A few months ago, I submitted an essay to Elephant Journal titled The Things We Pick Up: On Dreams, Discomfort & the Kind of Love that Stays. I chose the title, sent it off, and promptly forgot about it. Life was full—clients, parenting, and a relationship I was trying to make sense of.

Yesterday, two weeks after the breakup, it suddenly went live.

Seeing that title appear on my screen landed with a quiet, bittersweet ache. The relationship had not stayed. But the timing of the publication—and the title I had chosen months earlier without knowing what was coming—revealed a deeper truth I hadn’t been ready to see.

The Kindness and Stability That Helped Me Grow

During the first year of the relationship, my body settled into a steadiness I had never experienced with a partner before. He brought a kind of kindness, reliability, and emotional stability that felt grounding. He cared deeply and showed up in ways that helped my nervous system soften and trust.

I grew inside that container. I learned parts of myself because he believed in me and reflected back a version of me I had longed to inhabit—strong, capable, worthy of care. Whatever came later, that beginning was real, meaningful, and something I continue to hold with respect.

When the Rhythm Between Us Began to Shift

Over time, a subtle shift began—not dramatic or intentional, just a gentle pulling back my system recognized immediately. It was the familiar rhythm of an avoidant pattern: come close, then retreat. Not malicious—simply the way a nervous system protects itself when intimacy becomes overwhelming. My body had known that dance long before my mind could name it.

I believe he had deeper emotional needs he didn’t feel comfortable naming. He often expressed surface-level preferences—wanting more calm at night, less distraction, clearer routines—but the needs underneath remained unspoken until they built up inside him and spilled out sideways. I also think he felt selfish for wanting more from me when I was already carrying so much, so he minimized his needs instead of voicing them directly. And beneath even that, I sensed layers I never fully heard and may never understand.

Here’s the truth I eventually faced: I couldn’t help him feel safe enough to open up, because that was never my job. My responsibility was to create safety in my own nervous system—to stay regulated, receptive, and grounded—not to manage his internal world. That was work only he could do.

None of this makes him wrong. None of it makes me wrong. It simply reflects a mismatch in how we each accessed and expressed our inner worlds. Two people with good intentions, but different capacities for closeness at the same time.

The Breakup and the Body’s Quiet Truth

When the relationship ended, my body responded in a way I didn’t expect. Instead of panic or collapse, there was a surreal, detached calm—a cold and soft shock. It felt like stepping out of one reality and into another, a threshold where everything slows down just enough for truth to surface. I sat on my couch inside that stillness, letting my body register what had happened.

Synchronicity as Breadcrumbs from the Self

Then my son walked in from being dropped off by his dad. He held out a small black rubber band he’d found on the ground at the gas station. “Look what I found, Mom,” he said.

It was the exact image I had written about months earlier in that Elephant Journal piece—the black ponytail holders I pick up everywhere, the forgotten things that still have use. The symbol reappeared at the precise moment my life was shifting. It wasn’t coincidence. It was synchronicity—an outer moment mirroring my inner world with uncanny precision. It felt like the deeper Self saying, “Stay with this. Don’t abandon yourself.”

A couple of days later, the melody from “Neverending Story” kept looping through my mind. That evening, my son scrolled through TikTok and the song suddenly played aloud. It happened again the next day, and again after that. I still don’t fully know what it meant, but it connected to the part of me that once believed in childhood myths—the idea of “the one,” the fantasy that someone else would finish the story.

Hearing that song felt like something dissolving. Maybe the real never-ending story is the one inside me—the one that keeps unfolding as I see more clearly. And the truth was simple: he couldn’t meet me where I needed him to, not then. My body had known this before my mind had admitted it.

Transformation Appearing Before I Knew I Needed It

Throughout October and November, butterflies showed up everywhere. Yes, it was monarch season, but the frequency was unusual. They appeared in artwork, books, outside, on signs. Butterflies are an ancient symbol of transformation, and Jung believed archetypes surface when the psyche is reorganizing itself. Looking back, those butterflies were preparation. My psyche was shifting before I consciously realized what was happening.

What the Title Really Meant All Along

When the Elephant Journal piece resurfaced yesterday—the essay I had forgotten, the title I had chosen without understanding its future relevance—I finally understood it. The Things We Pick Up… & the Kind of Love that Stays. The title wasn’t about romantic love at all. It was about the love that finally stayed inside me.

For the first time in my adult life, I didn’t abandon myself to preserve a relationship. I didn’t chase or contort or compromise my truth. I didn’t override my body’s wisdom. I stayed with the little girl inside me. I stayed with my deepest, most authentic Self. Even when I wanted to reach for him, I reached for her instead.

Compassion, Respect for Him and Myself

I hold a deep respect for him—not just for who he was with me, but for the kind of man he is, the kindness he showed my son, and the ways he tried. The ending doesn’t erase the goodness. It also doesn’t erase the possibility that, under different circumstances or with different capacity, our paths could cross again someday.

I’m not closed to whatever the future may bring, but I know it cannot look like the past. If something ever unfolded again between us, it would have to grow from a different place—one where both of us can meet ourselves and each other safely. I respect him too much, and myself too much, to repeat the same dynamic.

And if it’s not him, I know I am more ready than ever for a relationship built on real security and deep intimacy—one that doesn’t pull away and self-protect but has the courage to sit with their own nervous system and stay. I’m also okay being completely alone. All of it is okay, because my own internal alignment matters more than anything now. I regulate through me, not through another.

The Body’s Wisdom and the Language of Symbols

For years in therapy, I’ve been learning to trust my body—not conceptually, but somatically. The mind analyzes, rationalizes, clings, and explains. The body tells the truth through sensation. Symbolic moments—rubber bands, songs, butterflies, perfectly timed publications—are not magic. They are meaning. They are the unconscious translating itself into form. Symbolic experiences give shape to truths the nervous system already knows. They help integrate implicit memory. They help us understand ourselves in ways the mind alone never could.

Meaning-making, when grounded, is not escape. It is integration.

Listening to the Self That Refuses to Abandon Me

The rubber band. The song. The butterflies. The reappearance of my forgotten words. All breadcrumbs. All mirrors. All reminders to come home to myself.

I don’t know where my story goes from here. But I know I am listening differently now. My deeper Self has been speaking long before my mind knew how to understand it. The body told the truth, and this time, I listened.

I stayed with myself. I stayed with the truth that he couldn’t meet me where I needed him to be in this season of our lives. And I stayed with the part of me that finally trusts my own inner authority.

I’m not closing the door on whatever the future holds, but I am honoring the reality of now and opening the door to me, and the deeper Self that refuses to abandon me again. This is the kind of love that actually stays.