The brave adventures of the Love Tiger and Super Lover.

We were on vacation. And we were fighting.

We both felt misunderstood and pissed off. Our survival lizard brains were on red alert. Our defensive, self-righteous painbodies had their hackles up.

There was an arts and crafts street fair happening, and we wandered around separately for a while to take a breather from each other.

As a former gallery owner, he is a prodigious hunter/gatherer of high-quality, unique art.

So, later, when he me handed two, cottage craft finger puppets, I looked at him quizzically.

His response was heroic.

But first: This happened years ago, before I began my coaching training at the Relationship School. Before I knew what it takes to be a Super Lover.

I thought my path would lead me to coach couples through conflict.

Instead, I grew fascinated by the power that just one person has to create the relationship they want when they make the decision to serve love- To do the brave and vulnerable work of self-awareness. To accept responsibility for the ways they obstruct love with their painbody stories. To have loving compassion for their own woundedness and to become lovers of themselves. To create the relationships they want when they lead themselves to the Super Lover path.

I knew that was the path I wanted to take.

I was fascinated by how our relationships provide the exact prescription for healing the relational wounds that stand between us and love we want- in ways that feel good and ways that challenge us to our core.

And I knew my relationship was showing me exactly where I needed to heal and grow.

The questions I’ve learned to ask myself when I get triggered: What kind of relationship do I want to create? How would Love create what the relationship I want?

By asking me to serve it- To serve myself as Love, To serve him as Love, To serve the relationship as Love. And to not serve my painbody with more stories and defenses.

By asking me to re-create myself in its image. And that is so fucking hard to do sometimes...

“...Like sheaves of corn he (love) gathers you unto himself He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant; And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.” ~Kahlil Gibran.

I made the decision that feasting on anything less- my reactive lizard brain and my painbody stories- was junk food for my soul.

Back at the street fair, I held the finger puppets in my hand.

“They’re us,” he told me.

Love Tiger and Super Lover.

Love is a hero's journey.