#5 Andrew - Love and Magic

From Heartbreak to Healing

I have fallen in love a few times in my life; or maybe I thought I did. However, the men I fell in love with were mostly the ones who hurt me. I left these relationships with big heartbreaks and wounds. Then, through my analytic therapy, I realized that these relationships and bonds that I thought were love, were actually trauma bonds. I was repeating the traumatic relationship patterns from my childhood, hoping I could resolve them today and create a different outcome. Deep down, I believed that it was my fault, or that there was something wrong with me that these people did not love me. From my unconscious mind, I was finding similar people with the exact same hurtful behavior patterns and trying to create a different ending; a happy, loving ending. That way I could prove to myself that I changed and was worthy of love. But of course these same people, with the same behavior and emotional patterns, always created the same end result: heartbreak.  In the end, me changing did not change anything about other people because it was never about me to begin with. It was never my fault that they were emotionally unavailable.

After coming to this realization, I started seeing my romantic relationships and the men I was attracted to from a different perspective. I was quickly able to identify my trauma bond and started asking myself, “Who made me feel this way in my past? What wound from my childhood am I trying to heal?” I started focusing on healing my past wounds instead of trying to change the person or relationship. This shift in perspective gave me an enormous opportunity to accelerate my healing journey. However, it also made me lose faith in magical love stories. Perceivably, all the flaring, captivating love stories had their roots in past traumas. I started seeing passion and fire as indicators of a toxic relationship. Relationships that seemed to be working in real life were the ones that were rooted in a more grounding, committed type of love, which to be honest felt too boring for me. I was not going to put all this work into a relationship that is, after all, ordinary and boring.

Therefore, I retired myself from the love and relationship business. I had been living alone for many years anyway and I really liked my solitude. I was working a very busy job and was packed during the week. I only had two days in my weekend and I preferred to spend these two days with my beloved friends, family and myself. A truly happy marriage, having kids and my own family, while still being adventurous  was an unrealistic dream for me. I believed most marriages ended with cheating, never ending fights and drama, or being bored of one another while the kids inevitably grow up with deep wounds because of their parents' unhealthy relationships. 

When it came to truly happy marriages and families, the ones that were working in real life, I thought I was already too emotionally broken or damaged to be a part of those. So I came to the conclusion that I would not get married or have kids in this lifetime. I did not want to take the risk of imprisoning myself in an unhappy marriage anyways. Yet I had been coming home to an empty and lonely home for years at that point, and there were times when deep down I yearned to come home to someone who is there for me in good days or bad. Someone who would look at me with loving eyes, hug me tight and be my teammate in this life. Even though I thought this was a dream that was not going to happen for me, I still held on to my dream as a secret fantasy. 

A Shift in Perspective

Then, I met Roko. He reminded me that I was the one writing the scenario of my life and showed me that magic exists. Growing up we are taught that there is no such a thing as magic. As adults, we have forgotten that our entire life is one big magic show. I said to myself, “Well, if I am the one writing the scenario, and if my life can be whatever I want it to be, in this case I want love. I want a passionate, exciting, love-at-first sight, magical love story. A love story that blossoms into a lifetime of a very healthy, happy and spiritual relationship.” I believed that this would come true. No, I’m sorry, believe is not the right word. I knew that this was going to happen; to a certainty that I knew it already happened in the future and it was only waiting for me. Just like I know that on any given Monday tomorrow will be Tuesday. It is as simple as that. I did not try to control or plan when or how it was gonna happen. I did not try to make it happen; I dreamed. I wrote my scenario with an immense faith in the divine flow. I let go of every doubt in my mind. I knew when the time and place was right, I would come upon my magical love story effortlessly.

The rough scenario I wrote in my mind back in November 2022 was this: ‘

After I start traveling, I will meet a man; this man will be my twin flame. We will meet in a very magical and romantic way, like a fairytale, and we will instantly fall in love. We will have a very healthy, happy, passionate, exciting and adventurous relationship. We will get married, have kids and live in the eco community I’ve always dreamed of as a family. We will build a happy and magical life together.’

