As a child I loved the world with the big-hearted innocence of someone untouched by pain…or perhaps because of it. I have always believed that the world was too big, too complex to not to believe myself capable of loving multiple people at once. I mean, despite my trauma, I loved with a trusting openness that included everyone. How was I supposed to choose just one person to be with for all of time? Maybe it was my neurodivergence or just my hopeless idealism, but I couldn’t fathom a world where love was so limited.

That feeling grew when I first learned about past lives. Raised a good, Catholic girl, such concepts were anathema to the salvation that would come through belief in one singular being, Jesus Christ. Resurrection was reserved for him alone. A conditional gift that only he (and the Holy Trinity) were allowed to bestow. Only through his power, his approval, his forgiveness for our sinful, default state could we be saved – because it’s not like we can come back and try again, right?

…right? By channeling us toward belief in a single divine being, how did that discourage divergence, force us to hide our differences, and destroy any alternative ideas of Love? This “one time only deal” that Catholicism was trying to sell me to this day still strikes me as wastefully lacking in compassion. The younger me, a trusting neurodivergent girl with a big, sensitive heart, felt an enormous pressure to be perfect.

Maybe that’s why the idea of past lives grew more attractive. It teased my imagination to think of myself in other time periods, leveling up my understanding of humanity through experiencing it through different eyes, situations & systems. To consider different cultures, even a different gender was a gateway for my empathy and intuition to develop. But more than anything, it was the concept of our interconnectedness through time that lingered in the back of my thoughts, even when I pursued my good, Catholic calling.

Despite what it might seem, my connections aren’t casual. There is always a purpose. Each person has carried something special in the dynamic, seemingly surpassing time and space because even when they are miles away, they still “fit”. I have fallen in love with and felt “soul” connections to enough people that if past lives couldn’t explain why I felt the magnetism the way I did, then maybe multiple soul mates did…or both.

My Love isn’t So Limited

“Multiple soul mates” might sound like a dirty phrase to the true believers in romance, the people who have given their all in the pursuit and celebration of “the one and only”. Likewise, a belief in past lives is often interwoven with the idea of a twin flame who is our “other half”. A soul mate, as in a singular being, in all of time and space that is ours and ours alone.

It’s seductive to think of one person made just for little ol’ me, but what happens to all those I have loved before? Because when we think of the number of people we have each loved in this life much less potentially in others, what worth should their influence carry? I had surely loved more than just that one, singular person in all of time…hell, even in one year of college alone. Who was to say that s/he/they was the ONLY one who was to accompany me on this journey? How could I believe in limiting the heart to only one of those people as a singular “soul mate” when my life here and now has become a testament to the network of love that extends from my heart to far more than just one person?

Our monogamous conditioning is so strong that we actively resist contemplating this enormous concept: Love is limitless. Granted, as I mark twenty years of polyamory this year, I long outgrew the fence that monogamy tried to place around my wild and uncontainable embodiment of love. But I know I’m not an anomaly. Others feel and practice this too. Especially when in a global community, we are exposed to so much difference that if we are to grow as a people, we also have to grow in how we view relationships (the essence of #RelationshipReboot).

As a bisexual, polyamorous woman, I already live in defiance of the rules of “one man, one woman”. My old Catholic communities would say my mortal soul is damned, a fate I had reconciled myself to long before polyamory was even in my vocabulary. So why not go all-in with queering up my spirituality by adopting a “Multiple lives, multiple loves” mindset?

Past Lives: From a Snowball to an Avalanche of Questions

I started questioning monogamy right around the same time I was introduced to past lives through the movie On a Clear Day You Can See Forever with Barbara Streisand. I was a big fan of old Hollywood musicals and I had spent the summer when I was eleven years old watching musicals day in and day out. Before my calling even happened this movie was already stuck in my mind, slowly making me question both the nature of the eternal soul and the restrictions on why we can only love one person.

For argument’s sake, I spent a lot of time thinking about if we had more than one life, then what was truly the meaning of ‘forever’? And would exclusivity over the course of ‘forever’ be likewise expected? What about those who might have soulmates who are murderers, liars, or abusive? Were they stuck forever in a dangerous relationship?

