I found thinking about him comforting.
 Charlotte Shane – Prostitute Laundry

—–
Lauren finds her true calling and treats herself to a night out;
the five year anniversary with celebrity and muse Rafael.

Saturday December 9, 2017 

I feel like this is the last thing I ll write this year.
Which is bullshit because even if nothing exciting will happen, and 2017 just finishes without anything noteworthy – I can and most likely will, write for my Dutch book Maitresse and my yoga and lifestyle book, or books, White Tigress.
But I mean the diary. That I won’t have anything to write in here. That you won’t see me, until the next emotional high or low. And it has to be so impressive that I will sacrifice writing on those other books, or my yoga work, in order to get the story out.
I don’t see that happening. My life is exceptionally quiet. And exceptionally wonderful. Because I really did find my calling, in the troublesome week between my book reading and Rafael’s show. By the time he came to see me, after his show, my life had already fallen into place. There was nothing more I needed. Not from him. Not from Mr.Big.
I was free.
These were the events that lead to this Zen state of mind, starting with the book reading. Which went perfectly well. It was something I had wanted to experience. Was I any good at giving them? Did I enjoy it? Did I lack any skills or would anything unforeseen pop up? At first it seemed like it wouldn’t.
In fact I loved the reading so much, that I was convinced I would go professional, and get myself gigs for this. Until I collapsed, into what someone once described as “A dark night of the soul” Mine was not that dark, but I did get sick, followed by five days in which I felt unstable, ashamed and desperately tried to figure things out.
I deciphered the problem to its core, threw away all the elements I didn’t like, and then I clicked the remaining pieces together.
Which, unexpectedly, made the perfect fit.
By the time I met Rafael I had full clarity on The Big Picture. I knew how I was going to thrive at being a writer, and a yoga teacher, without collapsing in the middle of my work week. It basically came down to a clean cut; Yoga on weekdays, LS Harteveld on weekends. But with a massive tweak. Which was that I was going to stop pretending I was a normal yoga teacher and I was going to write from the heart for the studio.
I cancelled my entire existing media program which had been way too plain and generic. And in the ten hours that were freed up by that, I started writing real stuff.
From the heart.
I completely stripped away any feeling of “this is how a normal column promoting a yoga studio should look like” and just went for it. I wrote. Daily. I hustled, promoted my yoga. And it worked. Even though I wasn’t really counting on it to take immediate effect, because these things take time.
People may not immediately recognize you as the most fun, unorthodox yoga studio from the city. And even if they do, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s their preferred flavor.
They may turn away and prefer generic yoga instead.
Which is totally cool.
So when I already had actual results within days, it was more than I had counted on. I would have been satisfied with merely my newly found joy in writing for the studio.
I had stopped pretending to be a normal yoga teacher who only blogs or does social media because that’s required this day and age. I showed I loved doing it. That I was writing because it lit me up from the inside.
And no longer stuff that any copy writer or any other yoga teacher could have written. Not anymore. The writing for the studio – just like teaching itself – had become purpose work, soul work. I basically chose to see myself as a badass, writing yoga teacher first. LS Harteveld hobby writer second.
LS Harteveld was marginalized – giving her only the weekends which often didn’t start before Friday 8 pm. That may sound like a cruel thing to do, but in reality, once I started speaking my truth for the yoga studio, the urge to speak What I Really Think here- as Miss Harteveld – was eliminated.
And the remaining writing for LS Harteveld went really well.
I would easily churn out ten thousand words in diary entries, private mailings, blog posts. And still see friends and family.
Many people will find my new week/weekend structure too compartmentalized, but for me it is wonderful. It takes all the pressure off LS Harteveld. On the weekends I will sleep in and only write if I feel called to do so. Which apparently I do.
But I am free as a bird to spend my weekends the way I want to.
And it was with this new found freedom that I saw Rafael’s new show. Rafael has been my muse since 2012, so it was our five year anniversary.
I now see this long period of being his fan, as entirely logic. It fits with my sexual preference, which is that I m a mistress;
