My epic tale of love, loss, and finding wholeness

This is the story of how my 19 year long legendary love with Bing ruptured and ended. It is only a slice of the whole story, which is still continuously unfolding, changing colors and shapes, morphing and expanding. I can only share my side of the story, which is one vantage point out of many. And there are parts of the story that are still too tender and raw, or not yet in alignment, to be shared so publicly.

So this go at the telling of the story is not meant to be the last word. In sharing it, I want to honor an in-the-moment work-in-progress truth that has arrived at a certain ripeness and longs to be set free. Free so that we can be in meaningful conversation about the complexities of life, of love, of finding our way. Free so that there is again breathing space for the bigger story to flow, to dance, to evolve.

Thank you for witnessing.

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More than a decade ago, when a friend asked me to describe my relationship to Bing, I shared something like the below…

“Bing is the nucleus of the atom - the grounded center, the unwavering clarity, the ever-constant north star. I am the electron - the high energy particle that dances around his orbit, never settling, never predictable, always excited to drag us into another adventurous quantum entanglement with something new. He is stillness, I am movement. He is foundation, I am change. He makes sure that I never lose sight of home, and I remind him that our nature is just as much waves as it is particles.”

(see the joyous post where this was referenced here)

I am struck now by how incredibly astute I was, and at the same time how BLINDINGLY naive.

I could see the profound beauty and poetry in our connection, but not how much we were leaning on one other to fill in the parts of ourselves that were not yet whole. The love that held us together was so vast and oceanic, that we did not notice that there were also, at the same exact time, strands that bound us together woven out of the fear of loss, out of trauma, out of codependency.

And those were the strands that have been getting tighter and tighter, as we chose to get closer and closer to each other, weaving together our interests, our home, and over time, work, mission, dreams of the future.

Until one day, a nuclear explosion.

A force that had been building inside his being, that he had kept the lid on for years, finally broke free in October of 2023. This force kept erupting for months after, and perhaps is still simmering today. But that initial explosion was intense enough that it quite literally blasted me out of his orbit.

I don’t think I’ll ever find the right words to describe the terror of that experience. My core abandonment wound was pierced wide open - revealing a little girl, forsaken at the bottom of a pitch black abyss, where not a spark of light was present. I had hidden her behind layers of walls my entire life, doing all I can to be lovable and indispensable, so that never again would I have to feel the rawness of her terror of being left behind. In that moment of rupture, this terror flooded through every cell of my body.

I spent that winter alone, in the frigid darkness of Wildsong’s unwavering embrace, in utter collapse, despair, brokenness. And even in that dark place, some part of me already knew that this rupture was about me, and for me, that this whole episode was just the mechanism life used to blow me wide open so that I can truly heal.

And sure enough, the tendrils of the most bewildering healing miracles had started to spin inside my being.

With help, we - me and my little girl - climbed out of the pitch black abyss together.

Within just a few months of deep rest, regular meditation, qigong, energy healing, my core wound stopped bleeding and started to grow a healthy layer of scab.

I reconnected with my father about the impact his persistent absence had on me. Even before I was conceived, he lived and worked in Shanghai, which was a 3-day train ride from where my mother and I lived. He taught at a university and could visit me during summer and winter holidays. For my little girl, the subjective experience of that was cycles of bonding with a father figure, and then being left behind, twice a year until I turned 6 and he permanently left for America. Little me, of course, could not grasp the why, and internalize the pain of abandonment in my unique miasma of self-punishing beliefs of “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not worthy”, “I need to prove myself to be loved”, etc etc, etc.

This opening in our conversation led him to share with me, for the first time in my entire life, the brutal story of how my grandparents and oldest uncle died. Growing up, I did not know my grandparents’ names, have never seen a single photo of them, and have never heard even one story of my father’s childhood with them. And while these stories were tucked behind the curtains, the imprints of their brutality informed all of my father’s major life choices, including working in Shanghai as the ticket out of China so that I will never have to experience the cruelty that he did.

(more about this story here).