It raises all sorts of questions:

• Does it mean that I can never fall in love with someone else? What if my “one and only” soulmate is killed in a car accident before they ever meet me?
• If I haven’t met my soul mate, is it ethical to allow strong connections with others? How does that not carry over as new soul mates and unfinished business in later lifetimes?
• If I marry someone other than my soul mate (shotgun weddings aren’t uncommon) does monogamy doom me to forever be with someone even if I meet my only soul mate later?
• What if… we are significantly poor and they are Prince Harry (shut up, we all have crushes)? How do we even enter each others’ orbits in this lifetime much less live out some fated one-soul-for-all-of-time narrative?
• What if we are tethered to soul mate more as a trauma bond than a love connection?
• What if that soul mate is a different gender than our normal orientation? Does that mean we change our orientation for that person or is that always who we were?

For the next few years I’d spend a lot of time thinking about the idea of a singular soul mate. Was the universe so cruel that it would sentence someone to misery just because they missed out on “the one”? If it was true that only these two souls belong together, then why would the universe separate them for whole lifetimes by circumstance, cowardice or chance?

All this was also presuming that a soul mate is what most people think it is, “the one”, when other faiths and practices deem them to be the ones who are meant to challenge us, level us up. They may not be the ones who bring us lasting happiness. They might have more of a “toxic soul mate vibe” bringing a harsh lesson, rather than “the one” who presumably will also help change the baby’s diapers, take out the trash or remember your anniversary.

The (in)convenient problem is that we’ll never truly know. Yet, even if we had surety about any of these questions, our world still needs a framework that helps us recognize the layers of our interconnected life beyond the individualized separation.

Harmonics played on a golden heartstring

Back in the summer of 1997, I was working for National Hispanic Institute (NHI) during the summer Lorenzo de Zavala Youth Legislative Session (LDZ) (the same program that launched my own leadership path). That year, a 16-year-old from El Paso, who had been elected President by his peers gave one of the most moving speeches I’ve ever heard – one that I continue to discuss to this day.  He said (liberally paraphrased here):

“After this week of bonding with you all, there is a little invisible golden thread flowing out of my heart to yours. We experienced things no one else will understand, a bond has formed between us that we will carry for a lifetime or more. And that gold thread is yours, each of yours, forever and ever. No matter how far we are, that thread will never break, never sever unless you choose for it to. But until you do, just give that thread a tug and I will be there, any of us will be there. Because what happens to you affects us too – so carry a piece of us with you wherever you go and we’ll help you through anything. Nothing can block my love from getting to you when you need it, we are always connected.”

My NHI kin defies explanation. I love them like family and their criticism is delivered not to tear me down, but to strengthen what I contribute to our community. See, the LDZ isn’t just a mock legislature, like Girls’ State or Model UN. It’s a revolutionary journey of leadership for Latine kids who have already tasted leadership. It’s a transformative coming-of-age for new leaders set within a mock legislative setting. It isn’t enough to just get into government or corporate C-suites, we must transform leadership as a whole. It’s our work to resist the urge to do what’s easy and to truly invest in innovative ways to improve our world, but especially our people.

Or at least that’s what it did for me. At a time that I was only beginning to recognize the differences between my whiteness and my Mexican-Catholic upbringing, I was introduced to LDZ. I had to defend my Chicana heritage and upbringing, I had to own my chingona self and take the criticism of privilege on the chin without it dimming my resolve for my people. The NHI family who helped with that transformation empowered me with a new confidence to set the world on fire with my ideas.

That some of my co-conspirators in world change became lovers for a time shouldn’t be surprising, yet people can’t understand why they would still be ride-or-die for me today now that some of them are married, scarred, or otherwise “unavailable” in a monogamous, romantic sense.

Those of us who have been through a common experience can share a love and intimacy that our partners in any other realm may never truly understand. They knew me before I was the me you see today and they each had a hand in the leader I became. This too is a form of love.

la Madonna Rosa: One heart, many chambers

My life has run on a pretty simple principle: my heart grows to hold multiple people at once. It was easy to realize I didn’t have to choose between which of my parents I loved. I didn’t have to choose only one child, certainly. How about those friend groups, huh? Or the ex who is now like a brother. If the heart can grow to fit multiple family members, an infinite number of friends and chosen family…then why was society telling me I am supposed to be limited to only one romantic or sexual mate for all of time? Why is that so protected?

