Why Your Relationship Didn't Fail (Even If It Ended)
A spiritual perspective on soul plans, sacred timing, and releasing the measuring stick
This week, my husband, DW, and I celebrated 36 years of marriage…
In years past, this was something that Mira was very proud of. I noticed because earlier this week, she almost puffed up with pride.
Thirty-six years. We must be doing something right.
The number that almost felt like evidence… a ribbon pinned to a lapel, proof of a race run well.
This year, I recognized it immediately…
Mira loves a scoreboard. She always has, and in the absence of anything else to measure, she will reach for the nearest number and make it mean something about our worthiness.
But then… there was another voice. Quieter. Steadier. But one that I’m beginning to recognize much more easily these days. Ny’Raia.
It was planned.
Not in the rigid, fate-locked way that removes the beauty of free will, but in the way souls plan… Before the body, before the forgetting, before the long walk back to remembering.
DW and I looked at this lifetime… at what we each came here to learn and the ways we would need one another… and we said yes. Together. This time.
And that? That changes everything about what thirty-six years together means.
Because… if our life plan simply called for us to walk a long road together… then the number isn’t as much a trophy as it’s just the shape of our unique journey.
Nothing more. Nothing less… And if that’s true for us... then it has to be true for everyone else as well.
The couple who made it two years before the love asked to be released… they weren’t “failing.” They were completing.
Something was learned. Something was given. Something was returned.
The person on their third marriage, quietly bracing for the look they’ve learned to expect… They’re not evidence of repeated mistakes… They’re a soul who keeps saying yes to love, who keeps showing up for the lesson, who refuses to let heartbreak have the last word.
That kind of courage doesn’t deserve a raised eyebrow… It deserves reverence.
We are not all living the same story. We never were.
We came with different plans, different contracts, different things to heal and offer and receive in this current lifetime we’re living.
The length of a relationship was never the measure of its sacredness. The depth of what was lived inside it… that’s where the real story lives.
Our Protective Self… our ego… wants to rank us.
Our Ember Self… our Spirit… just wants us to be free… happy.
So here is what I’m carrying in light of our anniversary… gratitude, yes. Deep, genuine, 36-years-of-living-it gratitude… But not through Mira’s lens… not from a space of superiority. Not a ribbon. Just the quiet recognition that DW and I came here to do this together, and so far... we have.
And for every love story that looked different from ours… shorter, harder, more scarred… I want to offer this…
The plan was always yours.
The lessons were always yours.
The love was always real.
None of us is behind.
None of us failed.
None of us is “doing it wrong.”
We are all just living our unique-to-us, irreplaceable, soul-designed lives.
And that is more than enough.
With steady flame,❤️🔥
Where to Next?
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© 2025-2026 The Ember Way™ by Dawna Kreis | Stories and posts written by the author, with AI-assisted refinement in service of clarity, continuity, and canon care. Visual art is created with AI tools under the direction and discernment of the Emberkeeper.
Happy anniversary and congratulations. It is something to celebrate.