#it's got vibes of us carrying the divine and beauty in ourselves and being able to create and show that just by being us

[royal-random-the-yogurt-queen]

So I woke up out of a dream this morning and had to put this down in my notes app before I forgot anymore. It's the only parts of a slam poetry-esque rant from my dream (a la America Ferrera in Barbie), so if someone can do something with it, I'd greatly appreciate it!

On the second try, you'll forget which color you used next [makeup], so you go with the one that catches your eye

So when you're showing how to do the Athena look, studies show that you'll teach them about her (75%) while showing them yourself (25%)

That last line was the part that stuck out and woke me up, the rest of everything is what I could piece together while half asleep. Pretty sure it's some self love fueled by constant repeat listening of Hozier's new album 🙏

(**Also if you do decide to try and do something with this, please credit! Either as inspo or prompt or whatever)

[oneneasgodess-blog]

About to give up?

Feeling all twinned-out? A Twin Flame stage nobody ever talks about because it’s just not all peace, love & light Let’s take a stole down the dark side of the Twin Flame journey So last week I got a donation from a Soul brother who reads my articles and told me he likes my brutally honest, no bullsh*t approach to the Twin Flame concept rather than sugarcoating all the hard work it really involves with self. If you have read my stuff, you know there are no magic pills and that I believe this journey is much more about becoming who you are meant to be than getting hooked up with your twin. I also believe that when you have become who you are meant to be, that the relationship with the twin and everybody else will be so MUCH better – because you have completely transformed yourself. We are all caterpillars coming into this journey, meant to become the most breathtaking beautiful butterflies…   My blog fan totally challenged me (in a good way) by saying that a lot of twin flame teachings are just romantic spiritual porn, but not mine. Which basically gives me a new level to live up to, because I want to be that person that debunks all those Twin Flame myths, broaches all the Twin Flame taboos and gets as many people as possible unstuck in their journeys. I want to get you from crawling over the ground to soaring through the sky!   Not because I am a rebel at heart, but because this is my soul mission to cut through the crap of all the BS that does not get you where you need to be on your amazing magic filled adventure with your beloved – aka your Twin Flame journey. In the end only ONE thing interests me and that is bringing up the truth, because it is the truth that sets us free. Romantic spiritual porn is awesome to drift off on in illusion, but drifting off in illusions only creates delays, more suffering and extended timelines – i.e. they are a f*cking waste of valuable time that you could otherwise be investing in creating Heaven on Earth because that is our joint mission as Twin Flames. So guys and gals get ready for another truth bomb. Because this week I am venturing on the dark side of the Twin Flame journey which is tricky to do because we are going to discuss all those low vibe energies that aren’t fun at all – but we are going to address them in an ultra high vibed way. So you can release them, instead of stay stuck in them or repressing them because you are afraid that allowing them to be felt is gonna jinx your life and your union. It’s really not just all peace, love & light We live in a world of contrasts, our 3rd dimensional physical experience is one of duality. It’s not the ultimate truth we know that, but it is part of the living here on planet Earth experience. Many people new to spirituality and the Law of Attraction fear lower vibrational energies because they think experiencing them will only attract more sh*t in there lives. It doesn’t work like that. When you suppress negative emotions (pretend they aren’t there by sweeping them under the rug) they don’t actually go anywhere. In fact they become much more dangerous than allowing yourself to experience them, would ever be. This is because they are now subconsciously doing the very thing you feared, attracting more of the same matching vibrational frequency crap into your physical life experience. Anything you resist, persists – that is just how this Universe works.   So if you resist feeling so called negative emotions, than you are in fact locking them into your physical experience in a much deeper way, than if you would have allowed yourself to feel the emotion and let it move out of your vibrational system. If you fear that feeling your negative emotions is going to bring you out of alignment to union with your Twin Flame, repressing your so called negative emotions (pretending they aren’t there) WILL actually derail your energies because repressed emotions get stuck in your energy field which structurally lowers your vibrational frequency. This does not happen when you allow yourself to feel them and allow them to move out of your system. Your frequency might drop temporarily, but it will climb quickly after that. Plus if the negative experience NOW is linked to any past experience (even previous lifetimes is possible) that you still carried repressed emotions around, you would actually be able to raise your frequency higher than before because you just allowed yourself to let go of some old emotional gunk and sludge that was weighing down your vibrational field. In my online program the Align to Your Divine Plan Twin Flame Mastery Program I teach that you should look at emotions like taking a dump. When you have taken a sh*t on the toilet, you don’t turn around and make up all kinds of stories about your bodily waste. You are glad it’s out and you flush it away. Yet when it comes to emotions, we DO want to create all these stories around them, hold on to them, nurture them and so on. When basically all you have to do is just have yourself and emotional crap and flush it out. Most people either vomit their negative emotions on the other, which is a big no-no because the other is not responsible for how you feel – you are responsible for your own feelings. If they don’t vomit their emotions outwards, they either fester in them or keep them fuming inside (yeah I mean all you twin bashers – well actually you fester and puke) or the third option they stuff them way deep down so one day it will all erupt. These are all unhealthy ways to deal with all these tough, hard to handle and uncomfortable emotions. The real spiritual approach to emotions is just to allow them to be felt and breathe through it.   