Last Friday and I had the privilege of being interviewed by Bernadette Pajer of Informed Life Radio, in collaboration with and TV.

We shared our stories of personal transformation, and how the struggles we braved as a couple forged our relationship with light.

As newlyweds, we both brought our own baggage to the party of Life. But it was only by dumping those crusted suitcases out onto the dead end streets of our past, that we were able to look forward to the future.

How did we learn to create a new life, and become people that our 30 year-old selves wouldn’t recognize?

We took radical responsibility for our own health by never feeling sorry for ourselves.

We embraced an unknown path fraught with sickness, but wrought in health.

When our feet touched the ground after a long flight to our sunny honeymoon destination in Italy, all we yearned for was a dark room where we could shut ourselves out from the world, and its expectations - the same expectations that had been driving us mad, and forcing us to live on a trendy yoyo diet of blue pills and luke warm comforts where you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.

The trick to departing Hotel California is knowing that you have the power to walk through the exit door - only if you have the balls to cross the doorman. You see, the keeper to the Gates of our personal Hell of pleasures lets us in easily, but won’t let us leave without a fight. The devil is pretty good at making us fall in love with a Self-image that doesn’t mirror back anything but a mirage of fear. Fear that makes us believe that we’ll never be thirsty in the soul-crushing desert of the real, as long as we drink from the springs others tell us are safe - the same waters that spring guilt, obedience, and “it’s just a small piece of cake - everyone’s having it…” upon us.

In these endless, mindless expanses of empty promises to our Self, and unrelenting sandstorms that whither the prettiest desert rose, there is no rain, only pain. Only torrents of tears from a merciful God can sprout those dry seeds of a forgotten Age. But we must be the ones to make the levee break, with a small crack of light, so that The Flood of life can come to crush our demons underfoot.

How do we start chiseling away at gargantian dams that could drown us before we’re able to escape to new lands?

By letting the light take away our pain.

I was still dealing with addictions at the time I met Bohdanna, and knew I needed to end them to not only have a fulfilling life, but to be able to help fulfill life for my wife. Instead of making a deal with the devil, we made an agreement with the angels of our better nature. I ripped off my mind’s bandaids, and vowed to never play online games or be in chat rooms ever again. Bohdanna made a plan to quit taking SSRIs (specific serotonin reuptake inhibitors), and we both were on our merry way, waiting for our new life to begin. Or so we thought.

After galavanting through the streets of Rome for a few days, we had arrived at a family’s home where we could both work on their farm as part of the experience. We would eat lunch and dinner with them, and would eventually become friends. However, upon arrival, we were both tapped out physically and emotionally, and dragged our heals in being social - Bohdanna especially so. She blamed this on being burnt out from wedding planning, people-pleasing, and overachieving throughout life. But these reasons didn’t explain why she couldn’t stop crying, dreading going on, yearning for a stop to the adventure.

Where was all this anguish coming from? We called it “honeymoon burnout” but it was really so much more.

The burnout was a rolling undercurrent of cold blue flames that had been building in a noxious house where dreams and letters from friends were returned-to-sender. The fire that had scorched our psyche was made with twigs our parents had snapped off special - just for us - laden with sugar, pharmaceuticals, and video games. Then came the logs that we both helped place all around that not-so-bon fire. The stumps of pleasing Big Daddy, and the timber that we thought made us look cool in the eyes of other children who were just as lost in the Black Forest.

We may not have started the fire, but we certainly kept it going. We would continue on our honeymoon blaming ourselves for overprescribing a busy schedule. But we both humbly forgot that our brains were undergoing a massive reconstruction project as our feet beat the cobblestone streets. Bohdanna wasn’t burning out, but changing. Years of psychopharmalogical drugs had altered her nervous system and hormones, and now without their numbing influence, she was building a Brain Colosseum to last the test of time.

All our lives we were standing too close to sacrificial flames, which not only got us burned from people who didn’t appreciate us, but blinded us with a blaze of self-hatred that didn’t let us see the council of friends we had sitting around our fire. Eventually, we’d learn how to use those flames as fuel. The choices we were about to make would spark the match that would set us alight with unextinguishable joy.

Many of us are stuck in fiery psychological shackles not because we don’t know how to cross the rubicon of the soul, but because we don’t want to. We like our company of misery, and blaming our failures and fate on “genetics.” We’re afraid that if we let too much light in, it may burn down the essence of who we thought we were, and reveal our true nature to dark woods that see right through us.

But when we know better, we do better.

This type of knowing doesn’t come from a book, it comes from the heart.

A heart that never quits beating,

only keeps yearning

for a life of light

that will crush our night.

