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Reverend Laurie Sue Brockway, The Romance Reverend

Soulful Love
February 2002

by Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway


Every month, our Soulful Singles "Romance Reverend" shares her sage insights on relationships and getting ready for soulful love!  Send your questions to RomanceRev@SoulfulLiving.com.


The Romance Reverend’s Seven Steps to Relationship Success


Plan A Valentine’s Day Team Date

Dear Romance Reverend,

I am once again without a date for Valentine’s Day. A few of my girlfriends are in the same boat. Any ideas for making the best of it?

-- Paula, Nova Scotia


*  *  *  *  *  *

Dear Paula,

The holiday of hearts is heralded as a time to be wined, dined and treated like a Goddess. Valentine’s day is a "concept" that has captured our fancy as the ultimate date night.

But even if you do not have a specific significant other, there is no need to go dateless on this day ordained as a time to celebrate our hearts. Have a "Valentine’s team date."

There is no rule that says Valentine’s Day dates are only valid with romantic partners! Call together your favorite friends, get something fabulous to wear, go to a restaurant you will all enjoy, and have a great dinner to celebrate your own hearts and friendship. When it’s time to order dessert, go for something deliciously chocolate and take a few moments each to go around the table and share something you are all grateful for. Then each of you should take a moment to make a wish about how you want to spend next Valentine’s Day, and with whom.

If dinner out is not for you, have your friends gather in someone’s house. Dress elegantly and as if you are on a date. Hang out together and watch a favorite romantic movie, share some popcorn and chocolate heart snacks, and afterwards, share some of your own romantic fantasies with one another. Put your romantic visions into words. The key to creating what you want is giving it language! Have a great and happy Valentine’s Day.

© Copyright Reverend Laurie Sue Brockway  All Rights Reserved. 


The Romance Reverend’s Seven Steps to Relationship Success

If you are in between relationships, this is a great time to reflect on important pointers for getting ready for love and being able to receive love and truly deal with a relationship, when Cupid’s coveted arrow does pierce your heart!

1. Develop A Relationship With Yourself, First
The person you must fall in love with first is you. Too often people seek out others who will fill some inner need, as opposed to someone with whom you can truly share life. It’s important to recognize the distinction between "neediness and having someone," and "love and sharing from the heart." Dysfunctional relationships are born out of unions between people who don’t really know what it means to love, honor and cherish. People who love, honor and cherish themselves--or at least strive for it--are more capable of both giving and receiving that from a mate.

2. Build Your Self Esteem
Research has proven time and again that people who get trapped in bad or abusive relationships suffer from low self-esteem. Sometimes, because of background and personal history, the only model someone has for love is destructive behavior or pain; perhaps they lived in a household were "love" was expressed that way. It gets dramatized in every relationship they have. Utilize everything you can--books, therapy, friends--to enhance emotional health and self-esteem.

3. Change yourself. Don’t expect others to change--do expect miracles!
Your personal power to change your own life is the greatest power of all. It is impossible to make another person change or offer help they have not asked for. But you can always strive to change yourself.

4. Learn to accept yourself, and you will know how to accept others.
Self-acceptance is your model for accepting others. If you are critical, harsh and unforgiving of yourself--so will you be to others.

5. Learn how to "surrender."
Control is a touchy issue in relationships. Yet surrender has nothing to do with control. It has to do with letting down your defenses and letting go of fear, in order to surrender and truly merge with another person. There is a notion that surrender makes one vulnerable, and vulnerability equals powerlessness. Not for people who realize that, when they are healthy inside, it is a natural response to surrender. We may try to get at it through sex, but, when you surrender on more than just a sexual level, it allows you to really have that which you truly desire: True intimacy.

6. Ask for what you want.
Women, more so than men, need coaching on this. This is not just for relationships but everything. While there is a line between nagging and making a request, there is a huge area of possibility in which magical things will happen if only you request them!

7. Learn to receive well.
The best way to continue getting what you want is to learn how to receive it well. The more you say thank you--to yourself, your significant other, to God, Goddess, All there is--the more good things that flow your way. The more good things that flow your way, the more experience you will have letting them in. Work on this and master it. In order to have your romantic dreams come true, you must be able to let Love in when it comes knocking at your door … and you must also be willing to allow Love to stay!


© Copyright Reverend Laurie Sue Brockway  All Rights Reserved. 


SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON LOVE:

How would you describe your perfect Valentine's Day date?

 

Read Reverend Laurie Sue's Current Column

 

Read Reverend Laurie Sue's Past Columns:

January 2002 - "Do I Hear Him Knocking … From the Other Side?"

December 2001 - "How Do We Make Our Love Dreams Come True?"

November 2001 - "What is the Future of Love?"

October 2001 - "Getting to Know 'Lakshmi' the Goddess of Good Fortune"

September 2001 - "Can't Hurry Love... It Will Happen in Its Right Moment"

August 2001 - "Family Rituals Help Us Grow Into Loving Beings"

July 2001 - "Dreams Warn It’s Time To Own Your Power"

June 2001 - "A Fun Visual of Your Favorite Romance"

May 2001 - "Someday Your Mystical Soul Mate Will Come"

April 2001 - "Enjoy the Merriment and Fun of An Ancient Love Holiday"

March 2001 - "Nourish Yourself On a Date for One"

February 2001 - "Get Ready for Soulful Love"


Reverend Laurie Sue Brockway is an author, teacher and contemporary clergy person who specializes in matters of the heart and soul. As an ordained interfaith minister and non-denominational wedding officiant, it is her honor to regularly marry couples in love.

Prior to becoming a minister she enjoyed a successful and colorful 20 years in media as a widely published journalist, editor and author of several books on relationships and romance—as well as being a noted spokesperson on those topics. She was editor-in-chief of two national magazines and several regional publications, and her articles have been published around the world and in many newspapers and national magazines, such as the NY Daily News, The Washington Post, Women’s News, New Woman, Ladies’ Home Journal and Child. She evolved years of specialized reporting in the field of male-female relationship dynamics into a more spiritual pursuit that led her to train to be an interfaith minister, and then establish her wedding ministry along with a number of popular relationship enhancement programs. Her wedding ministry is based in New York.

She is also dedicated to bringing about a deeper awareness and understanding of the Divine Feminine. As a graduate of The New Seminary in NYC, the world’s premier seminary for interfaith ministers, she was educated and trained in the tenants, spiritual practice and worship of many faiths. She became a specialist in the feminine aspects of God in all the world’s religions. Today, she is widely recognized as a minister, teacher and scribe specializing in women’s spirituality and The Divine Feminine from an interfaith and all-inclusive perspective. She is on the board of directors of World Light Fellowship, heading up their Feminine Faces of God programs, and is Founder of Our Mother’s House, a cyber ministry at www.OurMothersHouse.org.

Long devoted to helping women access the "Goddess Within," she is currently working on two books that bring the wisdom of ancient archetypes to modern women. Her newest book, A Goddess Is a Girl's Best Friend, is due out from Perigee Books in December 2002.

To be placed on a mailing list for information about A Goddess Is A Girl’s Best Friend: OurMothersHouse@aol.com

 

Visit Reverend Laurie Sue at:
www.weddinggoddess.com


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