Then instead of wiping your tooshie, you smudge yourself and your surroundings and put your feet in a warm Epsom salt foot bath to help you fully release all the vibrational residue of the experienced emotion…. and you are good to go. It is that easy. You don’t have to hold on to the emotion. You don’t need to rehash it. You especially don’t need to deny it. You don’t need to analyze it or understand it. Just allow yourself to let that sh*t go. So now that you have given yourself permission to have negative emotions, let’s look at how they can be triggered on your Twin Flame journey. Let’s be honest your Divine counterpart is being a total pain in the *ss sometimes Let’s just get real with each other here for a minute, some parts of this journey totally s*ck! This is the kind of crap you have to deal with: Ghosting – not responding Benching – keeping you warm for later Rejection – taking back their love etc Abandonment – pulling you close and then running away No commitment – I love you, I want to be with you but, da-da-da-da…. Wishy-washiness – first they are hot then they’re cold No integrity – actions and words don’t match New or existing girlfriends or wives (guys you can turn this around – gays make it work for you ) Not being able to move on, because you never got closure and the list goes on and on….. All this stuff hurts like hell. Let’s not kid ourselves here. It not only brings up grieve, it also brings up anger because anger is a natural part of any grieving process and feeling as if you have lost your Twin Flame is often more painful than losing a loved one to death. It rips your heart out, pulverizes it and spits out the pieces. It’s brutal, unlike any loss or pain you have ever felt before. Yes, separation is an illusion but the experience sure feels painfully real.   Let’s not pretend it’s not. Sure, in the end we need to suck it up – but it is in the feeling of the intense depth of our pain that we actually push through and get to the other side of the transformation. Adversity is the biggest catalyst of change How much we would like to think that we can learn as much from getting our way and the love & light bit, it actually doesn’t work like that. The biggest catalyst for change is adversity. It’s when things don’t go as we planned and we don’t get what we want that we get forced out of our comfort-zones and THAT is where not only the magic happens, but the inner transformation. Last week I was watching another loop movie with my youngest son. If you don’t know what a loop day is, it’s based on the movie Groundhog day with Bill Murray in which he is forced to relive the same day over and over again until he ‘get’s it right‘. The overall theme in loop movies is that, you can’t get out of the loop until you have transformed whatever the loop was set up to transform, without knowing the plan in advance – you have to figure it out by trial and error. The movie we watched was a modern version of this. A college student wakes up in a dorm room on the day of her birthday over and over again, to figure out who kills her that day. The girl starts out as a spoiled brat that is not very nice to anyone basically. As the story progresses and we have watched her loop in waking up, trying to find her killer and then getting slaughtered every night – we see that she is wearing this b*tchy mask in order not to feel the pain of her mother’s early death a couple of years before. As the movie unfolds and she comes closer and closer to unmasking her killer she in facts heals deeper and deeper inside which makes her want to become a much better person. She makes a 180 degree turnaround in character, when she allows herself to deal with the traumatic effects of losing her mother at a young age and stops trying to avoid the pain it caused her. Watching this movie made me realize we are all ego brats when we start out on this Twin Flame journey, no matter how much spiritual or healing work you have done before you met your twin – you have a WHOLE transformation process ahead of you still. Yet it is the above mentioned crappy behavior of your twin, that will be the catalyst of this inner transformation together with the looping effect of not being able to move on from this person. In the end the suffering is so great that YOU MAKE IT STOP and when walking away is not an option, you are left no choice but to find what DOES work. As Twin Flames we are in exactly such a looping experience, until we figure out how to break the loop. Just like any character in a loop movie, we try the easy way out first. Then we try our old ways. When that doesn’t work we get frustrated and that frustration opens us up to trying new ways or actually our old ways not working leaves us no choice, but to try something new and that is the point of transformation that the loop was setup to create. To move you out of your old ways (3D) into a new way of being (seeing/feeling/doing) – the new 5th dimensional vibrational frequency of creating Heaven on Earth.   You can’t get there without experiencing the frustration of the old ways not working anymore – it’s impossible because these frequencies are mutually exclusive. You are meant to manifest 5D in your 3D physical experience, but you can’t access 5D if you stay stuck in old paradigm 3D thinking which is fear based and views the world from the ego perception of separation from the whole and source. The Twin Flame loop is set up to make this specific transformation from 3D to 5D – as a PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE not just some spiritual notion somewhere up there. 