How did Bohdanna and I strike out together into the light?

We realized…

We are more powerful than we know.

Roman & Bohdanna

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“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

-Jiddu Krishnamurti

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In today’s episode, we discuss:

• The role of negative self-talk, and how phrases like “of course” weigh us down

• How we used routine to calm our minds and save our relationship

• How we had to first health as individuals before we could grow as a couple

• Why we need to look at our environment as if we’re looking at it the first time.

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𝗠𝘆 𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗱 in 𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲. 👩‍👦

Not knowing my father.

Not knowing my future.

Yet I always knew my mother’s love.

I saw with my heart, felt with my eyes, and sensed reality through my nose.

I didn’t know anything about chronic stress or have many thoughts about what I should be or shouldn’t be.

Yet I could sense something just wasn’t right.

My little nose could smell my mom’s musty emotional burden when it nuzzled up against the shoulder pads of her polyester business suit.

She would cook me amazing baked ziti and lasagna, all from scratch herself.

She helped me with my homework.

She taught me how to speak Ukrainian.

She taught me how to be kind yet give a firm handshake.

She taught me to respect my elders yet remember that all respect is mutual.

However, after dinner was made, and the lessons were taught, she would go.

Back to the work of finding a good man.

Back to the society that I didn’t know anything about, but felt all the time through her stress.

I would come home some days from the school bus to an empty house because my mom was still working.

I’d watch scary movies alone, and eat as much chocolate as my undisciplined 7 year old self would permit.

As much as I felt abandoned at times, 𝗺𝘆 𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿'𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁 never left me.

Even at my age, I knew she was also just a woman feeling alone and afraid in the wide world.

Not one of us can bear madness alone.

I would take a devoted single mother any day over a whole village of emotionally absent parents.

Why?

Because only a whole woman or man can make a whole heart.

My mother gave me that heart – the heart that allowed me to surmount the blackest of obstacles in the years to come.

The black of finally knowing what society and the broken hearts of men were capable of destroying…

The relationship we have with our Self.

We’re often taught that we shouldn’t be selfish.

Yet that’s only because the Self is misunderstood, and often confused with our ego, or the little “s”elfish needs we require.

Although its demands are sometimes petty, the ego still resides in the Self, and is necessary for us to function and survive on a daily basis.

However the Self is much more expansive, and limitless in its love, than our ego.

Our Self is our soul.

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You are more powerful than you know.

Roman & Bohdanna

Want to learn how you can connect with your authentic Self?

Looking for more fulfilling relationships in your life?

Join us tomorrow on our podcast:

and I will discuss:

1. Self care strategies you can take

2. the difference between our Ego vs our Self

3. why we chose not to have children

4. examples of parents we know who don’t make children their excuse but their reason for personal development

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Imagine a stack of 400 coins, which symbolizes our human history of the past 100,000 years.

The 400th coin represents everything that’s happened since the American Revolution. Before 1776, we lived without electricity, and were plugged into Mother Nature.

Life may have had its difficulties, most of which were acute such as being attacked by a bear, having our village raided, or starving.

Today our societies have become more complex, and our illnesses more complicated as result.

Degenerative diseases - heart attacks, cancer, stroke, arthritis, hypertension, diabetes, Alzheimer’s - have replaced infectious diseases as the major enemy of life.

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Why do we love ancestral living?

1. Gratitude.

We’re grateful for what our grandparents, and previous generations had to go through to get us to this point in history. All of the war, famine, as well as the songs of laughter and lessons of communal medicine are woven into the fabric of our DNA. We are the survivors of those very same survivors.

As children, we used to sit around our grandparents’ table at Easter, and felt forced to eat that “weird” Ukrainian food. I can say that now being in our forties, and learning how to cook nourishing meals for ourselves, that we truly appreciate how much love and energy goes into preparing something as “simple” as a pot of borscht, rolling out and stuffing vereneky (the Ukrainian version of pierogies) or fermenting a jar of beet kvaas.

Part of being grateful for one’s past includes challenging the future as well. Our grandparents came to North America and believed it was the promised land. In some respects it was, however the wolf in sheep’s clothing-of-progress lurked evermore, in the grocery aisle of instant gratification.

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2. Food as medicine.

Although we were raised surrounded by beets, whole milk, and hearty potatoes, we also grew up on the Western 1980s and 90s diet of sugar, microwaved TV dinners and low-fat ice cream (or is it creamy ice?). Once Bohdanna and I hit our twenties, our childhood saturation of junk would catch up with our livers, and eventually our minds.

