THE COURAGE OF TRUE INTIMACY

I woke this morning with a ripple of anxiety in my chest. As I breathed into it, I felt a deeper message surfacing — a teaching that’s been quietly forming through my relationships:

Intimacy takes immense courage.

To open our hearts, to reveal our truth, to be seen in our vulnerability — this is no small thing. It’s easy to talk about love as soft and gentle, but the truth is, love also asks for bravery.

My teacher, Elysabeth Williamson, taught me that the word courage comes from the Latin cor, meaning heart. Originally, to have courage meant “to speak one’s heart.”

In Spanish, this connection is beautifully alive.

Coraje means courage — and also, passion, even anger. The root cor is also found in the word corazón, meaning heart. The heart and courage live through that fierce, fiery current that rises when something true wants (or needs) to be expressed.

To live with coraje is to let the heart lead —

to allow what’s real within you to move outward into the world.

A PERSONAL PRACTICE OF TRUTH

Lately, I’ve been making a deeper commitment to honesty — especially in my closest relationships.

For much of my life, I carried a pattern of holding back my truth to protect someone else’s experience. It’s a familiar shape of codependency — one that grew from childhood conditioning, family dynamics, and a cultural message that told me: it’s safer to be agreeable than authentic.

For years, I believed that if I revealed too much of myself — if I shared what I really felt, wanted, or needed — I might lose love. So I learned to shape-shift, to soften the truth, to hold secrets that didn’t belong in my body, to bypass my own boundaries for the sake of keeping connection.

But something in me is shifting as I mature and age with grace. I am having a deeper gnosis that the cost of holding back — of not being fully known — has outweighed the comfort of staying silent.

I am committed now to living a life of alignment and real intimacy. It feels like a purification — especially in my throat.

In the yogic tradition, the throat chakra is called Vishuddha, which means “especially pure.” The Sanskrit root shuddha means pure, and the prefix vi- intensifies it — pointing us to the truth that when our throat is balanced, our communication becomes a clear channel for authenticity.

When I speak truthfully — even when my voice trembles — I align my inner and outer worlds. I live in integrity. I clear the static between my heart and expression, creating a resonance of truth. This can both be extremely beautiful, (like calling in and cultivating the relationship of my dreams) or painfully challenging (like loosing something that was very important to me) … but either way potently enlivening, and thus requires severe and serious courage!

I am no longer willing to hide truths or silence what is sacred to me. I trust that those who truly love and respect me will welcome my expression, even if it stretches them.

Because honesty, like intimacy, is a living practice.

It’s a way of loving ourselves and others enough to let truth breathe; requiring of us a capacity to slow down, listen, connect to the body, and return again and again to the heart’s courage.

BEING SEEN IN OUR FULL HUMANITY

The more I walk this path, the more I understand that intimacy deepens not only when we share our joy — but when we also allow our pain to be witnessed.

When we let others see our grief, our confusion, our tenderness, our longing, our joy, our mistakes, and our radiance — all of it — love expands its capacity.

To be seen, known, and felt in both our beauty and our sorrow is to experience the fullness of being human.

It is to be met in the truth of our shared humanity — where no part of us needs to hide.

This, too, is the essence of coraje.

The courage to reveal our heart in all its colors.

To say, “Here I am — still loving, still open, still alive.”

THE ART OF CORAJE

True connection isn’t built through perfection or perfection, it is built through authenticity — through the everyday courage of honesty.

Every time I open my heart, even a little, I am practicing this sacred art of coraje — the courage to be seen, to be known, and to stay open in love.

💕 💜 💕 💜 💕

This week, I invite you to practice heart-led courage.

Notice where you hold back what’s true — and see what happens when you bring gentle honesty to that place.

Inhale: I receive myself fully.

Exhale: I let myself be seen.

This is how we grow intimacy — with ourselves, with others, with life itself.

Moment by moment. Truth by truth. Heart by heart.

In practice and devotion,

Lara