5D is not up there, it is a dimensional frequency that needs to be anchored in your daily life. Spirit has only one way to get you there and that is to not leave you any other option – but to move out of the old and into the new. If you got the guy or girl of your dreams immediately, there would be no incentive to do anything any other way because doing things the way you have always done them, got you what you wanted. It is in NOT immediately getting what you want, that you get stretched from who you were to begin with and who you wanted to become in this lifetime. How to break the loop?! You might think that loving your twin unconditionally is ALWAYS feeling love and saying yes, but unconditional love is also loving someone enough to not put up with their sh*t. It’s being able to see them for who they really are – the good, the bad and the ugly and inspiring them to live up to the highest expression of themselves. Way too many Divine Feminines use unconditional love as an excuse to become their Twin Flames doormat when loving unconditionally should also be directed at the self. You cannot love yourself unconditionally and at the same time be your twin’s doormat, you can’t love yourself and abandon your own truth and desires to meet the needs and wants of someone else. Unconditional love has to go both to yourself and the twin, because otherwise it’s not unconditional it’s codependent love – meaning you bending over backwards to deserve/earn/keep the love of another. Read this blog here about the new love templates Twin Flames are bringing into the world. In the whole analogy of shifting from old to new ways, codependent love is certainly old ways and masking codependent love by thinking you are loving unconditionally only keeps you looping because you aren’t shifting. Not only that, your twin’s obnoxious behavior will continue because he (Divine masculine) can’t shift if you don’t. If you keep accepting bad behavior from your twin because you love them ‘unconditionally‘ you are doing yourself and them a disfavor. Say your twin is married and keeps coming around to you for sex, just because that person is your Twin Flame does not change the fact that you are having an affair with a married person. But above all this is not a way to get this person to commit to you, if this person really wants to be with you sex is not going to be the decisive factor. Yet making them feel what their life will be like without you in it, is sheer manipulation. Standing up for yourself has to be authentic, not a way to get what you want because in a loop scenario you can’t manipulate your way out of the loop effect.   The shift has to be real and genuine to break the loop. In the case of Twin Flames, what binds most twins in the looping effect is the fear that if they let their twin go – they will lose them forever. Fear of loss is at THE ROOT of codependency (read this powerful article on how codependency shows up in the Twin Flame connection) and it is this fear that makes way too many Divine Feminines shy away from speaking their truth, standing in their power and becoming who they are meant to be – because they subconsciously fear that choosing for themselves will cost them their connection with their twin. They don’t realize that this is the transformation the loop was set up to make. You becoming who YOU are meant to be, fully and unapologetically. If this person truly is your Twin Flame, he/she will revel in the sight of you expressing your highest version of yourself. If they split because of it, good riddens – you don’t need anyone in your life holding you down or small. Remember you aren’t meant to be a caterpillar you are meant to soar the skies. Key symptoms of feeling all twinned-out It’s when you realize that you can’t force yourself out of the loop. You can’t manipulate your way out of it and that you have exhausted yourself trying all the old ways that did not work, that you get to a point of desperation and despair and this happens at various times of the journey – when just before a massive shift you in fact feel all twinned-out. You just don’t care as much anymore. You don’t feel your twin as much anymore. Your telepathy disappeared maybe. You don’t think about your twin as much or any other shift in your connection that may make you wonder – Do I still love this person as much? Is this really my Twin Flame? Or everything feels lost and over, is this really the end? Of course if you get entangled and stuck in negative emotions then you have a problem. If this is the case for you now, write yourself an email as if it is directed to the Universe and ask your Divine guidance team to show you the truth of the situation you are angry about and what you need to know. This will open up the way to see what is happening in your physical experience from the highest perspective, which will help you to understand and forgive if necessary. There are many moments on this journey that doubt or negative feelings creep in, yet there also seems to be a taboo on expressing them because well then this person must not be your Twin Flame and sure this can apply to some cases. There are certainly people out there mistaking very toxic and abusive relationships for Twin Flame connections, but to think that this journey is all peace, love & light is an illusion. Anything that forces you out of your comfort zone is going to bring up a variety in emotions and not ALL of these emotions are going to be 100% positive – that is the reality of life.   