When You Are Your Own Greatest Love Story
My Greatest Love Story was one I never saw coming.
Not the kind written in fairytales.
This was a different kind of love story.
One born in the dust, and set alight by freedom and truth.
Life, in all its raw wild beauty, burst open my heart to reveal what had been burning underneath the surface all along.
That moment came in the desert.
In the dusty expanse of the Tankwa Karoo.
Not in someone else’s arms,
but in my own reckoning.
This wasn’t about finding someone else.
It was about finding myself,
and choosing her.
Again and again.
Because the greatest love story I’ve ever live
is the one I write,
with my own becoming.
Be True. Be You. Be Free.
It was my second Afrikaburn.
I had travelled with a partner but between us was a void of dissonance, unspoken truths, unravelled threads.
I left him behind to venture onto the playa. Alone.
To find my own path.
To write my own story, to live one not shaped by someone else’s rhythm, but by the pulse of my own being.
The year before, I had come to this same desert in the embrace of the woman I loved.
We danced through the dust together — radiant, free, alive.
I will never forget the night we visited the Love Chapel, kissing under the celestial glow of the milky way.
That night, I felt something deep in my core. That she would always be part of my life. I believed that love would echo forever.
But even the most beautiful love stories end.
Our paths began to curve away from each other.
We held on for a while, trying to cling onto a love that once radiated but was now rupturing, consumed by pain.
And when our relationship ended and our paths parted, it carved a deep hollow in my heart I didn’t know how to fill. Her absence was an ocean of grief I sank beneath.
Then came the illness. The exhaustion. The slow dimming of my fire.
I had been giving too much, to too many, for too long.
And so I had returned to the desert, the dust of Afrikaburn, not just to escape, but to face what still ached in me.
I brought a letter.
One I had written to her full of truth, anger, heartbreak,
forgiveness and love.
Words I was unable to speak to her.
Words that needed to burn, that I needed to release back into the dust.
That afternoon, I wandered alone toward the temple, my pilgrimage, under the scorching sun. There, written on the temple walls by hands I’ll never know were the words: Be True. Be You.
Below those words, I wrote my own: Be Free.
At the heart of the temple sat a singing bowl, nestled on the sun-warmed altar. Drawn to it, I settled onto the earth beneath the open sky. Barefoot. Breath steady. Eyes closed. I struck the bowl gently.
The sound moved through me, low and resonant, ancient and alive. With each vibration, something inside me stirred. A fire reignited in my root. The base of my spine tingled awake.
My Kundalini rose. Not in frenzy, but in sacred warm remembrance.
My grief loosened. My heart opened.
And in that moment, I found myself again — fierce, feminine, and alive.
I remembered who I was, before the breakups, before the burnout, before the shrinking.
I had spent so long pouring myself into the lives and longings of others.
But there, wrapped in dust and sunlight, I remembered:
I was never here to be someone else’s source.
I was the flame.
I was the fire.
I was my own greatest love story.
And I had finally come home.
Coming Home To Myself
Before that temple moment in the desert, I had forgotten.
I had forgotten that love is not meant to cost you yourself.
I had shaped myself to fit into the wants and wounds of others.
I had collapsed into roles I didn’t remember agreeing to.
Caretaker. Therapist. Fantasy.
And in the process, I stopped listening to the voice inside that whispered: “You don’t need to shrink to be loved”.
That voice came roaring back to life in the desert.
And it hasn’t left me since.
Because when you are your own home,
you stop trying to make other people your shelter.
You stop building relationships out of loneliness or fear.
You stop negotiating your spirit away for attachment.
Solo polyamory taught me that I could hold fierce, tender love for others
without abandoning the deep home I was building inside myself.
That love doesn’t require possession.
It requires presence.
And the deepest presence begins within.
Because true love — wild love — honours wholeness, not sacrifice.
And so I made this vow to myself and to others:
“I will not lose myself to love you.
And I will not ask you to lose yourself to love me”.
The Sacred Art of Solo Polyamory
Solo polyamory, for me, isn’t about fearing intimacy. It isn’t about endlessly chasing something else.
This isn’t about avoiding connection. It’s about choosing it.
Consciously. Courageously.
From a place that is rooted within myself.
For me, solo polyamory is a devotional practice.
A commitment to anchoring my life — and my love — in myself first.
To being my own primary partner, before I am anything to anyone else.
It’s not about being alone.
It’s about building a life not around partnership,
but around purpose, freedom, and creative fire.
It’s about waking up in the morning and knowing:
I am the architect of my life.
My time, my energy, my body, my love, all flow from a place of choice, not obligation.
The Wild Freedom of Being My Own Love Story
There is a nuanced feeling of freedom that blooms when you realise you don’t need to be chosen to be complete.
True intimacy deepens the moment you realise your emotional safety lives within you, not outside you.
When you are your own greatest love story, you love others without losing yourself. You give without abandoning yourself.
Being my own love story looks like this:
Setting boundaries without apology.
Taking myself out on dates.
Learning the language of my own desire.
Being fully accountable for my needs, my healing, my dreams.
Refusing to shrink or fit inside someone else’s life plan.
I no longer build relationships around hierarchy or need.
I invite them with intention. With desire. With wild love.
I choose lovers who honour my autonomy.
I create connection without clinging.
I rest when I need rest. I say no without guilt. I say yes with my whole body.
Most of all, I tend to the relationship with myself, first, always.
My happiness. My health. My sensuality. My purpose.
And when you nourish yourself first, when you are your own beloved,
you love others from abundance, not from emptiness.
I don’t need to be completed.
I’m already whole.
I’m already home.
When You Are Your Own Greatest Love Story
Here’s the truth no one taught us:
You don’t have to wait for someone to choose you.
You can choose you.
Right now. As you are.
And when you do — when you root into your own heart, when you light your own fire — everything changes.
You stop asking: Am I enough?
You start asking: Is this aligned with the life I’m here to build?
When you are your own greatest love story, you become the architect of your life.
You no longer abandon yourself to be loved.
You bring your whole, wild self to the altar of intimacy. And you invite others to meet you there.
And if they can’t?
You walk on.
With your head high, and your heart full.
Because you are the love of your life.
The poem. The revolution. The fire.
And you were never meant to be anything less. You were always enough.
When you stop waiting to be chosen
and start living as your own devotion,
You don’t just find love,
You find your power.
You come home back to yourself.
You rise from within.
Rooted. Radiant. Formidable.
Because being your own greatest love story isn’t the end.
It’s the opening chapter of everything,
that is true, wild and beautifully yours.
— Lana