We both struggled with depression in our thirties, and eventually learned that the remedy was through cultivating a healthy environment. This environment didn’t just include the healthy bacteria in our gut, but also became a habitat of nourishing thoughts and beneficial relationships that challenged us as individuals.

In order to honor the memory of our ancestors, we eventually defied even our grandparents as well, who had become indoctrinated by the false prophet-eers of margarine and processed sugar.

We learned that sugar not only did not have to be a preservative when canning our fruit preserves, but that other types of jam are actually even more flavorful without the sugar, such as St. Dalfour.

We were also told by our elders that “Tylenol is good for headaches,” only to find out decades of pills later that Tylenol can actually make our headaches worse. A 2019 study funded by the NIH has even suggested a potential link to autism for pregnant mothers who’ve taken Tylenol.123

We began taking white willow bark for our pain instead, just as our ancestors would have done thousands of years ago. Even though white willow bark is not close chemically to acetaminophen (Tylenol) or aspirin, we’ve found that it’s still a very effective pain-reliever, especially when taken with a little lemon water and magnesium, which helps increase absorption.*

*We are not medically-licensed professionals and do not make any medical claims.

3. Simplify life.

Living closer to the Earth takes work, but we’ve been rewarded with more simplicity in our lives. Growing food in our garden isn’t an easy task, especially in today’s harsh climate of aerial chemicals and insects that are dying off due to advances in technology.4

However knowing that you can just go to your backyard and pull out a blood-cleansing beet or liver-detoxifying carrot is a beautiful thing.

Learning from our ancestors has also helped us distill what we truly value in life: good food, solid relationships, and purposeful reconnection with our primal Self.

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We used to shop around and buy all kind of seasonings and ingredients. We’ve learned that most meals only need some superior sea salt, black pepper, and a slab of quality butter.

Note: Grassfed butter helps regenerate our brain as well.

Now that’s the kind of regenerative agriculture we need!

4. History is our favorite community.

Before we can adopt traditions and apply them to a community, we believe that we first must understand why they exist, and the meaning behind their symbolism. For instance, eggs represent the Divine Feminine and fertility.

The symbol of the Cosmic World Egg was worshipped by the Greeks, Egyptians, and Proto-Indo European civilizations of antiquity, and embodies the Universe coming into existence by "hatching" from the egg.

Geometric shapes such as those on the glass in the picture below are found all throughout different cultures, some of which include Native American, sub-Saharan African, Nordic and Slavic. Egyptians would even use shapes to form geometric, medicinal “power spots” in their societies.5

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The glass above contains triangles. In ancient belief, the triangle symbolized the narrow gate that leads to eternal life, and represented unity of the three worlds: the Earth, the Underworld and the Heavens.

The triangle also represents the three elements – Water, Fire and Air, the three levels of being and the Holy Trinity (in later Christian belief).

The triangle has long been associated mainly with Fire, recognized by some as the creative aspect of the Divine Masculine.

From Euromaiden Press:

Triangles, whose tips touch each other, call to mind an hourglass, symbolizing the World and Anti-world. The meeting or touching point symbolizes the place of transition from one world to another. 6

My last name Diduch “Дідух” translates as “forefather” in Ukrainian.

During Christmas, the Дідух is a sheaf of wheat put in a place of honor in the family home, and commemorates the family's ancestors.

I guess I’ve always been in touch with mine.

We understand that we’re at a crossroads of worlds.

We stand at the brink of a certain, “safe” future of robotic disempowerment.

We must be brave enough to gaze into an unknown abyss of a not-so-distant dream, where we can all come together and walk through the Primordial Fire of our past.

Are we saying we want to go life in a cave?

No. (Although I think Roman secretly wants to).

We don’t want to give up the printing press, the Wheel, or our coffee grinder. Chocolate too- although that’s not a technology.

We believe that by understanding where we came from, only then will we know where we are going.

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&

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I didn’t want to be like those “other people” :

Fat, sick, and nearly dead.

As a teen, I had seen Death come home too many times when it claimed the lives of my mother, grandfather, and grandmother. 

I was done trying to save others.  I didn’t even want to save myself anymore.

I just wanted to run from the pain.

I had seen doctors assume the throne of false gods, as they would distill complex chronic illnesses into oversimplified solutions of magic pills.

Everyone seemed to have all the answers without having asked any questions.

I learned that we have to become our own best health advocates, and channelled my rage against the machine into studying medical publications and books.

I believed I could expose the truth of how chronic toxicity was knowingly perpetrated by Big Pharma’s foot soldiers.

I shouted from the rooftops, where I thought someone would hear me.

But my felled trees of truth made no sound in a murky woods filled only with the silence of people I thought were friends.