It is actually a very positive sign if you are starting to feel all twinned-out because it means your are coming more into balance. It also means you are close to an important pivot point of either coming into physical union with your twin or finally being able to move on with your life. A prerequisite for it truly being twinned-out and not just sick and tired of (read impatient with) the journey, is that you have made the inner transformation, which I talk about here in this article on inner union. Many people freak out when they start to feel more neutral or maybe even somewhat negative toward the twin – afraid it means all is lost perhaps. I wrote this article to help you understand that there is nothing to fear if you are experiencing this, because as you can read in the descriptions below ALL of this is helping you come into a deeper alignment with your deepest heart’s desire. Here are some signs that you are starting to feel twinned-out: No. #1 You are done obsessing over your twin You don’t miss your twin, think about them 24/7 anymore or hope they will come back. This is because you have healed the voids in yourself that you were trying to fill externally. You are meeting your own needs now and therefor don’t NEED the other in the way you felt you needed them before. No. #2 You lost interest in the Twin Flame subject You don’t want to read anymore information about Twin Flames, watch YouTube reads or be part of Twin Flame groups. You just lost interest in the subject and are focused on other things in your life. You are no longer waiting for your twin to come back, instead you are creating the life you love and want to live. No. #3 You are ready to drop the Twin Flame label You stop identifying with the Twin Flame label, meaning seeing yourself as a Twin Flame or the other as a twin. Maybe the whole Twin Flame concept is bullsh*t anyway? Letting go of the Twin Flame label helps you open up to the truth of the connection. It’s a sign that you are ready to face the truth, you have overcome your fear of loss on all levels. Because if this person truly is your Twin Flame, the connection can’t ever be lost anyway. No. #4 You see your twin for who they really are – a mere mortal You see your twin for who they really are and for the first time dare to get honest about if this other person even fits into your life at the moment. Do you really want to be together with this person, as they are now? You may even think your twin is a total bleep-bleep and that’s okay. Most Twin Flames start off their journey thinking their Divine counterpart is a demigod, but no one can stay on such a high pedestal and you certainly can’t be together with someone you have placed high above yourself. Because by putting them on a pedestal, you have placed them out of your league. So seeing your twin for the imperfect human being they are is actually a massive step forward to getting into an actual physical relationship with them. It means that you can see the real person instead of the romantic fantasies you were projecting on them. No. #5 You are no longer over-focused on union You are not obsessing or focused on union. You are fine one way or the other. Actually the more neutral you become about being in a relationship with your twin, the more you become a vibrational match to it. Wanting something TOO much actually demagnetizes you. My favorite Florence Scovel Shinn quote is: Your ship come in over a “don’t care” sea. When you can be happy with or without your heart’s desire, it will suddenly appear.   Florence teaches that there is an occult law of indifference. “None of these things move me.” “None of these things disturb me” we might say in modern language. When you can no longer be disturbed, all disturbance will disappear from the external. No. #6 You may even feel disconnected from your twin When you don’t feel the immense pull or feel your twin period, this is not a bad thing. It may feel like you are fully disconnected energetically – the connection feels as dead as a door nail. Though it may feel alarming, the disconnect allows you both to fully focus on what is going on for YOU in this moment, which would not be possible if you still felt super close and connected to your twin. Remember on this journey the souls use both closeness and distance to facilitate the inner transformation it has come to create. No. #7 You have let go of fixed timelines You may have lost faith in all the signs and synchs you have gotten or you still acknowledge them but don’t take them to mean that physical union is going to happen tomorrow or super soon. You realize that the signs and synchs are confirmation from your Divine guidance team that you are on the right path and heading in the right direction and that physical union is not the goal of this journey, it’s a byproduct. Of course before you get to this point you first had to loose faith, which when you do makes you think all these signs and synch are only just f*cking with your head. This leads to feeling misled by the Divine, which of course feels very scary and sh*tty. Faith however doesn’t mean getting what you want, the way you wanted it. It means trusting despite outer experiences that the Universe always has your back and is helping you come into vibrational alignment with your deepest heart’s desire. It asks you to understand that the seemingly irritating delays, are in fact the very thing that are aligning you deeper and deeper to the very thing you have asked for. Provided you don’t give up, because you didn’t get YOUR WAY. No. #8 You stepped into your power and found your self worth You have developed healthy boundaries and self worth which makes you not put up with any of your twin’s crap anymore. When you have truly overcome your codependency and the underlying fear of loss, you have no issues standing up to your twin or anyone else. This again has to be authentic and not just a way to get the other back, your problems in your Twin Flame connection are vibrational in nature therefore you cannot fake it. If your so called healthy boundaries are coming from ego, they aren’t in fact healthy boundaries they are merely masked attempts to force the other person to give you what you want. When you truly step into your power you could care