The Courage to Be Seen-Ancestral Wisdom & Unconventional Love

An intimate letter from India, with love.

I am writing you this month's newsletter from the ancestral lands of 

Mama India, a place that has made some of the most profound and life-changing impressions on my life journey.

Over the years, traveling across this extraordinary land, studying, practicing, and immersing myself in its ancient wisdom traditions, India is where I completed most my yoga teacher trainings, met many of my teachers, and deepened my relationship with the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism and the lineages preserved by Tibetan communities throughout the Himalayan regions. From the mountains to the villages, temples, monasteries, this land has offered me some of the most extraordinary lessons in devotion, discipline, humility, and the great mystery of being human. So much of what I carry into my work today was shaped by these experiences. And here I am again, returning to this land with my beloved, this time to celebrate the marriage of two very dear friends. What a beautiful reason to return! Surrounded by the colors, music, rituals, and festivities of an Indian wedding, witnessing two people choosing one another in the presence of their families, loved ones, and ancestral traditions, I find myself reflecting on the many ways love, marriage, commitment, and belonging have been understood and celebrated across cultures.

Perhaps this is why another rather significant moment in my own life feels especially alive in my heart right now. After 7 years together, 

I proposed to my beloved ! Oh, what a cycle these seven years have been! And I can only imagine our ancestors must be having quite the conversation about this one. Perhaps even feeling a little proud of us! Music, song, ceremony, and medicine brought us together seven years ago, so it felt only appropriate that this next chapter of our love would begin in front of our altar, surrounded by an intimate circle of beloved community. A place where so much of our love, creativity, service, and transformation has already been witnessed. I have met parts of myself through this relationship that I didn't even know existed. Parts that were still learning how to receive love without abandoning themselves. And I have also met parts of myself that I didn't know carried such resilience, strength, tenderness, and devotion.We have taken great chances in creating a life together, supporting our community, honoring our individual creativity, our unique paths and work, while also learning how to make space for one another's becoming. 

And navigating all of this as two-spirit women in a rather unconventional relationship has certainly not been for the faint of heart! There have been beautiful moments of togetherness, and moments when we have had to learn what space really means. What does it mean to belong to ourselves while choosing to share a life with another? What does commitment look like when we are also deeply devoted to our individual paths? How do we continue supporting one another's unique expression while also creating something meaningful together?

Being here in India, I find myself reflecting on how deeply our understanding of love is shaped by the worlds we come from. The families that raised us, the cultures we inherited, the religious traditions that informed our lives, and the many spoken and unspoken expectations around what love, partnership, and marriage are supposed to look like. Because, after all we bring our generations with us. Our families, our cultures, our childhood experiences, our conditioning, our inherited expectations, and the many ways we learned what was acceptable, what was shameful, and what needed to remain unseen.

And this is where I want to share a little more of my heart with you.

My beloved Chonie, with her Chiricahua Apache, Spanish, Mexican, and Irish ancestry, was born and raised on the Central Coast of California, surrounded by a family that, despite its own learning curves and natural imperfections, offered her a foundation of love and acceptance. Of course, much has changed in the understanding and acceptance of LGBTQ+ lives since the 1980s, and there has been learning along the way, but she had the opportunity to explore and discover herself with a certain freedom that was quite different from my own upbringing.

My journey began in another world. Growing up in Türkiye, within a much more conservative cultural and religious environment, I began learning very early that certain expressions of love were simply not meant to be seen. I remember being around 7 years old, innocently giggling and exploring with my little girlfriend in my room. There were no titles, no agendas, no understanding of what any of it was supposed to mean. Just two little girls curious about our bodies, our affection, and the natural intimacy between us. Until my birth mother caught us. And suddenly, something that had felt so innocent became my first profound encounter with shame. The consequence was that I was separated from my little friend, never to see or play with her again.

I remember the confusion of it all. How could something that felt so natural suddenly become something so wrong? I didn't yet understand the judgments of society, religion, or the many ways human affection and sexuality could become separated into what was acceptable and what was forbidden. I only knew that something within me needed to be hidden. And so, very early on, I began learning to tuck parts of myself away. I remember wondering why affection between girls wasn't simply considered natural. It seemed to me that so many girls around me shared tenderness, curiosity, intimacy, and affection with one another. 