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I learned that the healing people needed was truly a quiet one of presence.

People would rather have me listen than lecture.

Even though my search for the light started in darkness, my rusted heart still bore an unrelenting flame from a inextinguishable torch of compassion that had been passed down by my ancestors.

I decided I wouldn’t let others feel the pain I felt.

Those “other people” I didn’t want to be like became all of “my people.”

But to carry that torch I had to become even more vulnerable than before. 

I had to open myself up to true criticism, not from my inner demons, but from the mirror of my soul - and the artist who pushed me to die to each day.

Instead of comparing myself to others, I chose to level the scales with my past.

So I started to listen to what my story was telling me. 

I began to do the inner work that filled me with passion, sorrow, and joy.

I’d write letters to my past Self, reflect on my life through art therapy, and incorporated a clean lifestyle.

Instead of staying up late at night in the fear of missing out, I woke up each morning and found that I actually had been missing out.

I had been taking the magnificent Sunrise, the music of the birds, and the laughter of the trees for granted.

Most importantly, I made sure to never miss another moment to shine a little quiet light on the lives of others: just like that Sun whose healing rays of infrared we often don’t see.

So…

Instead of granting you your wish, I’d like to hear your story.

You can come tell me on November 1st, as we begin 21 days of total mind body Regeneration.

Learn how to sync your circadian rhythm and use the Sun in order to:

• Amplify your metabolism

• Enhance mental focus

• Restore sleep.

Join us: 21 Day Regenerate Challenge

Don’t compromise. Seek 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵.

______________________________________________________

Connect with me on Linkedin 🔔 --> Roman Shapoval

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The coldest winter I ever spent was a fall in New Jersey. 

Just three months ago, I had bought a one-way ticket to New Mexico, with a quiet hope of not returning.

I had checked myself into a rehab clinic for over a month, and hit the road to explore the US Southwest for another month.  For the first time in a very long time, I felt strangely at home in a foreign place. 

However my past was calling me back to deal with those loose ends that seek to bind us with their grip on our progress.

I was leaving the fair weather of San Francisco, and came back to New Jersey with a frigid tale between my legs, as a freak October ice storm pummelled trees along with my spirit.

That night I came back to the empty apartment that my ex and I had to leave.   There wasn’t an ecstatic dog waiting to greet me, or the sound of laughter from a woman I was trying to forget.

All of my past progress and soul-expansive adventures imploded at that dark moment, under the immense emotional weight of an apartment that had sheltered me with its canopy of comfortably-numb defeat the past 2 years. 

I crumbled.  All I wanted to feel was oblivion.

I immediately checked the black box where my ex and I kept our cannabis…score!

My ex was also gracious enough to leave an open condom wrapper in the garbage.   

This wasn’t my wrapper…so needless to say I was a little surprised.  (Months later I found out that the condom wasn’t used for what I thought it had been)

I had been home for less than an hour, and my ship was already wrecked in a riptide of shallow degradation.

I thought: ”God, what are you trying to tell me?”

Is this a sign I should get out of this place, or stay and deal with my issues?

It turns out God wasn’t trying to tell me anything.  God was only listening, and waiting to see how I would respond under the tests before me.

I had felt supported by the universe just a day ago, and now I felt like I was a victim of its conspiracy.

The following years that ensued were my life’s fog of war. 

After a week of being alone in my apartment, my ex became distressed that I wouldn’t be ok and reached out to my uncle without my knowledge.   He called me and asked me to stay with him and his girlfriend for a while.

I moved in with them, and felt like a pitied refugee. 

After a few months, I was asked nicely to leave, and told my uncle I didn’t have a place yet, so I would have to move back with my ex.

I didn’t have much pride in those days, as I was just trying to survive by seeking refuge with familiar faces.  When I moved back with my ex, the enabling, co-dependent cycle continued. 

We would keep numbing ourselves daily, ignoring the fact that we would never love each other the same way again.  Eventually this active denial was too brutal for either of us to bear, so I finally moved out to find my own place.

I moved back to the same town where my uncle and girlfriend lived.  Like a dog who’s been beat to much, I was always trying to please another master instead of using my own instincts to hunt.

My saving grace: I had learned how to be a wanderer all my life and be independent since I was a child.   As much as I didn’t always cope well, I often enjoyed my own company.

I felt like I was on my feet again, and in my heart I knew I would find a way to inner peace. 

I could live anywhere at that point, as long as it was on my terms.

Soon new people would come into my life to test my notion of independence.

I knew I could trust myself, or so I thought. Could I trust anyone else?

Don’t compromise. Seek 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵.