Answers will range from the mundane explanations of how monogamy works to the “nature” of sexuality and intimacy (enforced through colonization). Yet, it failed to explain my ability (indeed, the ability of anyone who is polyamorous) to hold multiple threads of both sexual and romantic love at once. Our society is structured to ensure that I am told there is something wrong with me if I love not just one but many. That this is my “choice” or lifestyle, instead of simply how I’m wired. I just couldn’t abandon my truth for the myth of cosmic monogamy with a twin flame.

In my world, each person reflects back a part of me that is precious and rare, locked in a moment of time. Even when I burned an ex’s photo, it didn’t erase the love that was given or received. When a spouse dies, even with a remarriage, there are some secrets, some experiences that will always be filtered through that prior love. A growing family of new cousins and in-laws, our first kiss with our coveted high school crush, the first spark of love after loss – in each of these moments we carry the stories and loved influence of many special people within us.

Just like we carry the stories of our lineage in our DNA, I have always felt the influence of these loves throughout my life. Each person I love has their own space in my heart that is theirs alone. If the heart were limited, I’d have to kick someone out to make room for a new love. But instead, I just keep constructing new chambers, a space they inhabit in my emotional life even if we’re not physically together.

Consider: if we carry old traumas in our hearts, intergenerational pain and resilience in our bodies then how could we also not carry the love?

And if I can carry even a thread of that love and connection through my lifetime(s) of experiences, the multitude of people I have L-O-V-E-D, wasn’t it also my job to protect and honor that love not by denying it ever existed, but expressing it through my life today? That person’s influence ripples beyond me – touching others through my actions?

Honoring Our Orb of Influence

If it weren’t that pesky one person forever thing, this one idea could transform our lives, each of us conscious and aware of the influence that ripples out from our words and actions.

The people who have loved me in this life have known a very specific version of me, borne witness to the continual blooming, life and death cycles of my life. But I am also a witness to a very specific version of them – I am a steward of their story, holding it precious in a space that is theirs alone. For some, I might be the only one who knows about a past abuse. For others, I might have helped them experience the first cathartic release they’ve ever had. There have been a few, some who have since departed, who accompanied me in the deepest rituals of the dark goddess, uncaging the shadow queen in me. That stays with me the rest of my life…and certainly influences me to be even more compassionate and tender with my presence in the future.

Recognizing that my “orb of influence” lives long beyond me, I center my life in acceptance of a joyful duty to care for the essence that each person has left behind. To use those gifts to inform how I care for others, to ensure those experiences carry beyond that moment of time. Not to absolve past errors, but recognize when they’re about to be replicated so the pattern gets interrupted and connective choices emerge.

One of those choices emerged recently completely unbidden, entirely direct and wholly without doubt one of the most healing experiences of my life. It presented itself in the most improbable, impulsive moments I’ve had in a while and it flowed easily from there, unwrapping the present of me, pulling away the bandages of pain to revealed that despite what I had been telling myself, the scars had completely healed. Despite all the ways I might have once rejected this gift, chosen my hurt over my release, this time I leaned in with a dumbfounded but enthusiastic “yes.”

Just like I had spent my time healing others, what it took was the support of my multiple loves to finally accept myself as worthy of an opportunity that did nothing but bring out the best in me. And on one night in the depths of my heart I could finally see just how far my influence spreads…just how far someone could carry my energy, how influential it is as I move in the undercurrents of life, the ancient channels of our connection drawing people in who I never expected but immediately felt comfortable with.

It was truly humbling to finally be seen in my healed state. To finally see myself that way. To hear the voice of my Shadow Queen self fully restored to her full glory. It was one of the most vulnerable and yet powerful moments of my whole life. And it was only possible because I held true to my integrity, believing that all love is meaningful, even when offered in the DMS in the middle of the night. By allowing myself to see the divinity in others, I remained open enough to see my own reflected back at me…mirroring me and showing me my multifaceted worth.

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PART 2 coming on 4/4/24

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This is the first time I’ve really written these ideas out completely. I would love to hear your thoughts on this! ❤️‍🔥🙏 Leave a comment below or tag me (@sharpsweetbella) with your thoughts on social media.

If this is a topic of interest to you, I am integrating these ideas of into a queertastic historical fantasy novel series of intertwined loves. I am about 80% done with Book 1 and will be posting more excerpts, scraps and sneak peeks on Patreon in the coming months.