The Classroom & The Graduate…

When was the last time you took the time to pause?
Not just pausing to catch the breath, but pausing to catch the moment…to feel the wind upon your cheeks, to notice. It’s interesting, yes? The realm of the human experience. How one moment we can be filled with joy, and the next, with the weight of grief. Ah, the knowing that one is and so, be birthed the realm of the other. We can only know joy because of our capacity to feel into the realm of grief.

I am on a journey of expansion and healing from a six-year relationship that finally ended in April 2024.

How did it finally end?

How did I finally break the cycle of betrayal?

Inevitably, the same lesson will find us with new faces until we meet the lesson itself; the one that keeps the cycle going. The characters may change, but the classroom remains the same until we choose to graduate. And some classrooms we get to know deeply…this classroom in particular was one that I sat with myself within, alone, with Grace.

The story goes as this - there was a morning I woke up, just two weeks out from a three-week trip where I would be facilitating back-to-back retreats and spending time integrating with my best friend in Venice Beach. It was never normal for me to wake up before him, much less at 5 a.m. naturally, but that morning I woke with a sick feeling in my stomach. Something whispered to me, “It’s time to really see what has been…without your fear, disguised as hope, getting in the way, my love.”

So what did I do? Something that was new to me in the realm of trust with him - I trusted my intuition, something I had silenced and had been silenced for five years. I followed through with it instead of mongering in fear.

I thought back to the weeks before…his promises echoing: “I promise to be faithful to you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I only want you. Please forgive me for all of the times I have been unfaithful to you.” And the birthday celebration that seemed to seal those promises; walking into the house we created together on a path of white rose petals, two champagne flutes glimmering on the table, candles flickering, music playing, as he smiled and said, “This is us starting over.”

All of it was replayed in my mind as I allowed myself just two minutes to follow through on that intuitive guidance, to check his phone. I don’t believe in going through people’s phones, but my intuition said, Give yourself two minutes, that’s it. Whatever you find, put it down and then go from there.

And so, I did. And my inner knowing was correct. A multitude of women within his inbox…plans being made for the time I would be away traveling, serving, and offering my heart to the collective.

What next? Well… I cooled off. I was in disbelief, but when I think back to that moment, was I? Or was it the confirmation I needed? Confirmation should have come three or four betrayals ago, but I can be hard-headed - repeating the same lesson with new faces until I was ready to face it.

I took a shower as he remained sleeping in bed, gathered my things quietly, tried to cry, but there were no tears left after a year of exhaustion, of forgiving and being burned again, the walls in our “home” had seen more tears from me than it would have liked too, apparently.

I gently woke him, everything in my hands. Calm. Cool. Collected.
Giving him a nudge, saying his name a few times, his eyes opened, so confused.
“I saw what I needed to see on your phone. This is the last time you will see me. The last time you will have access to me. And this time, I mean what I say — I will never return to this home, and I will never return to you.”

I left before I could hear his response. And when I left, I vowed to never return. And I didn’t. Finally, a moment I could breathe again - a turning point where the healing could actually begin.

God’s timeline orchestrated this occurrence to happen right before an adventure to the jungle of Costa Rica, the desert of Southern California, and an integration trip of a lifetime with my best friend. A catalyst that propelled me into deeper healing — alongside the beautiful humans I was facilitating. A reminder that you don’t have to be healed to guide. Are we ever all the way healed? I don’t believe so. We are always growing, expanding, and healing through different facets of our human experience. That is what makes the journey beautiful. Being fully healed is like someone telling you all of their chakras are balanced every day. As a Yogic philosophy teacher…this is a false statement, lol.

So why are you sharing this?

Because healing is not linear. Because yesterday I woke up from a dream with his face within it. His face still finds me in meditation, in dreams, sometimes in random moments — his energy still finds me. I’ve gone to therapy, worked with holistic healers, studied scripture, prayed on my knees to God… but some things really do take time. Healing takes time.

