Hi guys!

This is my first post on this site, so I’m hoping to get some good feedback and insight.

I’m a 25 year old woman who has lived a pretty blessed life. I’ve gone through many hardships so far, and have overcome them all…or, most.

A bit about me: I’m from Canada, grew up in a divorced household (which didnt have a huge impact on me since my parents divorced when I was bout 4, so I never really remember them being together), with one older brother. I was a dancer, active, curious about nature and the world. After I graduated highschool, I left Canada in order to see the world. I planned to go for 3 months, but 7 years later, I’m still on the road (currently living in beautiful Panama, Central America). I work as a freelancer for a design company – something that I’m not crazily passionate about, BUT it gives me the ability to continually travel the world and fulfil those dreams, so its SO worth it.

I live with my boyfriend of 10 months now who I met on the road in Colombia late last year. I met him on my 3rd day in South America and we’ve been together since day 1. It’s been intense at times (living together/traveling together, we’ve gotten to know each other MUCH faster than a normal couple would) and a bit overwhelming. He is 28 and this is his first REAL relationship, although hes been in love before and has been with (intimate) a large number of females in his past. I have more relationship history than him, but sometimes its a struggle to stay balanced. We have amazing communication and talk things through openly when something feels off and I recently returned from a month alone in Costa Rica for some personal growth time. During this month apart, we grew even closer, taking time to see how we feel apart and both realizing our deep love for eachother.

However: I struggle with things still and I hate it. I am an open person who wants others to be happy and try to make others as happy as I can without forgetting to take care of myself. But I struggle with jealousy issues and a fear of him leaving me. Hes a very strong and spiritual individual and I feel like I’m on my way, but I sometimes retreat back to that lonely teenager where I ate bad food to fulfil a hole that was inside of me. I’m been able to see that in ALL of my past relationships, I get to love them much too quickly and use their love as a filler inside of me, just as I used to do with food. Therefore, it gets intense very quickly and when they leave, I’m devastated. My brain does this LOVE = VALIDATION. If they DONT love me or if they leave = LACK OF FULFILMENT AND VALIDATIONS = I’M NOT WORTHY ENOUGH OF THEIR LOVE.

I know this stems back to my childhood when my divorced parents, who STILL carry a torch of hate for each other, even though they havent spoken in many years, would put me and my brother in the middle of their problems. My mother would make me go to my father to get the child support each month in which case he’d make a snide remark such as “give this money to your fat ass bitch mother and tell her i hate her.” even though the remarks were towards my mom, I felt like he didnt want to give the money to her and therefore, since it was for my support, I wasnt worth the money or care.

Now, I know I have some dark places still inside of me and I want more than ANYTHING to work them out so that I can be emotionally stable and quit worrying and stressing that bad stuff will happen, for no reason. And I want to be able to do this while in a relationship. I feel like overcoming this will have a massive impact on myself (most of the time, I have good self-confidence and I do love myself, but sometimes its conditioned by how others treat me) and my relationship with my lover/other people).

If anyone has any ideas/books/stories/advice about how to become emotionally stable and strong, I’d love to hear them. I’ve progressed a lot in the past while (I’ve become a Vegan, lost all my access weight, stop using food as a filler, stopped using travel as an escape, been a good partner, read a lot, started to do stuff I LOVE again…such as dancing and yoga, began to meditate again, ect) but this is the last step to becoming the fullest version of myself that I think I can become currently.

Sending love and light.

Amie