less about what the other person does or doesn’t do because you know they aren’t the source of love in your life, YOU are. As you are no longer seeking fulfillment outside of you or fearing to lose something outside of you that you falsely believe you need – you no longer need to wear masks or please others. Instead you give yourself permission to become the REAL you – not the you you think you need to be to others to get what you want or feel you need. No. #9 You realized you can’t screw up your union anyway  Many Divine Feminines fear screwing up their union one way or another and it’s all just fears in your heads ladies, figments of your imagination. Remember EVERYTHING your twin triggers inside of you is meant to help you purge old emotions and heal on the deepest level. Also the very negative feelings are part of this clean up. Since November 2017 my twin and I have worked through betrayal issues and deep core wounding that I didn’t even know was tucked away in the far depths of my subconscious. In this period I have been pissed as h*ll with him and I have made him well aware of it. He knows how angry I have been and has just endured and supported my rage being unleashed. Of course throughout this process I have remained respectful to him, but I have really spoken my truth. He knows what I am upset about and why. This is what has been going on on a 3D level. So I was just in Ibiza for my very first Gangsta Goddesses retreat and we went up to Es Vedra where I did a meditation to ground my light body on one of the most magnetic spots worldwide next to the North Pole and the Bermuda Triangle. My twin has showed up in my dreams off and on but for the rest our communication has consisted of me speaking my truth and him patiently reading it. On that rock in front of Es Vedra – I am doing this meditation and out of nowhere I feel my twin’s energy coming in full force into my heart and grounding the light body with me on that spot. I have no idea what it means, but what I do know is that our higher selves laugh at our 3D tiffs and troubles. They have their own agenda and are implementing that whether we cooperate or not. I mean I have been angry with him for months and I have either not spoken to him or when I opened my mouth gave him truth bombs that he is still trying to digest and he shows up energetically anyway. I have not been easy on him at all, yet his higher self is not bothered one bit by my 3D behavior. The same can be said for me, I have been pissed with him for some time and have certainly not been his most adoring fan like I have been in the past. There was no reason for me to think of him or to want to feel him grounding my/our light body together. I am perfectly capable of grounding my own, thanks. I certainly didn’t invite him to come and honestly I am not impressed with his current 3D behavior as well, so there was no longing inside of me to have him show up in this way energetically. It happened nonetheless and it made me realize once again, you can’t screw things up with your twin – provided they are really your Twin Flame. Since I have let go of the twin label for myself in my own process, the Universe has been staking up the confirmation in all different ways. I see it and acknowledge it, but stay in a state of indifference as much as possible. I’ll tell you why. Recently I went to Mother Meera where I also met up with the lovely Ana Souto from the Bloom From Within Project. I had been thinking about the guy (twin) while driving to the event. I had thought about everything that had happened in our lives since we met. Sometimes you have these thoughts that just come with ultra awareness and this happened to me as I walked in the door. I remembered how much I had wanted to marry this man and have his baby. A desire we had both strongly felt and I thought of how different things had unfolded for us and that he was even married to someone else now. At that moment I felt such gratitude and acceptance for where I am now and that what I had gotten from this journey has been so much more valuable, then being married to him and having his child would have been if I had gotten it at that time. I love babies and children, but the bliss of having a child with the man you love is nothing compared to the bliss of truly coming home to yourself. Not to mention the fact that cleaning up all the core wounding like I have is going to make any future relationship with him or someone else so much better because I am no longer coming to a relationship with a beggars cup, begging to be loved. I am coming with a cup flowing over with love for myself and the other. If this is where this journey has already brought me now, in a space of being – far beyond what I had envisioned for myself, then I am in awe of where I will be once my higher self has brought me where it wants me to be in this lifetime. This realization alone helped me to surrender even deeper to the Divine Plan my soul scripted for me, because it has proven to me without a shadow of a doubt that it’s plan for me is much more magical and majestic than anything I can come up with in the limited 3D version of myself. I pray this article serves you and helps you further along on your journey. Donations are very thankfully received. If you wish to make a donation of any amount, you can do so here. Wishing you magic and miracles on this amazing adventure with your beloved. If this article resonates with you please share it abundantly. Thank you.         Twin Flame reunion energy is flooding in, are you ready to reunite with your twin? 11 Twin Flame side effects that hardly anyone ever talks about, in this way … Astrology and Twin Souls, here is how the planets are influencing your Twin Flame journey in… 7 reasons to stop dating and become exclusive with your Twin Flame (even when you are not together) 50 shades of silence on the Twin Flame journey, the real reason why the Divine Masculine… Help! My Twin Flame is in a romantic relationship with someone else – does this mean…