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My cowboy hat sat on a rock, tending to the blaze of guilt I was letting run wild at my soul’s inaugural campfire…

I had learned to be on my own most of my life and learned to like it, or so I had thought.

I believed I was independent all those years, but I had been mostly co-dependant.

I depended on the approval and validation of others to uphold my image. 

Yet this image was also unsound, as it had only been echoed by the mirror of society and 1980s action heroes, rather than a reflection of introspection.

Ironically, all my life I hadn’t criticized myself deeply enough.

I had only looked at the surface level of my primal pond of feel-good reactions, rather than responding to the enlightenment of pain found in the deep caverns of our abyss.

I had just left The Life Healing Center, where I had gone to work on myself, and address the patterns that were no longer serving me.

I had committed myself to weeks of emotional labor, deconstructing the conditioning of previous behavior and harsh expectations I had placed on myself.

Now the magical bubble had popped me square into the jaws of a dark desert night of the soul.

I had been driving for over 6 hours on a lonely highway north of Santa Fe, into the Great Sand Dune Mountains of Southern Colorado.

The cold desert sundown was quickly approaching, and I was driving on a path of no return, with no motels booked, no cell signal, only a little gas and a map.

Luckily my eyes were keen enough, after years of New Jersey driving, to see the sign for the park.

I knew I had arrived when I saw the 10ft high dumpster laden with “You are in Bear Country” signs.

I quickly gathered wood, along with drawings and letters I had written at the Center’s art therapy class.

These letters and drawings depicted how others in my life had polluted my soul with their own unresolved guilt and were meant to be eventually burnt at a ceremony where those past emotions were finally released.

The fires of catharsis were ablaze, as I spent the night staring back at the new hat I was ready to wear in life.

After the final embers of dead soul scrolls faded into the endless starry sky, I was thunderstruck by a surge of silence rippling through my once vacuous heart.

Those embers were a sign that the light we can learn from rests in the void of our surrender.

The world felt like it was mine to claim for the first time in a very long time.

My wounds of abandonment, betrayal and shame had been dissolved by the golden elixir of Self-commitment.

When we commit to our Selves, we honor our ancestors, and their primordial fires that we left behind.

My only regret was that I had not started writing those burn letters sooner.

Are you ready to burn your beliefs in a desert where you are one with all the world, so that you can forge a fire of belief in your Self?

Take that ride.

Everybody’s waiting for you…

Don’t compromise. Seek 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵.

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Thank you!

Twenty-five years ago, my freedom battled loyalty and lost. 😌 

“You’re not going away to college.” was my aunt’s retort as I told her I was looking for a dorm room. 

My mother had passed a few years back, and I was left caring for my 8yr old sister along with my aunt. 

My aunt had been there for my sister and I during the crisis of my mother’s passing. 

However, she was more than my aunt, she was her own person, with her own past relationships. 

As a 17 year old I failed to see her as the person who had been the middle child who took on a lot of responsibility at a young age, while sacrificing her youth. 

When she dismissed my desire to go away, I quickly conceded as I felt the pangs of guilt shudder through my body. 

I didn’t know it at the time, but my self-sacrifice would come at a cost, greater than the benefit it bestowed to those around me. 

I sacrificed my Self at the expense of my lesser self:  

The self that didn’t know how to stand up for himself. 

The self who desperately yearned for petty validation. 

The self that didn’t think his dreams were notable enough.  

I was the one being sacrificed - not offering sacrifice. 

My unformed heart had been consecrated to the sacred groves of the shadow ceremony, where congregants follow the tribal virtues of guilt, cloaked in self-anointed garments of loyalty. 

Years later I would still repeat the same pattern of circumventing my own needs through pleasing others.

I’d work a job where I thought I could attain money, rather than work for love.

I’d show up at events where I was “expected” rather than accepted.

I’d follow the rules of society’s relationship roadmap, not knowing my true north.

Loyalty and sacrifice are often misunderstood, as they’re emotionally imposed on us at a young age, by parents who have their own meanings of the word. 

Loyal comes from legal, and means “faithful in carrying out legal obligations, honorable.”

We’ve allowed the legal concept of loyalty to ironically betray those closest to us.  

How was I being loyal to my aunt if I was only betraying myself, and not honouring my own obligations to develop my core? 

Would society rather have a man who is shackled to reigns of guilt, or a man who unleashes his chariot to hurl through the eminent obstacles of his civilization? 

How do we release the guilt that allows us to steer our destiny?  

How can we remedy betrayal in our lives? 

Through learning how to concoct its antidote: 

Loyalty to Self. 

Follow me as I help you craft your own psychic elixirs of loyalty, honor, and commitment to Self. 