And yet, there was another rather curious contradiction in my upbringing. While my affection toward girls was something to hide, my relationships with boys were also highly restricted! I was expected to eventually find a good husband, create a family, and make my Baba and the men in my family proud. But actually dating a boy? Oh no, that was certainly not part of the arrangement. Somehow, I was supposed to meet a boy, determine whether he was my life partner within a matter of weeks or months, and introduce him to my Baba or uncles only when he was ready to ask for my hand in marriage. Quite the paradox, wouldn't you say?

Looking back, I realize how much of my journey has been about learning the difference between being loved for who I am and feeling that I needed to become someone else to keep love. How often do we abandon parts of ourselves simply to belong? These questions have accompanied me through years of relationships and the ongoing practice of learning to love. And perhaps one of the most unexpected answers came through my  Baba, during his final days.

For much of my life, I wasn't sure how much he understood or accepted about my relationship with Chonie. We had never openly spoken about it, although he knew her well and witnessed the life we were creating together. In his own mysterious ways, he would say things like, “It's okay for people to have secrets. Not everything needs to be shared. What matters is that you are happy and healthy.” And then, quite casually, “Tell that Joni I love her.”He always called her Joni. :) Sometimes he would tease, “You really have a different kind of love for this Joni.”And I would wonder, Does he know? Has he always known? He would affectionately call me his son, sometimes refer to us as his daughters and sons, and despite the expectations of our culture, never pressured me to marry a man or have children.

Then, as his memory began fading toward the end of his life, something extraordinary happened. In the presence of family, he began openly acknowledging our relationship, speaking of our years together with love and acceptance.

One day, I asked him, “Baba, what if I get married?”

And then, “What if it's a woman?”

Without hesitation, he answered, “Joni?” I know you have been togther for many years and you have my blessing.

Oh, my heart.

He knew. Perhaps he had always known.

He told me he knew we had been together for years and wished us the very best. There, in the tenderness of his final days, I received a blessing I hadn't even realized how deeply I longed for. The little girl who had learned to hide her affection was finally being truly seen by her Baba.

And as I shared in my previous newsletters , he also gave me the name Toprak, meaning Earth, a name often associated with boys in Turkish, yet one that speaks so beautifully to my own nature and belonging. Somehow, through these final gifts, he seemed to recognize and bless parts of me I had spent much of my life learning to accept.

Ps : For those who desire to know more about this passage, you can read my previous newsletters about this journey here

my Substack and/or the Temple blog)

What extraordinary medicine, to discover that the acceptance we feared might never come had perhaps been quietly present all along. And what a reminder that our ancestors, like ourselves, are complex beings, carrying both inherited limitations and an extraordinary capacity for love. Perhaps integration is about allowing the old stories to soften, honoring what has been given, and finding the courage to live more fully as ourselves. Our tenderness and our strength, our freedom and our belonging, our individuality and our commitments, our inherited stories and the lives we are consciously choosing to create. It is learning to honor what our ancestors have given us while also having the courage to live beyond the limitations they may have known. And sometimes, it is allowing ourselves to be seen in ways we were once taught were impossible.

These 7 years of my relationship w a woman have been one of the most profound integration journeys of my life. Our relationship hasn’t always been easy thou it has continued to invite us into deeper honesty, greater compassion, and the willingness to keep discovering what love can become.

And so, here we are. Seven years into this rather unconventional, beautiful, challenging, and deeply transformative love. In the season of the ancestors. In a year that has asked so much of my heart. I am reminded that our ancestors live through us, in both the blessings we carry and the inherited stories we have the opportunity to transform. Perhaps one of the greatest ways to honor them is to live more fully as ourselves, carrying their wisdom forward while finding the courage to love beyond the limitations they may have known.

And as we, too, become ancestors, I wonder: What stories of love, freedom, and belonging will we leave behind?

May we continue honoring where we come from without being defined by it, allowing ourselves to be seen and loved in all the beautiful, unconventional ways life invites us. After all, integration is the ceremony, and perhaps love is one of its most devoted teachers.

May our ancestors be proud of the love we are learning to embody.

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With so much love,

Tutku Toprak

Temple of Integration