[create-ninety]

Tuesday 1st January, 2019

I’ll admit I was nervous about travelling to Morocco. I didn’t know what to expect. There’s only so much you can read about before you simply need to experience it to make up your own mind. But our trip to Fes has been one of my favourite cities that I have visited – ever.

On the way to the riad from the airport, I tried to gauge what the general vibe was. But it was dark and we couldn’t see a lot. Glimpsing various buildings, I was reminded of bits of Spain. My anxieties had been quelled slightly; I liked the driver and didn’t feel unsafe. And soon I was even grinning for a moment - I noticed a guy sitting in the back of a swerving white van ahead of us, the back door wide open and flailing about with each twist and turn of the driver’s whim. I thought maybe the door was broken but Lucie pointed it out – the guy was smoking a cigarette, and looked completely nonplussed.

But then I felt my heat sink not long after. While pulled up at some lights, a small child darted around the side of our van. The driver waved his finger at the kid who was probably no older than nine. Rejected, he made his way to the vehicle on the other side of us and I saw what he was holding: a brush and bottle of water. A sight not uncommon in parts of New Zealand – but I’d certainly never seen a child working for probably nothing more than a Durham at a time.

When we got to the riad, my anxieties weren’t quite quelled. There were groups of teenage boys gathered around, leaning against walls and listening to music. The buildings were high and chipped, and if there were windows, they were protected by bars.  Almost immediately a homeless looking man rushed forward with a trolley in the hopes of wheeling our luggage, but he was also dismissed by our driver. Tall, hands buried in his jacket pockets, he lead us  through narrow, winding alleyways for at least five minutes. If he had merely dropped us off, we would haven’t have had a clue. If I was nervous then I’m sure Lucie would have been too. But soon we stopped outside a big wooden door with an iron knocker and a thin slit at eye level. The driver knocked. And when a woman answered and let us inside, it almost took our breath away – a dazzling hallway and then open space came into view, with a ceiling so high you had to crane your neck to see the ornate detailing at the top. Doors with painted gold, green and red stars and shapes stood tall, framed by windows looking in on our bedroom. Our host Elodie showed us the room and gave us the key. She spoke in a hush voice and in the morning I knew why: the layout of the Riad places the rooms around and above the communal area.