Don’t compromise. Seek 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵.

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Let's Connect!

​𝗜 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗺 𝗺𝘆𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗯𝘆 𝘄𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗺𝗮𝘀𝗸. 😒

I had just completed a 35-day program at the Life Healing Center, and I was ready to be tested by the real world outside.

The problem was…

I felt like a new man.

I was so new to myself, that I didn’t know how to relate to my new Self.

I isolated myself from me, since there was nothing, and no one, to whom I could relate.

I had taken a hard look at the relationships that were no longer serving me, and lost touch with many people as a means of self-preservation.

Who was I now if I wasn’t my past, and only an uncertain future?

I was so afraid to see myself in the mirror of new possibilities, that I decided to wear the same mask that had covered up my inner beauty for so long.

The mask that made me believe I helped others more than others helped me.

The mask that protected my inner demons from the outer angels of fulfilling relationships.

The mask that withered with anger the spirit I was afraid of unleashing onto the world.

I was terrified to cross the desert of limitless expansion because I knew I would suffer exposure to the elements of reality.

I wanted to run by traveling different roads but could not hide with the same beggar’s clothes.

I rented a Jeep and embarked into the desert of New Mexico, driving all the way to the Pacific.

I soon remembered that the physical world “out there” extracted its meaning by the emotions 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦.

𝗜 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 when I noticed how uncomfortable and shy I would be around strangers, whereas my past Self was magnanimous and jovial to a fault.

𝗜 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 when all I had was silence of original thought, which quieted the noisy chatter of self-talk.

𝗜 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 when I walked in nature, being supported by the Divine elements that 𝘐 𝘭𝘦𝘵 myself embrace.

𝗜 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 who I had falsely thought I was, when 𝘐 𝘭𝘦𝘵 myself feel who I truly was.

When 𝘐 𝘭𝘦𝘵 myself feel, all those emotions and thoughts at first burst out of control into a time-shattering tornado.

The winds of my new understanding cascaded into a downward torrent of confusion, followed by an upward spiral that settled in my heart’s center of gnosis.

Could I keep the faith that I would lead my life with a new knowledge?

Could I live with the uncertainty of starting fresh, on my own, and not having a roadmap that was given to me by society?

Or would I fall back into the same patterns, careers, and relationships?

I didn’t need to choose.

All I needed to do now was act.

Don’t compromise. Seek 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵.

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“What’s the password for your email?”

Sweating bullets onto the unforgiving July heat island of pavement known as the northern New Jersey strip mall parking lot, I told her.

I had pulled the plug on my own hand grenade of lies, and lost myself in a thousand-yard stare into the potholes I had created with the mortar fire of addiction.

As the last scalding drop from the melting plastic bottle that had sat in my car all day evaporated on my tongue, I was left in my own desolate desert of lies.

I knew I would have to surrender to the heat of my truth’s crucible.

I would have to face not only the loved woman I hurt, but I would have to rip open the emotional callouses of numb denial that I had built up as protection for far too long.

I had spent the past year scrolling online, chatting and looking at other women, because I was unfulfilled in my relationship.

I had tried to be the hero who had already torn his achilles heel.

The hero who tried to heal the damsel in distress with his rigged armor on.

The hero who couldn’t drown out the song of his own Sirens.

I had done time in my own prison of comfort, sipping and smoking away my feelings.

So I checked in at the gates of surrender, expecting the wrath of God.

I was met with the grace and mercy of an angel instead.

This God of Unconditional Love took my hand, and helped me leap into a new life.

Her name was Kristyn.

Even though I had betrayed her, she would remain loyal.

She honored our relationship by listening to my shattered truth, and even helped me research healing centers where I could deal with all of my life’s past trauma.

Like the Valkyrie, she had chosen this slain hero with a trust to keep fighting in the afterlife of his addictions’ armageddon.

I honored her trust with loyalty to Self.

I checked myself into The Life Healing Center, where I burned the deadwood letters to my past self and my abusers.

Even though I had bought a one-way ticket to New Mexico, I eventually came back to my hometown.

However I don’t feel like it’s home anymore.

I crafted my new home of the heart out in the desert of New Mexico, where the sands ran hot with truth, yet hope of a new life sprang eternal.

Thank you Kristyn for the immortal soul you helped me to keep.

I love you.

Roman

Don’t compromise. Seek 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵.

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This mind will 𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛-𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙩 in 10 years… 👇
 
Time’s ticking…which wire do you cut?
 
Red, blue?
 
Cut the tight wire of distraction.
 
Embrace the tightrope of soul.
 
All that remains between us, and our distractions is our soul.
 
