Bearing Witness: The Beauty of Patina
A relationship isn't just about loving someone—I think most of us know that by now. Love is often the easy part, the spark that initiates the journey.
But the substance of a real partnership, the heavy and magnificent lifting, is about bearing witness to someone's life.
When you commit to truly seeing another person, you sign up for the full spectrum of human experience. Sometimes, that means navigating in the dark when the future is completely obscured. It means weathering storms you didn’t cause and couldn't prevent, braving the journey when every instinct tells you to retreat, and facing your deepest fears just to take an emotional risk.
At its core, bearing witness requires you to show up naked. Not just physically, but psychologically and emotionally. It means bringing your wounded, imperfect self and laying it right next to someone else's wounded self. It is a delicate, lifelong dance of confidence and vulnerability, of knowing when to lead and when to surrender.
Too often we forget to pause and acknowledge the road that’s in the rear view mirror… maybe we don't want to remember where we've come from, or maybe we're too focused on the potholes ahead.
I have a lot of activities to help couples in my book 7 Primal Wounds—but I thought I’d share a little transparently. This is a message I sent to my partner not that long ago, one you might find inspiring, and perhaps even modify to send to the special person in your life.
Because it’s never too late to learn how to truly bear witness to someone, drop the armor, and love the person standing right in front of you for exactly who they are.
Dear Commander -
Looking back, there is a profound sense of gratitude for the paths that led us here. I am grateful every day that your exes didn't see what I see in you—that they had expectations you were never meant to live up to, and likewise, that my past had its own mismatched blueprints.
More than that, I am grateful for the people before us who marked us with battle scars. Because in each of those scars is a piece of the creation we are now. They are the exact mixture of life experience required to match yours. Without those prior chapters, we wouldn't have the depth, the wisdom, or the capacity to appreciate the reality we share today.
In the time we've been together, you've shown me what true love really is, and it isn't about the cinematic idea of "love" at all. It is a rich, predicatbly - unpredictable recipe made of:
- Daring: Stepping off the ledge and trusting the fall.
- Challenge: The friction that demands we grow rather than stay comfortable.
- Adventure: Exploring the unknown side-by-side.
- Laughter and Tears: Sharing the absolute highest highs and the grounding lows.
- Salt and Sugar: The bitter hardships and the undeniable sweetness of life together.
Day by day, this partnership teaches me how to show up better. More patient, more loving, more graceful, and yet somehow more willing to be wounded and completely naked in my truth.
I love life with you. It's precious on a scale I didn't know was possible—acting as both a finite and infinite measuring tool.
So here's to sloppy seconds, or thirds. I always thought the best things came with a little history anyway - or "a little bit of patina" as you would say.
Love JoJo
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