My journey to love

At the start of 2018 I did a writing project where I wrote a word each day on a post-it and stuck it on my wall. It was a visual journey of my year in progress and the wall became a much-loved part of my daily life. As each post-it went up, a colourful paper garden bloomed full of words that meant something to me. They either came to me out of the blue, or were inspired by events or desires I had. It was quite the year, so the words were many and varied.

I also made a list of things I wanted to achieve and on my list was love. I wanted to experience pure, joyous love, and eventually, the “L” word made it to the wall, along with others such as man, boyfriend, mindset, flirting, dating, and various other words that fit the genre of relationship-building and the self-work that we sometimes needed to be done to prepare us for when the magic happens.

Four years earlier I had left an unhappy marriage and moved to the other end of the country to write a new life chapter. I was a 48-year-old effervescent and attractive woman who thought that love would come knocking on my door the minute I arrived in my new city. Well, guess what, it didn’t. I had no emotional baggage, I lived in the moment, and entered this newfound life with enthusiasm and anticipation and yet, I could barely get a date, let alone see the possibility of a long-term romance happening in a city of four million people.

I decided to write this story after seeing one of my post-it words pop up in my Facebook memories and I had a little “oh wow” moment. This particular word was “ODDS,” which I chose when my sister asked why the women in our family seemed unable to find love again following either the death of their partners or ending of their relationships.

What are the odds that four generations of vibrant and vital women have not found love again? It was something that had crossed my mind and I wondered if we were cursed. I didn’t want to believe it, but I did wonder if I would find love again, given it was something I wanted so badly. I wanted to experience pure, kind, joyous, unconditional love. I didn’t want to be part of this self-diagnosed curse. I wanted to be the cure, so I set out to see if I could make love happen for me.

Love is something that can’t be forced or turned on like a tap, and people say it comes along when you least expect it. For some souls it just happens, but for me, it was elusive. I decided that finding love would be a goal. After all, four years was long enough waiting for the magic to happen and I was tired of crossing paths with men who only wanted a visa to travel south of my navel.

I knew the kind of love I wanted. I wanted a best friend, a kind heart, and a deep connection, but I told the universe out loud to send me a hot, young, black guy. Can I just say, be careful what you wish for...

Along with making a universal declaration, I thought about the strong independent women in my family who had remained single and considered what else I could do to bring love to my life and, perhaps, change the fortune of the women ahead of us.

I wondered if there were times in my past when I had heard or witnessed anything from the women before me, stating that they didn’t need men in their life and whether that planted a subconscious thought that had set up camp in my psyche. Nope, couldn’t think of anything, but one of the first things I did was acknowledge that I am my own person and no one else’s experiences should have an effect on me. I found some meditations to release past blockages and ancestral or family karma. You might be thinking I am crazy, but I was leaving no stone unturned in my quest to find love. Is it possible that our DNA carries across past hurts? Well, if it did, my DNA was now devoid of some bad juju.

I then turned to visualisation to see if this would help. I visualised the classic “see yourself with your loving partner, etc” and to be honest, my mind drew a blank. No matter how much I tried, there was just no man there. But I wasn’t disheartened because I was on a quest to find love.

I was also really conscious of the concept of “letting go,” where we hand over our wishes and desires to the universe and not give them another thought. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, so I asked Dr. Google and was given a prescription to do some more YouTubing to help me learn the art of letting go.

My mind was being purged and cleansed of anything that would stand in the way of me and finding love. I even asked Google to assist in helping me find a boyfriend. The assistant told me to try matchmaking sites and that I was also perfect on my own as well.

I then went to see a real-life Google assistant - a fortune teller. She asked if I was travelling to India. Nope, I hadn’t planned on it, so put that out of my mind. She also told me to really embrace my femininity and my inner goddess, and to use my sacral chakra. I wasn’t up on all things chakras, so I headed back to Google and found a way to give them a polish. Can I just say that my chakras are as shiny as the good silver ready for a Sunday lunch?

I didn't go to see her about my search for love, but this woman also told me to go back to online dating. Had she been talking to my Google assistant? Damn, that was the last place I wanted to be, as I found that community to be lacking in respect and sincerity, and the thought of having to deal with more disingenuous men was last thing my self-esteem or my squeaky-clean chakras needed.

Not only was I doing lots of inner work, I was also really conscious of putting out vibes that would attract men to me, and sure enough, men would come and talk to me when I was out and about. They would compliment me, ask for my number, and even ask me on dates. This was not the norm for me, so I lapped up the flirtations and used them to build my confidence and keep my momentum going.

I had ramped up my sex appeal and let my va va voom off the chain. I was embracing my sex appeal, femininity, and my inner goddess.