It was an incredible opening, a magical portal. I could finally touch a part of my ancestry, the other half of where I came from, and understand what it is I inherited. I also had a chance to mourn the deep intergenerational pain and grief, giving them the space to be cleaned and washed away. And in the process, I also got to see my father in a whole new light, understand his choices, appreciate his grit, devotion, and the beauty of his own hero’s journey.

And as all of this healing unfolded, I began to grow my own nucleus. (For those of you in my energy community, I run oral pattern, and my core literally just came back, as if the central river in my body suddenly started flowing!) It’s a strange transition to experience, but for the first time in my life, I can, with full confidence, say that I know who I am.

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Bing came back in the spring and we did our best to make sense of what happened together. I was actually excited to share with him how much was opening up for me, and to perhaps get help with repairing what had happened in the fall. But it became apparent very quickly that we were no longer living in the same reality.

We were oscillating on that thin line between love and contempt, passion and pain, longing and isolation, lucid seeing and distrust, fear and sweetness. And as more hidden truth bubbled up to the surface over the next few weeks, the pain of the drama intensified.

I could see now that it was because neither of us were anywhere close the bottom of the rabbit hole.

I found my first big letting go during the April solar eclipse. While I was at the breakfast table, a crisp and lyrical piano track came on the speaker. I suddenly started to weep uncontrollably. He put one foot on my foot and just held it there, and held it there.

The first words that came out of my mouth, barely audible, was…

“But… it was sooooo beautiful. I have never let go of anything THIS big”.

“That’s because neither of us has ever HAD anything else this big.” he replied.

I learned, that day, that the last time there was a solar eclipse in the sign of Aries was the spring of 2005, when our love affair first began at the back of a taxi in Bali.

On May 27, after more oscillations and revelations and emotional roller coaster rides, I finally found the strength in myself to do the most courageous thing I have ever done in my life.

“I am breaking up with you”, there was an intense calmness in my voice.

He bawled.

When I shared with my cranial sacral therapist that I had done it, he said “but your heart is open.”

Yes, it was. Because as gut-wrenchingly painful as it was, I broke up with him FOR love.

On June 24, we held a sacred ceremony for our separation at Wildsong With all of our sacred relations as witness, we spoke our intentions that the break up was about coming into full alignment and integrity with the true quality of connection between the current version of ourselves, of giving each other the spaciousness to unfold on our own terms, free from each other’s expectations, and of facing the unhealthy patterns in our co-dependence and growing into our own sovereignty and wholeness.

We planted 2 oak trees in our enchanted food forest, 30 feet apart, in honor of this piece of wisdom from Khalil Gibran

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts
And stand together yet not too near together
For the pillars of the temple stand apart
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow

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It has been many months since then and layers and layers more keep unfolding. The more that fall away, the more clarity with which I see. The more clearly I see, the more I know that this “rough initiation” which ripped apart the foundation of my life and ruptured my sense of reality is the most profound gift, the answer to my prayers, the fiery destructive force that was necessary to burn away the layers that caged my truest essence.

I gave myself the space to find repentance…

I repent that I never stopped pushing him to change.

There are ways of his being that are so sharp and painful to my being, almost like the perfectly shaped dagger for my tender wounds (which, of course, existed way before he came into my life). But I also could not just walk away. The fear of losing him, of triggering that primal abandonment wound, made any responsible boundary setting impossible.

And so I did my best to mold him to be more palatable, at times with the gentle patience of a loving mother, and other times with the chaotic tantrums, threats, and manipulation of a teenage daughter.

And he suffered for it. There were so many moments when saying no to me was not an option, I would raise hell. So he learned to deny his own needs, and hide parts of himself. While he felt the bigness and sunshine of my love and adoration, he simultaneously also experienced the constant subtle whisper of “you are not yet good enough”.

I could feel his heart break over and over with how halfhearted I was about marrying him, and with how, despite doing his best to love me and build the most beautiful world for me, I still never got to the point of proactively wanting to be the mother of his children. Both of those blocks were mostly my own to work through and not principally about him. But I know now that there is also a nugget of truth in my doubts. He could feel it, suffered in silence, and was also too consumed by the fear of loss to walk away.

