Even Tantric goddesses are not exempt from the pain and arrows of Love. One of the most important lessons in Tantra are in the areas and practice of "Self Love" to which we, healers, or the empathetic types tend to struggle with. Add on that I am a Virgo, the sign of the perfectionist as well as the Goddess, and you get a double whammy with "trying to always get it right" complex. Which is ironic actually because Tantra is all about being OK with NOT getting it right. To let go what blocks you from that Bliss state. I spent three years trying to blend the vast differences of our two worlds together. Algeria is not as open minded or diverse a Muslim culture as Morocco or Tunisia. It certainly was not easy trying to share who I am, a tantra sexuality teacher, to a country where most women are covered in public, there are men only public places and women resigned their lives to living at home for only family and their household responsibilities. We should have ALL seen this one coming. My mother likes to laugh at me now and say, "But Farrah, you are a sexual cultural anthropologist: you HAD to experience this one experience!" And surely not many people from the west get to experience what I did which was an insider's experience to being the wife in a Muslim world. But it became clear to everyone in time that despite many attempts to lessen my female power, whether it was locking me up in a room in their home, or verbally abuse me, or abandon me pregnant in Tunisia, or not show up for our son's birth until 2 months after he was born, and then abandon us later again, to the multiple sex profiles he kept online and the various women around the world he kept "something" with to which when I discovered and questioned him on this while I was in America working and caring for his son while waiting on his visa round #2, his response was, "Farrah, it is my right to have 4 wives." Ummm, not going to fly with a tantra goddess I'm afraid. ;) He has never contributed a single $1 to his son and rarely asks or involves himself in his life. It took the US embassy getting me out of their home with my baby in my arms while their family screamed every unimaginable thing at me because I was choosing to leave, rather than stay, in that world. And please do not think poorly of Algerian people for I've had hundreds of amazing Algerian people constantly call, Skype, email (and date) since who feel appalled by my treatment by this one family. I love Algeria....they're the original "Arab Springers" and the first to win their independence from the French. My son and I speak only French together and we sing daily to Cheb Khaled. Like India, Algeria is now in my blood too.