I am monogamous, and I like distance. It’s space for me to admire and literally muse over a man. For me a man has way more value as an unattainable muse, than as a reliable partner. And being a monogamist, one man has more value than a series of men. Which I find confusing and tiresome.
That’s the reason I m still with my lover Big, with whom I ve been with for three years. And it’s the reason I’m happy being a fan of Rafael.
I feel emotionally moved by them, and they make great muses.
So I went to see Rafael’s show and I m afraid I sucked up every word, every gesture, every second of his stage time. I forgot when the last show was before this but I m guessing 2015. But it was too long… And it had the same effect as not seeing Mr.Big for a long time. I was thrown between an accusatory;
“How could you do this to me!”
And the bittersweet knowledge that all the waiting had eventually only fueled the pleasure. Made the moment more memorable.
Rafael and I sat opposite to each other.
We talked about his show and his upcoming book, and just general stuff on the professional side of things. But there was also something else. Something that I will not reveal here, because it was private. But it bore a remarkable resemblance to me having hid my real personality as a yoga teacher. So that no one would get mad. Me before coming to terms with, and ultimately fully owning the fact that I m a mistress, even though practically every woman I speak to responds with either;
“How can you do this to his wife?”
or
“I can’t understand you do this to yourself.”
I m not doing anything to myself. This is who I am. And if things end with Mr.Big I ll either look for another married man, or if he’s available, I ll make sure that he understands that keeping me interested will include spending quality time with me, just as much as spending time away from me. In which I want him to appear busy with his own life, to not bother me, and to be absolutely fucking thrilled if we meet again. I want him to only share things about his other women for the single purpose of turning me on. Not because we’re going to have an honest and open conversation about it, or because he’s oversharing. That’s cruel. I want him to be totally devoted to exactly what it is I want, to what arouses me, to what I want to hear. And at the same time I want him to regularly create vast distances between us, which I can fill with writing; With dreaming; With creating, and recreating, the image of him I hold in my head.
That’s what’s it gonna take.
In a similar fashion, Rafael was doing a great job as my muse. But he was holding out. I could feel it. In the same way I had been afraid, and was still afraid at times, that being a mistress would get me killed. That someone would put a knife between my ribs because I had sex with a married man. Until ultimately I had decided that stepping into my true power, was more important than being scared. That I couldn’t keep hiding forever. That I had to accept that this was who I was. That yes, there was a betrayed wife in the equation, and that I was probably a monster for needing other women somewhere, around a potential partner, in order to give him the light of day.
But it was simply who I was.
I knew there was power into totally stepping into that role. And well… Rafael had something like that going on. And I pointed that out, that maybe, he was meant for greater things. That maybe, the time to play safe was over.
That maybe, it was time to step into his power, and face whatever the consequences might be because in reality, keeping all that stuff within will do you even more damage.
It’s a life not lived.
It’s a calling not heard.
Five years ago, I read Rafael’s book. It was a mixture between fiction and facts, where he becomes the prime minister of the Netherlands. In years that followed he withdrew from the idea that this was a real goal, or calling.
But writing this post now, a week after having this conversation with Rafael, I realize that even our undocumented conversation really comes down to me believing that he was meant for great things.
My belief that the fictional novel associating him with politics, was actually his true calling. That me pushing him to step into his power now – about the topic I won’t share – is related to me insisting he was writing his own future with that novel.
His own heart’s calling.
That he wasn’t just meant for greater things, he might have been meant to become the greatest thing.
That in reality, self-deprecating Rafael, bore all the markings of a great leader.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living
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Rafael is in the English books;
LS Diary (€10)
Bedtime Stories (€ 15)
Mirage (€ 5)

aanbevolen boek NL:
Het boek Benjamin, verzameld werk Engels en Nederlands
Dit Boek Benjamin (€45),
mijn verzameld werk inclusief de boeken over Rafael, die in het echt Johan Fretz heet.
is ook te koop bij de Feeks 
Zij regelen ook de online bestellingen.

Als je yogales bij me volgt in Nijmegen kan ik het ook voor je meenemen naar de les.