We curled up in bed, grateful to finally be able to rest, in awe. The room had been decorated with such impeccable detail that it almost seemed rude to disturb the bed. Paintings of African women were hung beside the elaborate door; ivory elephants lined up in size order on a shelf; a Moroccan guitar; white and green tiled floors; painted shutters. A traditional bathroom. I couldn’t believe that such a grand and beautiful house was there, hidden amongst those intimidating alleys we had walked through. We fell asleep in pure darkness and I was completely at ease.

Elodie greeted us for breakfast in the morning. The tables had been laid out with the same effort and care as our bedroom, and we were pleased to spot an elegant long-haired cat. Elodie said her name was Amira, which is Arabic for princess, a name Lucie particularly liked.  We hurriedly ate a breakfast of bread, freshly squeezed orange juice, and coffee, and then got a very quick explanation of the Medina from Elodie. We had a deadline to be at the Post Office to meet our Medina tour guide – our first activity of our trip. Thankfully Elodie kindly agreed to take us to our meeting point so that we weren’t swallowed by the Medina before we even started.

Our guide was friendly, tall, Moroccan, and was wearing a traditional robe with a peaked hood – I came to realise that peaked hoods, which I’d only seen in Harry Potter, were a common occurrence in the Medina. And he excitedly led us to the Blue Door and into the thick of it all, and I found myself falling in love with the strange city.

Thin alleyways but bursting with colour, delicious smells, the sounds of accents and language I couldn’t identify. The cobbled ground underneath was uneven and well worn; this was a city with the most interesting history, and its inhabitants seemed all at once otherworldly and familiar.

We visited one of the three tanneries of Fes, and I was chosen by one of the salesmen as an easy target. And he had selected well. I was a bumbling mess as, after I announced quietly to Lucie that I liked one of the bags on display, the man darted forward and started (in his opinion, likely) humerously trying to sell me the bag. I was awkward and uncomfortable as the rest of the group were watching me fail – I can only describe it as being more of a ‘guess the price’ game, because I kept saying low numbers even though I knew there was no way we’d be buying it. But every time I said no he persisted. By the time we left the tannery I was red-faced and thinking there’s no way I’d be stepping foot back in there, even though the view from the top of the factory was truly a stunning sight to behold.

We carried on, and I adored the rest of the sights. The ceramics, the leather goods, and the rugs… all on display in the most vibrant waves of colour. People were in most cases far more polite than they were pushy, a pleasant surprise which kept me calm. And when we stopped off towards the end of the tour at a tiny roofed stall, just off the copper square, our tour group got to taste – in my opinion – some of the most delicious tea and coffee that I had ever tasted. It was served by a man who had almost no knowledge of English, and who stood behind a tiny counter covered in fresh herbs, and who twiddled the knobs and taps of a gigantic copper vat. We sat and drank and I grinned. How beautiful, to be surrounded by people so interesting, different to me, and who were just going about the business of their every day life, not knowing that I was in awe of someone merely making coffee. The man had a permanent smile on his face and the guide mentioned in passing he’d been there since the sixties. I turned to Lucie: “I’m going to find this place tomorrow. We’re going to come back.”

“I’d be very impressed if you manage to find this again!”

By the time the tour was over, we were hungry and tired, and ate a tagine meal at the ‘Cinema Café’ not far from our Riad. And then we picked up a blue pouffe and some beautiful hand painted plates from a shop. I have some lovely pictures of Lucie crouched down on the floor as we were choosing which ones we liked the best. Along with a little copper pot we’d bought on the tour, we excitedly dropped our goods off and headed back out into the Medina by ourselves. On that excursion we found another pouffe we liked – this time a mustard one – and I made a fool of myself for a second time that day, accidentally low-balling the shop keeper because I was convinced we had paid less for the exact same thing up the street. Only after he denied our offer and we’d left did we realise that his pouffe was bigger than the one we’d bought earlier; we turned around and went back, paying his lowest price.