The soul that beckons us to dance unencumbered with it on the tightrope.
 
The soul we’ve harnessed between the twin towers we chose to build up in our lives.
 
The towers of fear and love.
 
The soul that patiently waits and listens to our heart’s wind on the 99th floor of surrender.
 
The wind that whispers to us so the devil can’t hear.
 
How often we ignore this wind by creating our own tornadoes of self-loathing that shout out the silence and drown out the pain in their reckless waling?
 
I ignored the whispers of my heart most of my life.
 
Instead of facing my fear, I feared what I faced.
 
I looked into the abyss, and fell in love with the darkness.
 
My mother had recently passed from an excruciating illness.
 
Reckless men and doctors had gotten away with murder.
 
Shell-shocked, I decided to take refuge behind the gilded aluminum armor of beer cans.
 
𝗜 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗱 to not decide how to deal with reality.
 
𝗜 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗱 to walk with a chip on my muscled yet tired shoulders.
 
𝗜 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗱 to isolate myself from those around me.
 
But that tight rope still called me to dance.
 
My friends were always waiting on the other side.
 
I couldn’t hear my friends’ pleas of support.
 
All I could listen to were the screams of my inner demons.
 
Demons that coaxed me into a bright, attractive shelter of numb comfort.
 
Demons that didn’t want me to enter the dark cave that was their command center…
 
The place where I would seek #highertruth and take out their leader, the Prince of Fear.
 
Would the fates spin me a tightrope of soul, or was I slowly weaving my own karmic cloak of darkness?
 

Don’t compromise. Seek 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵.

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“He’s stoned-faced drunk, not drowsy from his allergy medicine!” 

I could hear my uncle (far right in the picture) tell my aunt, as I lie face-flat on the basement floor… 

I was 16 at the time.   

I had come home from school and no one was around, but me, Tropicana Orange and Vodka. 

Was I happy that my uncle woke me up from a blacked-out state? 

Yes, because I needed help to awaken. 

𝗔𝘄𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵 of who I might become. 

My aunt held me too close to the bosom of childhood, as my testosterone bursted at the seams.  

I was ready to be anointed by the priesthood of men. 

However I had only known false prophets, who ruled by force, and shunned their own creative masculine power. 

My mother had recently passed away from cancer, and I was helping raise my 6-yr old sister with my aunt, who had recently married whom I refer to as my uncle Chris. 

My uncle Chris was my first true relationship coach, and mentor. 

A mentor who showed me what a true man could be – sensitive, caring, and responsible for his own actions. 

A man who had created his own destiny. 

A man who would hold me accountable to my actions. 

Quickly the basement that was my dungeon, turned into a fallout shelter of blissful creative expansion, as Chris taught me how to play guitar, as we’d ramble on about all things man, and woman. 

“When the student is ready, the master shall appear.” 

How does the student get ready in the first place?  Why does the student even want to learn? 

Students are formless, hollowed out gentle hearts, that are eager to embrace what they don’t know. 

Students are ready to thrust forward into life because they have exhausted all of life’s previous lessons. 

I knew what kind of man I didn’t want to be. 

I recognized that many men, no matter how old, were unwilling to let go of their infantile sentiment that clung fiercely to their mothers, which served to produce only a skin-deep attraction to their partners. 

Many of these revelations were thanks to my uncle Chris. 

For the first time in my life, I could hear my voice heard by another grown man. 

I was willing to be vulnerable enough to talk, and he was willing to be present. 

That’s what a true mentorship, and a relationship looks like. 

What mentors do you have in your life? 

Are you ready to be a student? 

Don’t compromise. Seek 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵. 

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#relationships #mindfulness  #mentalhealth  #addiction

𝙄 𝙙𝙞𝙙𝙣’𝙩 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙖 𝙨𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙧. 𝙄 𝙙𝙞𝙙𝙣’𝙩 𝙬𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚 𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙨. 😕

All I wanted was presence. 

Call me ungrateful. I was 11. 

I was an only child, who lived very happily in my own little bubble with his single mother.  

Then a belligerent stepfather came barging through the front door of my freedom, and shortly after tossed a newborn my way.  

I knew that I would have to shoulder the burden of taking care of my sister with my mother and protect her from the thrashing of an out-of- control man. 

I would have put that innocent smiley face on, just like I would have to put together that model car and pretend like I enjoyed it. 

Maybe that’s why I never really liked Christmas the way it is now. 

At its modern core, it’s been more about getting than giving. 

When others get things from us, we expect them to reciprocate by way of appreciation. 

However true gifts are given freely, not gotten through unspoken contract. 