Of course, like a perfect mirror, his original wounds also had nothing to do with me either. And still, I repent for the part I played, that I held a dagger to that wound, a dagger in the precise shape that would injure it the most. I regret that I did not have the capacity to love him unconditionally, nor the courage to walk away to be true to myself.

I repent that in my own maniacal drive to grow and transform, I became blind to my impact on him at moments of his greatest vulnerability. It feels like a cruel joke that his cancer was what really lit the fire for me to realize that something was very wrong at the root of our existence, and that I had to find a way out at all costs. And then of course, the turbulence that necessarily accompanies any sincere pursuit of growth and transformation (especially a massive feminine awakening) rocked the boat of our lives precisely when he, just one year out of cancer surgery, needed peace and stability the most. I deeply deeply regret how unaware I was of the damage I caused, how little capacity I had to empathize with his needs, and how much he had to tolerate and stuff down his own pain, because he simply did not have the energy to object.

I don’t regret the choice I made to grow and transform, even if it were extremely turbulent. Knowing what I know now of the potential cost, I would have still made the same choice to go through the gauntlet. My soul is a spiritual daredevil and I own that fully, consequences and all.

But I feel deep remorse that the consequences of my choices have been so hurtful for him, far beyond what I expected, far beyond what he allowed me to see. I also deeply regret that I did not have the humility nor awareness, especially in those early years right after he was diagnosed, to find myself the support I truly needed. Mentors and elders who could show me how to navigate these perilous waters with a bit more stability. Support of healer, coaches, therapists, community to help me clear the storm of shadow material that was surfacing at such a rapid pace, so that my storm would not also spill over into this most cherished relationship and threaten his well-being.

And, I fully accept, love, and forgive myself. I see my primal innocence, the innocence of trying to protect myself from pain, to carve a path forward. Despite the unbearable mess I made, I was truly, at every moment, devoted to learning to love him better and devoted to what I saw was the path of liberation.

I found the support structure I needed over time, and year after year got better and better and better. But the trajectory of my own improvement was not enough. Going from negative 96 to negative 34 meant that the subtle disapproval and emotional storms continued, just in ever decreasing doses. I needed that last rupture to truly clear the deck and reset my own inner world. At the same time, my behavior and actions continued to add to Bing’s suppressed load of unprocessed resentment and anger, which had also began to block his capacity to truly see me.

And in coming to fully forgive myself for the innocence at the core of my being, I also came to see the primal innocence at the core of him, that he was always doing his best to love me better, and simply did not know how, nor had sufficient support to truly address issues at the root. I forgive him, and pray from the depth of my heart and soul that he can also find his way.

And how liberating it is, that an event that carried the trauma of a “loss of innocence”, where trust is utterly shattered, can mature into coming into relationship with a much deeper sense of innocence, the innocence that lies beneath, and thus is not devoid of ugliness, not devoid of shadows, not devoid of even cruelty.

The gift of a dream being ripped apart, is that as it comes back down to the ground, all the bits of fantasy in it dissipate, until only reality remains.

We had both completely and utterly failed each other, and oddly, in the grander karmic sense, we had also completely and utterly served each other, played the exact part we were supposed to play in catapulting each other into our next evolution.

My friend Tom shared with me that in Quodoushka, the Shamanic teachings on relationship and spirituality that we study with, monogamy falls on the West side of the Medicine Wheel. West the direction of the sunset, of death, transformation, before the next sunrise. So sustained monogamous relationships necessarily goes through cycles of death and rebirth. Sometimes, two people can find their way back to each other, and sometimes, they don’t. We are simply in this moment.

And I am in awe, that I, in my short 42 years of life, have already had the chance to taste such heartache, be humbled by such pain and darkness, and still be touched by grace… my soul is on my knees kissing and weeping on the earth, profoundly moved by the beauty and artistry of my own life, grateful for the privilege to “suck the marrows” of this human experience.

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For me, new life began to return.

My pattern had been to over-give, to make myself indispensable to others. I was also never fully in touch with the nucleus of who I am, and thus couldn’t fully stand for my dreams, my desires, my path. So I poured my energy and attention into “us”, which, especially with Wildsong where our dreams were so enmeshed, meant that I lost myself. And so I supported Bing through every step of getting the food forest off the ground, but completely failed to build the part of my dream on the land, which starts with the retreat center, but extends to a far bigger vision of community, soulful connection to land, and the blueprint for a more heart-centered future.