I believe the most powerful way of using magic to make dreams come true is to get clear in our hearts about our intention,  visualize what we want, then know that it already has happened, waiting for us. It is just a matter of time until we come upon whatever it is that our hearts yearned for at the right time and place. And I knew this was going to happen for me.

I did one more thing to make the magic more powerful. I thought to myself, “If I want love and happiness, then I should create love and happiness right here and now in my life every day.” Somehow, from all the spiritual writings, I remembered the law of ‘like attracts like’ and the creative power of now. When we want something, we usually operate from a place of lack -we believe we lack a certain thing, so we want it. But when we are in the thought pattern, or energy field of lack, we create more lacking energy and end up not getting what we want. We want abundance, but we believe we are poor and we keep telling ourselves we are poor. Because we keep telling ourselves that we are poor, we recreate this reality and stay poor. A better way to get abundance would be to recognize everything we already have in the present and tell ourselves how rich we already are.  This will not only create more happiness, but eventually more abundance.

So I made a commitment to falling in love with myself every day. Instead of thinking about the future, or when I was going to find the love of my life, I focused my attention on  making myself the love of my life. I committed to falling in love with myself. Loving myself and being in a loving relationship with myself every day. I became my own soulmate, whom I’ve always dreamed of. I started waking up every morning, looking at myself in the mirror and telling myself how beautiful I am and how much I love myself. I caressed my own hair, I snuggled myself lovingly at night, I cooked myself delicious dinners and took myself out to nice restaurants. I bought myself flowers and I started telling myself how much I love and adore myself each day. I started talking to myself very kindly. Whenever I said anything hurtful or mean, I apologized to myself and I promised that I would be better next time. And I kept my promise. Every day I treated myself better than the last, and I really did fall in love with myself. I found love, unity, integrity and wholeness within. I was incredibly happy living and spending my days in my own company. I found the love I was looking for within and I felt complete. I was not yearning for anyone or anything else anymore. I felt like my dream had already come true.

Embracing the Desert

This brings us to the point in my life where I left my meeting with Agni and got on the road towards White Sand Dunes National Park. I arrived at White Sand Dunes around noon. At the entrance there was a big sign telling visitors that there is no available drinking water once you enter the park. In case you do not have enough, it is advised to turn back and get enough water supply before entering- I had only half  of a small bottle of water left. It was still January, so it wasn’t hot outside, it felt more like warm spring weather. I thought about going back and getting more water, but something was pulling me inside.  I did not want to go back. So I journeyed ahead and entered the desert with what tiny water I did have. 

After driving through the desert for some time, I came upon a parking lot where you can park your car and start walking the desert trail. I parked my car, drank my last cup of water and entered the trail. This was the longest trail in the desert. There was a warning sign at the entrance that said the entire trail is about 4 miles long and it takes about 4 hours to complete. Also, since you climb up and down sand dunes the entire time, it is a very strenuous trail and no one should enter the trail unless they are well prepared with a minimum 2 litre of water. I stopped at the warning sign -I was not prepared at all. I only had my jeans and my sweater. I did not have a backpack, I did not have any water or food with me. I only had my phone that I was carrying in my pocket.

My mind was fearful and told me to go back and get some water before entering the trail. But my heart urged me to go ahead and start. I felt at peace and content- deep down I knew I was going to be fine. My feet did not want to go back and there was a strong pull toward the desert. It almost felt like I had no time to waste even though I was not in a rush at all. I remembered Roko saying that I write my own life’s scenario. I remembered Agni saying to always follow your heart. I remembered that magic is real. So I decided not to listen to my mind and my fears. I decided to follow my heart, went back to the state of my five year old self, and continued my path feeling super excited and childlike.