New Year’s dinner was divine. Elodie and her mother, and perhaps others, had prepared a three-course meal for us. We were so full at the end we could barely fit the dessert in too. All the guests staying were French speakers, and I found myself desperately trying to understand the conversations as we joined them in the lead-up to midnight. I picked up a kids book on a shelf and did some reading, surprised with how much I was able to remember, but a little frustrated that my listening and understanding skills weren’t as sharp.

Midnight ticked over and suddenly it was 2019, and with a clink of champagne glasses and a chorus of ‘happy new year!’, we stood around drinking for a while longer before bidding each other goodnight. Lucie and I collapsed into bed totally full, a tad drunk, and trying to stifle a fit of giggles: we’d been laughing most the day, and at times during dinner, had struggled to contain ourselves.

The next day I looked at the map. And then I boldly declared to Lucie that I would find that coffee shop – that I was determined. And I did! Somehow I was able to identify stalls we had passed, instinctively knowing what we had seen and what was unfamiliar. At one point I paused and listened: sure enough, I could hear the clanking of mallets on copper, and knew that if I could find that square, then I would know how to get to the coffee. Connecting those dots in my mind was of the greatest satisfaction, and as we entered the little stall, the man behind the counter exclaimed excitedly something in Arabic. Lucie was beyond surprised, and the coffee tasted extra sweet.

From there I was confident I could navigate us around places we’d seen on the tour. After then it didn’t really matter where we went, so long as we could get back to the copper square. And after a couple of turns, me making metal notes, we found a narrow street that was home to knives and other metal work. At one of the stalls a man with blue eyes and an array of hand made knives set out in front of him caught my attention; picking up one of the small objects, he told me proudly he’d made it himself, and that the handle was from ram’s horn. We had a conversation in French and when he told me that the knife I liked was twenty Durhams, or the equivalent of £2, my jaw dropped and I handed over the money without even trying to negotiate. Bursting with glee, imagining making my books with the knife, I lead us back to the copper square. There we picked up four small copper pots and four small glasses to go inside; it was as close to the way the man in the coffee stall served it to us, and we wanted to recreate it. There we watched as another man polished the pots so that they shined bright in the sun – it was the most magical day, seeing people creating things with their hands, with such care and pride, with such ease and creativity. I looked at all the items and saw them, in a sense, as art: sculpted, cut, melted, bent, forged, painted… all by the hands of people with a story to tell.

We started hunting for lunch, and discovered a terraced restaurant overlooking the Medina. We ate another tagine, with vegetables on the side, and a cat circled the table. The sky was blue except for a few scatterings of clouds. Lucie revelled being in the warmth of the sun, and when the call to prayer rang out over the city, I hit record on my phone to capture it. I felt so happy. I was with the woman I loved. We were getting lost somewhere beautiful. It was the first day of the new year; a new chapter, a new beginning.

Leaving the restaurant, I thought I knew where to go. But I realised quickly that we must have gone too far, or not taken a turn; the stalls were unfamiliar. We turned around to head back the other way and Lucie spotted a bright orange rug with embroidered detail. And to my surprise (she hadn’t liked many of the rugs we’d seen), she engaged in a price battle with the shop keeper. He dropped his price, but we agreed it was still too much, and we didn’t have the cash anyway. I was anxious because I must’ve made a wrong turn but couldn’t work out where we had made the mistake… and even after we left the rug shop, I still couldn’t catch my bearings. But when the shop keeper came running after us shouting, “okay, okay, I can do 1900, but that’s as low as I can go!”, we excitedly went back with him. That worked out to be £180. We got it. And the men in the shop wrapped it up for us, and scrawled the name of the place it had come from: somewhere in the Atlas mountains, made by one of the Berber tribes.

Thankfully, the men also told us how to get back to the Blue Door. From there I could navigate easily. And we were close – I worked out that we had indeed missed a turn off down a non-descript alley I hadn’t thought to remember, as I had actually thought we’d be taking a taxi back. But we made it back, thrilled, and dropped all the stuff off. We had a sleep and then went out and found some dinner: skewered meat, rice, and chips. Normally I’d not like being caught up at a table by the river of passers-by. But I didn’t mind it in this context. Even though I’m sure I stood out with my red hair, and did attract a few curious stares, I felt anonymous enough. People went on about their days, and so did we, and I loved it.