In finding my own nucleus, I got to reclaim all that energy back. For most of 2024, much of that energy had to be directed towards the healing and grappling with the loss of all the foundational pieces of my life - life partner, financial stability, physical and metaphorical home. I won’t lie, it’s still hard. But as I start to get a grip of different balancing points, I could start to feel the first spark of creative energy return, like a curious, joyful, tickling sensation.

What do I want to do with this one wild and precious life?

Little shoots of my own dreams are starting to sprout, most of it still too tiny and fragile to even detect the exact shape. But I can feel the vitality of life in these little sprouts, and I’m taking care to both breath life into them daily, and protect them from the harshness of my own judgments and the push of urgency that seems to be the hallmark of this civilization.

I am taking stock of the priceless gifts that I have gained from years of inner work and major dark underworld journeys - compassion, intuition, clarity, fluidity, resilience, trust, a much deeper knowing - and adding them to my knapsack of tools for the next leg of the journey. It did take some time to also reclaim gifts that I had pushed away, remembering - oh yeah, I’m really good at building teams and making things happen! I simply wasn’t motivated at the core and thought what I worked so hard for was mostly utter bullshit.

On the other side, I’m also giving my curiosity the space to play - what does this world need, where does it hurt, what direction are the currents flowing, and how can I hitch a ride on those waves and find creative and joyous ways to help co-create that more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. How can I remind all of us of the beauty, magic, splendor, and love that is already here, so that we can face the challenges of “the meta-crisis” with curiosity, courage, care, and that titillating sense of adventure, to know that THIS is what we came here for.

New vigor is coming back for my dreams for Wildsong. Bing and I have tentatively agreed that we will still co-steward the land, with him taking a lead with the food forest and me with the retreat center, to experiment how we can work together with clear distance and boundaries. I am committing to start writing again, through both the Wildsong newsletter and my personal one. I am also working as a somatic shadow-work coach and spiritual mentor, finally sharing the incredible skills I’ve accumulated over years of training to support others who are also committed to finding deeper integrity and intimacy within themselves, with others, with life.

And much more is to come, in perfect, luscious, timing. As Lao Tzu said. “nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished”.

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Now that I am getting to the other side of the wave that crashed through my life, I am starting to find space to grieve the loss of this fateful 19 year love story, cradled between two solar eclipses in Aries.

To me, grieving this loss is the equivalent of celebrating the immensity of its beauty, so here is the beginning of that celebration.

I am blinded by the enormity of Bing’s light, how big he loves, how brightly he shines, how brilliantly he strives, how fierce his inner light burns, and how much I can feel his light in every moment we have ever shared

I bow to Bing’s boundless capacity to be present to, to relish in, to truly savor, the magic of life’s gifts, whether it be a single dew drop, a haunting tune, the blinking pattern of the flight-paths of fireflies, or that perfect umami-filled bite. He inspires me to look closer, feel deeper, and rest into pure wonder and reverence of the magic all around me.

I am deeply appreciative of Bing’s patience, meticulousness to details, and unwavering devotion to each unassuming step of the process that steadily builds into something beautiful, whether it’s a bench, a painted figurine, a house, or a forest.

I am inspired by the Bing’s unyielding integrity, that he puts his money, time, energy behind his values, that he treats people around him generously, acts boldly in the direction of his dreams, even when he himself is under enormous fear and pressure.

I love Bing’s playfulness, how he can just drop into such carefree joy - to frolic with children, romp around with animals, to break out spontaneously into songs and dance around like his favorite rooster

I am inspired by how gracefully he accepts and celebrates the uniqueness of his being and his creative desires - the quirky braids, the unconventional fashion, the nerdy hobbies full of armies of ogres and zombies and mystical creatures, and in being the little weirdo he is, invites me into revealing and loving my inner little weirdo just a little more.

