🌸 Throwback Thursday 🌸 – flashing back to the season when I was leaning all the way into flower power mode. Back then, I was on a journey of expressing myself more through cultural values, networking, fashion, and love. I was focused on teaming up with people who shared a similar vision, mindset, and work. I’d met someone who was making a real positive impact on my life, helping me rediscover my identity, take back my power, and reshape the things that had been holding me back. Inspiring me to expand my marathon internationally.
To tell the stories of my polyamorous life back then, I decided to give all my suitors and associates nicknames inspired by the Regency Era, circa 1795-1837, a period when romance flourished (they say the official years were 1811-1820 but anyways).
Looking back, it makes sense why I leaned into that Regency-inspired framing. The era is remembered as a time when romance was genuinely celebrated rather than just a transaction: historians point to the London Season, when elite families sent their sons and daughters to endless balls hoping they’d find a match at places like Almack’s Assembly Rooms, one of the most exclusive clubs of the time. Courtships back then often stretched a year or more, built slowly through chaperoned walks, tea visits, and letters exchanged between suitors testing whether they were truly compatible before committing to a marriage that couldn’t easily be undone. It was a slower, more deliberate kind of romance than most of us are used to now.
I think that slowness is part of why it still resonates. Having a steady, supportive partner does more than fill lonely hours: researchers who study couples have linked romantic partnership to lower stress, better sleep, and fewer physical markers of poor health, while a lack of connection and loneliness can ripple through a relationship and affect both people’s well-being. That’s the flower power I was chasing back then, and honestly, still am.
I’d met a fellow I called Sir Wentworth, and from the start of that relationship, he intrigued me and kept my attention. He didn’t just listen, he acknowledged who I was through his actions. We had some of the most intelligent encounters I’d been longing for in most relationships. Before that, I’d seemingly thought everyone around me was dull or unwilling to build even if it was for a short time. But I came to learn that everyone simply moves at a different speed, and we all connect in some way.
Looking back, I don’t think what I felt with him was random. Psychology Today has explored how relationships can drive real self-improvement, pointing out that the people we let in often challenge our old, limiting beliefs and nudge us toward growth we couldn’t reach alone. A research review by psychologist Brooke Feeney, hosted by the National Institutes of Health, makes a similar case: supportive relationships work less like a security blanket and more like a launchpad, giving people the confidence to chase their own goals. That’s what Sir Wentworth became for me that season, not someone I depended on, but someone whose presence made it easier to depend on myself. He also helped me determine things I need in a partner, stop things that were dimming my light, and he made me feel alive.
He inspired me to embrace my authentic ways of indulging in my sovereignty while connecting to others. I hope that you all are out here being lovers on purpose, everyday, making a positive impact on others regardless of the term, short or long.
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