The gift is the gain of the giver, more than that of the receiver. 

Art is such a gift.  

You can never create true art or lasting work if you expect something in return.  

That’s called commerce, and there’s no love in that. 

Marriages and partnerships have that commercial nature about them as well. 

Many partners live out ledger relationships, always playing tit for tat. 

These relationships are a zero-sum game, with a shallow comprehension of what everyone can truly bring to the table. 

Meaningful relationships don’t have to be long-term ones, but they do have emotional depth. 

Each partner gives of themselves and doesn’t expect anything in return. 

I decided to give myself the gift of responsibility that Christmas. 

I wasn’t expecting praise, or anyone to notice. 

I may not have liked the situation, but I did respect my sister, and honored myself enough to be present with the circumstance. 

I still chose to give my all. 

Did I have to? 

No. 

Did I put in enough effort? 

To this day, I don’t know.  

What I do know is that I’ve learned to give from an open heart, rather than from a closed fist of resentment. 

I would learn that honoring my own commitments was the most potent drug I could self-medicate with in the years to come… 

Don’t compromise. Seek 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵.

Love,

Roman

Follow #womansman if you're interested in learning about more techniques that will allow you to harness the full potential of your mind, body, and relationships! 

Don’t compromise. Seek 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵.

#relationships #mindfulness #love #mentalhealth

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They throw the first pitch, and watch the children play.

Then they go off to play their own power games.

I remember that bleak and damp fall afternoon my new stepfather Michael came to watch me on the field of bygone dreams.

I missed some swings, but Michael was dropping more balls than the game of life could count.

He made an indellible first impression on our neighbors, as he sat in the stands with them and made himself a little too comfortable.

I could see the major league spectacle from the outfield.

He berated me between swigs of Coors and coughs from Marlboro Red smoke misting through the barren trees, indifferent to his toxic breeze.

I could feel at that moment that my days were numbered like my jersey:

Lifeless and limited to live out its season in an inevitable battle-to-the-death of innocence.

I didn’t know it yet, but the at the end of the game was when the sport of adult life began.

The sport of limitless options to choose one’s destiny, or to play the victim who gets a conciliatory ice cream at the end of the game.

I could play by the rules of the game rigged by the adults who were in charge of me, but not in charge of themselves.

Or I could create my own rules to live by.

I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to swing the bat hard enough to break the back of my enemy.

I didn’t know it yet…

But I did have a backbone that could break the back of their rules.

I didn’t need to worry about not catching and deflecting their every insult.

All I had to worry about was catching my soul.

All I had to do was walk of their field.

At 10 years of age, I had Big league Choices to consider.

How to deal with Michael?

How to protect my mother?

I would have to find my solace in left field, where the adults forgot about me, and where I could ponder what to do next.

How was I going to engage in the Sport of Life?

Don’t compromise. Seek 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵.
 
Love,
Roman

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𝗠𝘆 𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗱 in 𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲. 👩‍👦

Not knowing my father.

Not knowing my future.

Yet I always knew my mother’s love.

I saw with my heart, felt with my eyes, and sensed reality through my nose.

I didn’t know anything about chronic stress or have many thoughts about what I should be or shouldn’t be.

Yet I could sense something just wasn’t right.

My little nose could smell my mom’s musty emotional burden when it nuzzled up against the shoulder pads of her polyester business suit.

She would cook me amazing baked ziti and lasagna, all from scratch herself.

She helped me with my homework.

She taught me how to speak Ukrainian.

She taught me how to be kind yet give a firm handshake.

She taught me to respect my elders yet remember that all respect is mutual.

However, after dinner was made, and the lessons were taught, she would go.

Back to the work of finding a good man.

Back to the society that I didn’t know anything about, but felt all the time through her stress.

I would come home some days from the school bus to an empty house because my mom was still working.

I’d watch scary movies alone, and eat as much chocolate as my undisciplined 7 year old self would permit.

As much as I felt abandoned at times, 𝗺𝘆 𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿'𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁 never left me.

Even at my age, I knew she was also just a woman feeling alone and afraid in the wide world.

Not one of us can bear madness alone.

I would take a devoted single mother any day over a whole village of emotionally absent parents.

Why?

Because only a whole woman or man can make a whole heart.

My mother gave me that heart – the heart that allowed me to surmount the blackest of obstacles in the years to come.

The black of finally knowing what society and the broken hearts of men were capable of destroying…

𝙅𝙤𝙞𝙣 𝙢𝙚 in the following days as I tell you the story of how I was almost destroyed myself, and how the work of 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲 became my 𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘅𝗶𝗿.

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Don’t compromise. Seek 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵.
 

Love,
Roman