The moment I started walking in the desert, I was mesmerized by its beauty- an endless white sand sea laid down beneath a deep blue sky. I felt like I was on top of the clouds. I felt very small in this endless eternity. At that moment, I understood why desert has such a big place in spiritual stories and finding God. Desert is a place where you fully experience nothingness because there is simply nothing but sand and sky. In this vast nothingness, you also realize you are part of nothing. Your ego, mistaken identity and self (which keeps you separate from God) melts away. In a vast nothingness, you relinquish the burden of your mistaken identity. You become nothing. You fully let the feeling of nothingness merge with you. You experience a union with God- pure bliss and peace.

I kept walking with this bliss, hypnotized by the beauty of the desert. After about an hour I was a little out of breath from climbing the sand dunes. I gazed around and did not see any living being in sight. It was only me and the desert. My mind started talking fearfully again: “You are out of breath, you do not have any water and you still have 3 more hours to go. You should turn back at this point. You’ve experienced the beauty, that’s enough. You should go back to safety and find water.” But I did not want to go back. There was a strong, powerful tie that was pulling me forward. I chose not to listen to my mind’s fears. I chose to listen to my heart and keep going.

A Magical Encounter

As I went further, I started climbing another sand dune, following the stakes that marked the hiking trail so that people would not get lost. At the top of the dune, I could see further across the desert. Suddenly, almost out of nowhere, three figures appeared to my far left, walking from outside of the marked trail. I thought to myself, “Where are these people coming from? Apparently they were not following the trail.” Then I thought ‘whatever’ and I just kept walking at my own pace. After a short time, our paths crossed right at the exact same point. Among these three people, two of them were left behind me and one of them was right in front of me. The one right in front of me turned back, looked at me with his gorgeous, glowing green eyes and said, “Hi, I am Andrew!”

I still get chills when I think about this moment. I was charmed by this man right there and then. He was glowing; he had such a loving and joyful light that was overflowing from his eyes. I felt struck by his light. At that moment, it was almost as if I knew that we had a story together. A magical story that goes way back and will go way forward. The way he made me feel when he looked at me was very familiar- it felt like home. As if we’ve been together for years in the past and we were only reuniting. With these thoughts and feelings flowing over me in a matter of seconds, I was able to say, “Hi, I am Didem.” Yet I was still thinking in my head, “Who is this man? Can he be my twin flame that I set my intention to find months ago?” Then I decided to let go of all of my thoughts and said to myself, “Well, time will show.”

I spent the whole day with Andrew and his friends exploring the desert. We had so much fun together, tumbling down sand dunes and watching a mesmerizing sunset. As I spent more time that day with Andrew, the attraction between us grew stronger and became more clear. At the end of the day, it was time to go our separate ways, but to me this did not feel like an end. It felt more like the beginning of our story. I knew we were going to see each other again. And we did.

After White Sands, I continued my travels onward to Sedona, Arizona to work with a shaman for the month. Andrew headed back to Los Angeles where he lived. We talked on the phone for hours almost every day during the month we were apart. The more we talked, the more we realized how similar we are and how much our life values and dreams are in alignment. Even though we had just met each other, we kept feeling like we have known each other for years. We felt very comfortable and safe with each other right away. After my time in Sedona, I went to Los Angeles for a month. Andrew and I spent nearly every day together. The more time we spent together, the more it became clear that we were soulmates; we fell in love with each other all over again every day. We would practice yoga in the mornings together, went on roadtrips and weekend adventures, and shared our meditations in the evenings. We traveled quite a bit, but we also stayed at home a lot, cooking and watching movies together. We watched many amazing sunsets at the beach and walked by the Venice Beach canals early in the mornings, admiring nature’s beauty. Time spent with each other was full of love, gratitude, excitement, joy, appreciation for life and each other.

At the end of our month together, I continued my travels. My next stop was Nicaragua (see Nicaragua post). We kept talking and FaceTiming almost every day. He even came to visit me in Nicaragua and we had a magical time together! After traveling through Nicaragua and Costa Rica, I went back to Los Angeles to be with him for another month.

