Sheleana Aiyana - Becoming the One: Heal Your Past, Transform Your Relationship Patterns, and Come Home to Yourself

Copyright 2022 by Sheleana Aiyana.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

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ISBN 978-1-7972-1167-1 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-7972-1169-5 (ebook)

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Mom, our souls chose to come together for deeper healing. Thank you for gifting me this life and the experiences I needed to be of service to others. For teaching me generosity and play, and for celebrating my healing path. I love you.

I am often asked, What is your advice for someone who wants to find The One? Some people are disappointed to hear that I dont subscribe to the typical notion of The One. This is because, while I fullheartedly believe we can find a partner who connects to us on a soul level, the idea of searching for our one holds a major self-limiting message. And that message is that we are somehow incomplete without another.

We are relational beings; we are designed to be in relationship. Deep in our hearts, we all want the experience of true love, yet romantic relationship is not what defines us or makes us whole. This is why my response to anyone whos seeking love is always first to seek within. To remember that you are not waiting for confirmation from someone else to know that you are complete.

When we operate from our past wounds or seek external fulfillment, we might approach dating and relationships as if theyre a performance. We show up in whatever way we think will impress the other person or keep them interested. But we cant win someones love by pretending to be someone were not. Nor should we want to. Instead, when we show up from a space of worth and wholeness, we become the one for ourselves.

Over the years, thousands of courageous and incredible women have taken my relationship program Becoming the One. Whether single, in a complicated relationship, or going through heartbreak, wherever they are on their life path, many women ask: What am I doing wrong? Why do my relationships keep ending?

Heres the thing: There is nothing wrong with you if youre single or you feel like you cant seem to get it right in love. Theres nothing wrong with you if you havent been chosen.

Many of us grew up on a diet of fairy-tale romance. It was in the books we read, the movies we watched, the advertisements we saw on televisionit was and is everywhere we look. Weve been taught that we need to be an unrealistic version of perfection to be chosen, that somewhere out there is one magical person coming to sweep us off our feet and save us. All the while, we are given texting strategies and game-playing tactics for dating that tell us how we should act and who we should be to make ourselves more attractive.

Somewhere along the way, we learned that to be loved, we had to give ourselves away, turn down our needs, or bend to fit the expectations of others. We are constantly bombarded with messaging that were not enough or maybe even too much. It all boils down to a culture of self-abandonment in the name of trying to find and keep love.

But healthy love doesnt require you to abandon or give yourself away. It doesnt require you to change your core personality or hide your flaws. It does ask you, however, to know yourself at the deepest level, because the truth is that a conscious relationship doesnt begin when you meet a partner. It starts the moment you decide to make your relationship with yourself a priority.

This book is about choosing yourself. It is a reminder to return to the seat of your power and recognize that love is available in many forms. But, in the end, a healthy relationship to self is what fuels all other loves we hope to have in our livesdeep friendships, strong family connections, passion for our work, and romantic love.

In life there is very little we can control outside of ourselves. We dont get to control the timing of when our partners arrive or how long we remain with them. The work is to remain at home in ourselves, no matter what life bringsto claim the right to be joyous and powerful within a relationship or without one.

Becoming the One is your invitation to reclaim the parts of yourself that you may have lost or become disconnected from. It is an inner-work journey to healing and developing a deeper relationship to your own heart. To discover what is important to youyour values, relationship goals, and dreamsso that you can choose love from a place of self-awareness and confidence.

My earliest conditioning around love was laced with betrayal, abandonment, and abuse. I spent most of my childhood afraid of men, I never met my father, and I had an emotionally and often physically unavailable mother. Later in life, I found myself attracted to people who were unsafe for me. But even when the alarm bells were going off, I was too conditioned for chaos to choose differently.

By the age of twenty, I had spent many years numbing my pain with hard drugs and alcohol. I had witnessed my mother make multiple attempts to take her own life, lost many close people to suicide and homicide, and endured sexual violence, addiction, homelessness, and domestic abuse. My story is a part of who I am. It has put me on this path, and Im also aware that my story is just one tiny drop in the ocean of stories of those who have suffered, and continue to, but who will never have the opportunities that Ive had to heal and recover.

I want to acknowledge that healing is a gift and a privilege that not everyone has, and it is my hope that each person who heals will find their way of giving back in service to others. By healing ourselves we can contribute to profound change in this world.

My own healing journey didnt truly begin until I was twenty-six years old, catalyzed by a divorce and the stripping away of my own carefully crafted walls and defenses. It was at that time that I met a spiritual teacher whom I journeyed with in Tantra, alchemy, Jungian shadow work, and conscious relationship, and I later became his apprentice. I sat with many Amazonian plant medicines, including rap (pronounced ha-PAY), kambo, sananga, and psychedelics like DMT and psilocybin, and I eventually found my way to ayahuasca. I prayed, I wrote poetry, and I devoted myself to my healing. I intentionally remained focused on my relationship to self and ignored many date invitations from seemingly attractive suitors to focus on my inner work.