize all of that which is not. The ultimate protector of my mind, body, and soul. He keeps the key to my heart, the gateway to my soul. Relationships no longer come from a source of lack, because I am enough. I know who I am. I am love and light.
The Goddess has risen.