I am inspired by his incomparable intellect, how insanely observant he is, how deep his capacity to remember every little detail with which to update and maintain his mental model of understanding, and the piecing insights he usually has as a result

I am enthralled by his ability to put the complex and ineffable in simple, understandable words, be it the most complex board game rules, the tasting notes of a special sake, or a verse of the Tao-Te-Ching

And I am so deeply grateful for our love, and what that love has meant to each of us. And with this, I am completely at a loss for words. It’s both too big, and at the same time too tender, to express. So perhaps this is the part of the story that I save for the next chapter.

Except to say, when we find our flow on the dance floor, we can *really* dance together.

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Bing is still the closest family I have on this Earth, and I’m pretty sure I am his too, for a while to come. For anyone reading this post, I ask for your blessings and prayers, that we each find our way, and truly learn to love each other unconditionally (one of the conditions being, “being together in a romantic partnership”). And if God’s willing, perhaps one day we might find our way back to each other, in one form or another.

The two of us are consciously taking space from each other, so we can heal and process on our own time, away from each other’s energy. In order to honor his space, as well as my own desire to share, I have excluded him from all of these communications. If you know him, I invite you to be as considerate as possible, and refrain from sharing details of what I shared unless you have an extremely strong intuition that you should (and even then, perhaps check in with at least one other person before doing so).

I know our culture doesn’t do well with endings, but I am inviting something different. If you knew us as a couple, you can support me by sharing a memory or an aspect of our love that has touched you. Your contribution will help me build an etheric memorial for this incredible 19 year chapter of our lives. If you would like to share privately, you are welcome to email me, but if you are open for this to be part of a communal celebration of love, I’d highly encourage sharing in the comment section of this post where others (and eventually Bing) can also witness. Of course, there is no rush, I honor your perfect timing. I know I will be grieving for years, perhaps even decades.

I have a beautiful network of support, but I am always open to receiving your love, your witnessing, your words of affirmation and encouragement. And, if what I want to create resonates, reach out, share with me what’s beautiful and what’s heartbreaking in your world, what you long for, what you need support with, what you might be interested in co-creating. If I don’t pick up the phone, just leave a voicenote (in the messaging apps ideally).

The first 10 years

Finally, it takes a village to raise a child, and it truly took a village to hold my terrified and wounded little girl and put her on the path of healing and growing up. I could not have made it through without this village, and want to express my infinite gratitude to

… the first responders, who heard my call for help and showed up to hold me when I was in absolute collapse - Karin, Sue/Dawn, Joy, Barbara, Norma, Dan, Tom, Tanya, Irene, Julie, Paul, Dana, Jodi, Marianne, Marta

… Lynda, whose words “you are going through your black belt test” gave me the strength and resolve through even the darkest moments

… Jesse, who held me as my little terrified girl climbed out of that dark abyss

… the soul friendship and infinitely patient love of Tami, Kat, Joohee, who walked with me every single step of the way

… Willow, for smothering me with love and teaching me how to pray

… Karin, whose gift of big-sisterhood was such a pillar of strength for me to show up during last year’s Oakdance

… all those who offered their way of support, whether it’s a temporary home, ongoing healing, or the power of your love and belief in me - Nik, Olivier, Mark F, Chris C, Simi, Shannon, Erin M, Klaus, Richard, Kiki, Won-Hee, Daria, Rohit, Mark B, my entire reaching and holding class (esp. Ellie and Iris), Nunutsi, Kayvon and Elena, Moshe, Alex P, Alex V, Cory, Anne, Peter T, Natalie, Jeffrey, Rick, Gladys, Carly

… the land spirits at Wildsong, on the Big Island of Hawaii, and the expanse of New Mexico, the ocean, the mountains, the trees, the rocks, the hot springs, the sweat lodges and sweat rocks, the chickens (who laid egg all through that frigid winter), Shish and Chicha, Barish and Dini, my healed ancestors, the 20 count, the rays, and so many countless beings who held me and loved me

I hung a tapestry with this image under my shields of intentions at the Oak Dance in June 2023, praying to be carried by the waves towards my dreams. My prayers were answered, the Big Wave did come for me, even if it was not what I expected.

Thank you for witnessing, your presence reading this far means all the world to me.