Growing Together

By this time we both knew deep in our hearts that we were meant for each other. We loved each other in a way that I have never experienced before. I loved him in a way that I loved a fascinating sunset. I loved him in a way I loved the ocean. I had no expectations, I was just fascinated by his  being -how beautiful and full of love he was. And just being with him, watching him and sharing life with him, was enough for me to feel the divine love- the way I felt watching a gorgeous sunset or being in the ocean. When I am in the ocean, I love being immersed in water, admiring and playing with the waves. Feeling like a small kid full of joy, admiring the white bubbles the waves create. Nothing else occupies my mind. All of my ego and my mind’s chatter disappears in the ocean. I feel at peace, fully content, simultaneously full of life, excitement and joy.

Loving Andrew is like being in the ocean for me. Whenever I am with him, I feel immersed in a love that makes everything else feel small. I feel safe, loved, at peace, at home, and yet still adventurous at the same time. Excited to play and full of passion for exploring life. These feelings are not necessarily foreign to me, I’ve found myself feeling them often on my journey to loving myself, but with Andrew I learned that it was possible to feel all these feelings within a relationship. It was not about him completing me; I already felt complete on my own and had no problem with living my entire life in solitude. With Andrew, I’ve discovered what unconditional love truly is. I love him with no expectations and with no reason. Why do you love watching the sunrise? The answer can be nothing more than simply because it is gorgeous and fascinating. I love Andrew because every time I look at his eyes, I see a gorgeous sunrise in his soul. Because he is simply beautiful and fascinating to me. Because in his presence I feel a deep, pure love that reminds me of the divine. In July, after six months having met each other, we got married in Yosemite National Park in California. A few months later, on 14th October, we were also married eternally in the heavens with a spiritual ceremony by my dear Roko in Istanbul.

Throughout our relationship, I have learned many things and healed many past traumas through unconditional love and support. Especially in the beginning of the relationship, fears and negative beliefs from past relationships surfaced frequently. My mind kept telling me, “This cannot be true, this is too good to be true, there has to be something wrong with him you just don’t see it yet.  Is he gonna turn out to be a psychopath? Does he have some other issues that I don’t see yet? This is a fairytale -fairytales are never real. They only exist in movies, you have to find what’s wrong with it before you get sucked into it. Best case scenario, either you or he will get bored of it because everything is too good to be true.” I chose to not listen to my mind or take it seriously. I let the chatter flow through and saw it for what it was: a bunch of words, rooted in my fears, nothing real or serious. I promised myself not to sabotage love and not to sabotage myself this time because of my fears. It was very challenging not to do so because in those times you are not able to see that it is a self sabotage -you believe it is self protection. But thanks to years in analytical therapy, I was able to recognize my triggers pretty quickly. When I realized my fears were not really about him, but more so my own past wounds, I was able to take a deep breath and not to run away from something so precious because I was afraid. Meditation, surrendering, centering myself in faith, trust and divine love gave me a lot of strength through these moments. 

A Dream Realized

The most valuable gift that Roko and spirituality gave me was the awareness of the fact that I am not a victim. I am not a victim of my past, of the world, of society, of life, or the bad things that have happened to me. Surely, they have an impact on my thoughts and emotions, but it is possible to choose to think and feel differently. It is possible to not let all my thoughts and emotions dominate me. Even if I can’t change them at the moment, it is possible to not take them seriously; not treat them as permanent realities. It then becomes possible to act differently. Through acting differently, it is possible to reinvent myself, despite what has happened in my past. While analytical therapy has given me a chance to look at my past, and why I think or feel a certain way, spirituality on the other hand has shown me that I am not only a product of this past. It has given me a future where anything and everything is possible. I am not a victim. My life is not a sequence of fortunate or unfortunate events happening to me. I am the creator of myself and my own life. I am a magician. I have the choice to completely and radically reinvent myself each day. I  have the power to create a magic life.