Yesterday I felt the wave of grief rise again. But there’s no need to point fingers. Was what he did wrong? Absolutely. No woman should know what it feels like to have her love and forgiveness taken for granted. But was it also a mirror? Yes. Because me going back showed the amount of respect I had for myself. Me going back when the well of my belly was saying otherwise - that was self-betrayal, fear disguised as hope.

The journey of healing isn’t linear, and sometimes you wake up from a nap dreaming of the past, asked to dig deep into the soil below the situation that occurred — to notice the quality and aliveness the soil still holds, and how some of it has become toxic to your roots. Some soil isn’t meant to stay… but the space it leaves matters.

The holes left in me allowed, and are still allowing, new love to permeate them; to fill, to nourish, to bring life to my roots again. And now I truly know the capacity I have to feel the depths of joy, because I allow myself to sit in the sometimes treacherous waters of grief.

And so, being here in the jungle, an orchestration by God, is something I am not taking for granted. Being immersed in nature with two incredibly wise women ten years older than me, holding space as I learn the ways of the rivers that flow within my own currents of feeling.

I sat on the porch outside. I let myself cry — a hell of a good cry. As I listened to the birds while staring at the color green, grief kissed me on the cheek, and so I asked,

“Grief, what do you look like?”

Grief replied,

“I am the love within you that was once taken for granted,
I am the wind that meets your face, allowing these tears to hydrate your skin anew,
I am in the warmth of your own palms as you give yourself a hug and feel the temperature of your body that healing at this moment feels like,
I am the swallow over the stone in your throat,
I am within you before you need to identify what it is that I am.
I do not always need a reason to be, just permission.
Sometimes it can feel like I take time from you, but I promise I do not.
For I grant you more time to come; time within awareness,
where you know when to stay, when to go, when to forgive, when to trust yourself, and so on.
Because I am a masterful teacher, you see…
to feel is to live, and to live is to love,
to return to love, over and over again, with the assurance that your love matters.
This is the price you have to pay for having a heart such as yours.”

And so, I return to the realm of trust…again and again.

To trust myself when my hands shake as I show my boarding pass to the flight attendant before hopping a plane to a new place.
To trust the still, small voice when fear tries to disguise itself as hope.
To trust in God’s orchestration; that every heartbreak, every holy undoing, clears space for something more true to root within me.

Healing is not about forgetting; it’s about remembering who we are within the choice to remember in the first place. It’s about being gentle with ourselves when we fall short, forgiving the parts of us that didn’t yet know better, and learning to waltz with the mystery that somehow knows exactly when to break us open so that grace can pour through.

Because to feel is to live, and to live is to love…over and over again.
Love as the inhale.
Forgiveness as the exhale.
Love as the teacher.
God as the guide.
And the courage to trust that every ending is, in truth, a beginning in disguise.

Trust is not a fixed state; it is tested, but in our faith, love becomes a prayer that dances along side of us with aliveness and moments that allow us to feel HUMAN. It calls us to meet ourselves with tenderness even when the heart shivers in scarcity, to listen when the soul whispers, and to forgive when our humanness forgets. It invites us to see God’s hand even in the unraveling…to remember that healing and heartbreak are both holy notes in the same song - of life.

For each time we trust again…after loss, after fear, after falling short; we rise softer, wiser, and more rooted in grace. And perhaps that is what love truly is: not the absence of pain, but the willingness to meet it with open palms, knowing that every tear waters the garden of who we are becoming.

Which brings be back to the offering of release I gave to the fire in Costa Rica after all of this happened…and I will close with this: “I release that which keeps me apart of the landscape when I know I deserve to be apart of the masterpiece in motion.”

After all, we are all masterpieces in motion.

Bless the journey. Bless the realm of vulnerability. Bless the roots of compassion and Grace.

Until we meet again, Grateful you're here,

Tori Grace Anito