And did I go back online? Yes. I cranked up my Tinder and began swiping (mostly left). It had been about eight months since I was in online hell and the matches came flooding in along with the usual suspects who were still searching for the forbidden fruit. They were all forbidden to have my fruit that’s for sure.

I struck up a conversation with a man I had matched with when I was last playing Tinder roulette and we agreed to meet up. He was a hot, young, black man (hello universe) and was disappointed that we hadn’t got to meet each other previously. There were sparks, phone calls, and dates, and we enjoyed hanging out together. Was I feeling love vibes? Had I begun to break the curse? Only time would tell.

After losing my job through redundancy, I really needed divine intervention, so I went to see a different psychic. My life was in chaos and she told me some amazing things. Nearing the end of our session, I asked about my love life, because isn’t that what everyone wants to know?

She told me I would meet a man. He would be tall, strong, grounded, anchored, and have his own business and he’d be from overseas. My ears pricked up.

Perhaps the Nigerian prince I was dating was the one and all I needed to do was keep working at it. I told the psychic that I was already seeing a man who fitted this exact description and she said, “no, he’s not the one.” Sometimes, we get a false start before the real race begins.

About a month later I ended it with the false start and went back to my swiping ways. I was still working on my inner self, YouTubing the life out of everything that might help and keeping an open mind to all possibility.

I continued on with my meditations and visualisations, and during one of these, I did in fact see a form in my mind’s eye, and the more I visualised, the more it showed up. Well, this was a new player in the game.

My word of the day project was ticking along and my mother was visiting. She would read my stars to me each day, so on the 23rd of October “stars” was my word, and on this particular day, they said I was in the middle of an experience called a “map moment”, whereby I had been mapping out a path for some time and I was about to reach the destination. I was certainly ready for a destination and a happy ending.

Another match came and we agreed to meet. It was a few days after reading about my map moment and things were looking up until that man stood me up. I hadn’t finished Googling the life out of how to find love, so I couldn’t give up yet. After all, my “map moment” said I was nearly at a destination.

Needless to say, my word the following day was “player” and my map moment destination was heading toward a Tinder uninstall, but as I was sitting somewhere swiping away, I right swiped on a profile that seemed unique. He looked unassuming and there was something I liked about the words he wrote and KABOOM, we matched.

He reached out to me and we agreed to have a coffee. There was a high chance he might not turn up, so in my usual “not really giving a fuck” kind of way, I threw on a t-shirt from my dirty wash basket, sprayed a bit of perfume, put my bumbag on, waited and waited for him at the train station, and then took him to the most uncomfortable, unromantic place I could possibly find. He was tall, grounded, strong, and a businessman from India who was only here for a few months. And yes, he was very much single.

We had a nice coffee, talked about meaningful things, and then parted ways. He initiated another meeting two days later at that very same uncomfortable, unromantic place. He displayed a great deal of respect for himself, for me, and for the women of the world.

There was something sweet about this man, but a girl shouldn’t put all her eggs in one basket. In fact, at 52, my eggs were long gone, and he was going to be long gone in the not-too-distant future, so my plan was to keep swiping away, but Tinder had other ideas. I couldn’t get back into the app. The giant flame kept flashing at me like a big neon sign, and no amount of deleting and reinstalling would bring my profile or any of my matches back.

We arranged a third date, which lasted a very respectable and respectful 15 hours, and I told him about my Tinder crashing. His had done exactly the same. There was no global outage, because I checked.

More dates followed and within two weeks of meeting, we decided to go to Fiji together. That's almost like going to India I thought. I threw caution to the wind and embraced a summer romance, knowing that in a few months I’d probably be heartbroken, but at least I might experience a soul-stirring, heart-healing, and delightful romance with a man who I may have manifested to find his way into my life.

Our trip was still four weeks away, and a lot could go wrong in this scenario, but everything went right. Our holiday was great, we spent Christmas with my family, and when we returned home, he stayed with me right until the time he had to return to India. We treasured every moment, made beautiful memories, discovered we had a love of art, and he painted me a beautiful painting to show how much he cared.

Before he left, we clipped a padlock onto a bridge and threw the key into the Yarra River. We are locked together. Was I prepared for him to leave? Yes. Am I broken hearted that he has gone? No. Our summer romance was a dreamy success, and not only did I meet a hot, young black man, but I found my best friend, a kindred spirit, a deep connection, and a love story that gives me goosebumps when I think about the odds.

Summer might have been over, but our romance wasn't. The psychic told me that a tall, strong, grounded, anchored businessman from overseas would be my life partner, and this beautiful man said he would come back for me in a few weeks to continue our divine journey together. We both found something that we never thought existed and we couldn’t be happier. I achieved my goal of finding love and hopefully broke that self-diagnosed curse.

Sadly, he never made it back for me, but as predicted, travel was on my horizon. After many months apart I bought a one-way ticket to India and we were finally reunited. Our beautiful love story continues.