Many times, when we see magical, fairytale love stories, we think of them as winning the lottery. We see them as incredibly lucky encounters that happen to very few, extremely lucky people. At least that’s what I thought before. I thought there was no effort or work involved in these love stories; they just happen to you. You see a man, you fall in love and then comes the happily ever after, as if the magical story did not have anything to do with your own doing. I saw it as an external, miraculous event that just happened and I just needed to be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. When it finally did happen, I realized that these magical love stories in real life are not like winning the lottery. They do not just happen to you. You create your story. You invest in your story. You work on your story. They are not necessarily hard, they do flow naturally, but you still need to put in the work. Just like making a magical movie. The story might come to you easily as an inspiration, but you still have to do the work to make it a reality. You still have to write the screenplay, direct it, and act your part.

When we tell these love stories as easy breezy, very lucky encounters, I believe we do them a disservice. We reinforce the belief in people that this was an extremely rare thing that would never happen to them if they are not incredibly lucky. I do not want to reinforce the same false belief in people with my own story. I do not want people to read my story and think ‘oh wow what a lucky woman, I wish I had a magical story but I am not (blank) enough to have it’. I want people to realize how they too have the same power and magic within themselves to create their own magical story, whatever that looks like to them. None of us are more special, or more powerful, or more lucky than the other. We are all writing our own stories, our own tales and they can be anything we would like them to be. They don’t have to be romantic love stories either. Your story can be a love story with yourself,  with traveling, with your job, your passion, or it can be a love story with your friends. It can be whatever you want it to be; it will be beautiful, magical and inspiring as long as it has your heart and love in it. You have the power and magic within you to create it. You just need to put in the necessary inner work.

My magical story could have looked very different if I did not choose to create it this way. I could have seen my encounter with Andrew as ordinary, or merely a coincidence. I could have chosen to say, “Who is this man that I do not know? I do not trust him. I do not know anything about him. I should be careful and watch out.” I could have chosen not to stick with him and his friends, but rather go on my own because a bunch of men in the desert realistically seem more of a threat than magic really. Also, why would I think my soulmate would appear in the middle of a desert anyway? How unrealistic. Later on I could have chosen not to give my phone number to him because I do not know him. Or I could have chosen to not respond to his texts. I could have made myself believe that this would not work anyway because I was traveling and he was living in LA, so why put the effort or work into something unrealistic? I could have chosen to see and focus on everything wrong, or missing, or all of the reasons why it would not work out, but I did not. I wanted a different story; a magical story.  I knew that if I wanted a magical story then I needed to choose to see and focus on magical things. I knew that if I wanted a magical story, I needed to do my part and create the magic on my end. So I did. I saw and focused on his magical eyes, magical soul, his magical love. I chose to not run away. I chose to work through my fears and past wounds. I chose to breathe deeply, remind myself of my courage and chose to stay in the magical love and make it work. This love story could easily be one of those mundane dating, at-the-end-it-did-not-work-out love stories, but it turned out to be a magical fairytale because I made it to be, because he made it to be, because we made it to be.

My old self would never think, even in her wildest dreams, that she would find a man who would risk looking like a fool for love, for his dreams, for the adventure of being alive with her. Who has the courage to touch his own sorrow and can sit with her when she is in pain without moving to fix it. A man who is brave enough to disappoint another to be true to himself. A man who is truly trustworthy not because of his words, but because of his commitment to his heart and soul. A man who can see beauty everyday in the most ordinary ways with her; say hi to flowers, hug trees, dance a silly childish dance with her, celebrate love and life in a simple but most powerful way. A man who can live with failure as much as success, his and hers, and still able to look at the sun and feel the gratitude to be alive. A man who I know will stand in the centre of the fire with her and not shrink back.* Today I am honored and very grateful to call this man my husband.

I believe Andrew and I met in our dreams before meeting each other in the physical world. Our hearts yearned for the same dream. We both chose to go after it, we both believed in magic and this journey brought us together in this world, making our dream a reality. Our story started as a magical fairytale and continues to be so because we choose to keep it this way and put in the necessary work. I am incredibly excited to watch the rest of our story unfold in the most magical and unexpected ways. <3

Urala

*paraphrased and inspired by The Invitation poem by Oriah Mountain Dreamer