“Happily, ever after”
Most of us grow up in a world where we are taught that one day we will find the love of our life, marry and live happily ever after. That’s at least what the fairy tales and the movies tell us. But life seldom works out that way. No one talks about the fact that relationships are challenging and that it takes a lot of skill, devotion, and hard work to make close relationships last, let alone be healthy and thrive.
For the past two years, I have devoted a lot of time to studying relationships. I feel like I could write a thesis on the topic. I have been researching couples that stay together and those that break apart. What makes them work, why they don’t work and how to fix them. Since getting divorced, I am determined to learn my lessons and educate myself so that I can create a better relationship in the future.
In many ways, my marriage was the perfect example of what should have been the happily ever after. I married my college sweetheart, we were madly in love, and built our dream together- a family farm.
It was a few months after moving into the new house that this idea of happily ever after started to sink into my body. I had thought the new house was going to finally fix everything, I thought that was the missing link that would solve all of our problems. In the past I had come up with lots of things that could have been the problem- the poverty, the over work, the lack of modern conveniences, the isolation, the constant child care, the lack of support outside our marriage. But finally, we were moving into a new home, and that would be the icing on the cake. However, homes do not come with magic “happily ever after” buttons.
We had moved to the land 7 years earlier, we lived in a tent on raw pasture building with our four hands a home and greenhouse for the family. I was pregnant at the time with our first child. We moved in at Thanksgiving, just after the first snows. And in the middle of January, while laying atop a sheepskin on the dirt floor of the log cabin, by candle light- I gave birth to our first child. We had running cold water with no electricity at the time. We soon got a solar panel to run a washing machine for the cloth diapers. The cabin had a wood stove for heat and it was our only cooking source.
Over the next three years I birthed two more children, and we built 2 more barns, planted an orchard, started a ½ acre garden and started a dairy operation. We had no experience in building, farming, or dairy! Nor did either of us have experience with marriage or parenting. But we were young, ambitious, hard working, smart enough to figure things out, and naive enough to give it all a go.
Writing this now, it really sounds like insanity to me. But at the time, with the back to the land mentality, I thought we had it made. I kept thinking of the early settlers that did not even have a hardware store, or grocery store to go to for resupplies. I told myself that my ancestors were tougher and that I had it easy. I wanted to make up for all the lost knowledge from how my ancestors used to commune with mother nature. I wanted to repair my relationship with mother earth. I wanted to repay the debt for all my people who had left the farm for life in the city.
It’s hard to imagine living off of the amount of income that we made those first few years. We were both working full time to establish the farm, to sell enough tomatoes to buy lumber in order to build the barn that would house the cows that we also bought by selling lettuce and tomatoes.
Now a days in California where I live, many people spend in a month what the two of us were earning and living off of in a year. But things were different then, we did not have a cell phone, internet, electricity, insurance or many of the monthly bills that most people have. We ate primarily what we grew or could wild harvest. And clothed our family from hand me downs and second hand stores. We used reclaimed building materials whenever possible and tried to find farming equipment at estate sales.
After about 5 years on the land, we received some unexpected blessings and were able to hire someone to build a modern home. It felt surreal when we moved into the new home. I felt like I was staying in someone’s summer home. We had three bedrooms (versus a 570-square foot one room cabin), electricity, a dishwasher, hot running water, flushing toilets, a heater!
I remember swimming in the pond that summer thinking, “This is it. We have finally made it.” All the hard work has paid off. We have a functioning farm, our own business, three beautiful and healthy children, a modern home, a marriage. We should get to live happily ever after now. But that was not the case for us.
You see happily ever after will never come from a material procession. It is not just buy the new outfit and I will feel better. It’s not move into a bigger home and I will be happy. It’s not marry the beautiful woman and all will be perfect.
Happily, ever after comes from a lot of fucking hard inner work. A lot of self-analysis. A lot of cold honest truth. A lot of uncomfortable vulnerability. A lot of risk taking, a lot of lessons learned from failed attempts, a lot of pain expressed through art, a lot of exposure of the inner self, a lot of tears, a lot of letting go, a lot of trust and faith.
And I can honestly say that I am way happier now. I have had to forgive myself and my partner. I have had to reinvent who I am. I have had to humbly admit to myself and the world that my marriage was not perfect and it did come to an end. But if I had it to do all over again, I’m not sure I would change it. Yes, part of me romanticizes about living the dream on the land. But I can assure you running a farm is a lot of fucking work. I don’t really miss breaking up the ice in the winter so the cows have water to drink, or having to be there every morning and night to let the chickens in and out. And the responsibilities of moving the irrigation so that the pasture is evenly watered. The list goes on and on. It is no wonder that my career as a yoga teacher took a back seat once we moved to the farm. Or that I did not have much time for pursuing other interests. With running a farm, homeschooling 3 kids and managing the household I was very busy.
MY happily ever after has been falling in love with myself again. It was only through the tremendous pain and humbling of the divorce that I finally took the time to look myself in the mirror and fall in love with who I saw.
If I was still in that marriage I would not be spreading the healing work around the country as I do today. I would not be helping people to awaken to their power. The work I do now is very rewarding and I have been able to guide many people. I cannot help but do this work. It is my destiny to help people regain their power and heal their lives. My gift is seeing the Godliness in everyone and helping them to see it in themselves. Helping others to remove the blocks so that they can embody their authentic self. 
So, for me, happily ever after means finding my truth, living my life purpose, doing the inner work, opening my heart to connect with the universe, and loving my kids. Maybe one day it will involve a partner again. But for me, happily ever after is an inside job. It is learning to love my self fully, find my soul’s mission and bravely walk the path of truth. I am incredibly grateful for how my happily ever after looks, it is just radically different from what I thought it would be.