The End of an Era (And the Woman I Thought I Had to Be)

Endings are never easy. We humans have this thing — we try to prolong the inevitable for as long as we can. We cling. Especially to the people, roles, and identities that once made us feel whole. That gave us purpose. That we worked hard to build. Which we have prayed for.

But some things do need to die, so something new can be born.

The time has come for me.

After many beautiful, wild, soul-shaping years of teaching tantra, I’m choosing a new chapter: one that feels softer. Simpler. More spacious. A semi-retired life. I’ll still keep a very small private practice — just for the ones going through relational hell, because these souls deserve everything and more. 

But most of my energy will be devoted to the deeper call:

To write.

To ask better questions.

To dismantle tired and horrible narratives about love, sex, and relationships.

To reimagine what intimacy can look like when we stop performing and start acting like humans.

Something my nieces and nephews can read one day.

Something they can turn to when life breaks their hearts wide open.

Something human. And beautiful. And real. A legacy made of stories — especially the messy ones.

And more than just stories — a shift.

A new paradigm for sex, love, and relationships. One built on real connection. On curiosity, honesty, nuance, and compassion. Because the way we’re doing love right now? It’s not working. Not for me. And not for so many others.

I know this in my bones — not just from the heartbreaks I’ve survived, but from all the people who’ve come to me over the years. Clients. Friends. Strangers. People who are doing their best, have tried everything they could — and still finding themselves lost, ashamed, exhausted, or lonely in love.

I started this journey almost 30 years ago. Not as a teacher, but as a woman with a big, open, longing heart. I’ve always been perceived as strong and independent. But the truth is:

My deepest, quietest wish has always been to find that one person — the one to share the rest of my life with. That truth has shaped everything I’ve done, and it has not always been easy.

I’ve lost count of how many breakups didn’t kill me but made me stronger. Or how many times I had to trust the process or to remind myself: this too shall pass. But I have to admit — even when those loves ended, they carried a kind of epicness — a beautiful chaos of love, adventure, and pain that shaped me.

One of my first big love stories was with an incredibly handsome and sexy Argentinian I met in an online chatroom. After months of late-night emails (in hot mail accounts!) and glitchy video calls (the first ones in skype!), I flew to Buenos Aires. Alone. No cell phone. No Airbnb. No Uber. No google maps.  Just hope, a reckless heart and a printed airplane ticket.

Before I left, I told my dear friend Fernando Gonzalez Gortazar — a larger-than-life architect and mentor — that I was scared. “What if I get killed?” I asked him.

He looked at me, arms in the air in the middle of the street stopping the traffic, like the drama king he was, and in his deep loud voice said:

“If you die in the name of love, it will have been worth it.”

That line blessed my path. It still does.

That relationship and adventure ended - dramatically - but it set the tone for many of the ones that followed.  If I wasn’t willing to die for it, I wasn’t interested. (My ex-therapist has very interesting theories about that. Poor woman. She’s so unromantic.)

I’ve lived, adventured, and loved intensely.

It’s been hard. And it’s been fucking crazy and beautiful.

This desire — this longing — pushed me not just to love, but to try to understand love. I became obsessed. I needed to make sense of it.

So I studied it from every angle I could find — religion, biology, philosophy, psychology, myth, energy, spirituality. 

I wanted to know why we love the way we do. Why we break. Why we stay. Why we betray. Why it hurts so much and brings so much pleasure and joy. I found Tantra and Tantra found me.

And as I went deeper into my own stories — heartbreaks, patterns, questions, and healing — something strange started to happen.

People began telling me theirs.

Not just my friends, who already came to me for advice. But complete strangers.

I’d be at a convenience store in El Salvador buying tooth paste, and the cashier — a woman I had never met — would start crying mid-conversation, confessing (in painfully vivid detail) how guilty she felt for cheating on her husband. And I’d stand there, listening. Holding space. Offering what I could as the line behind me grew.

It was like the universe had put a big invisible sign on me: You can tell her everything.

And people did. They were everywhere.

On airplanes, beaches, and sidewalks. 

In banks, parks, elevators, and crowded meeting rooms.

 They showed up at weddings and funerals, during sunsets and dawns, while I was sun tanning, working, peeing or peacefully meditating .

They found me in airports, hospitals, hostels, fancy restaurants, and random parking lots. 

In every country I’ve ever set foot in. 

Sometimes they knocked on my door by accident — or so it seemed — and ended up crying on my couch an hour later with some good advice and a cup of tea, telling me everything. 

Wherever I went, the stories came too.

For a long time, I thought this was just... normal. That everyone had strangers trauma-dumping in grocery stores. That this was just part of being human — people opening up, processing their stuff, heart to heart, in random places.

But then I started asking around. And none of my friends had these kinds of encounters. Not like this. Not with the consistency, the intimacy, or the weight of what people were sharing with me. Back then I was just an architect and a project manager.

So I paid attention. I listened harder. I studied more. I trained in every way I could — therapy, coaching, energetics, whatever. And the more I grew in knowledge and presence, the more I trusted my voice. Eventually, I got certified, and I began doing this work “officially”.

And it was beautiful. Owning my own pleasure school. Coaching incredible humans, one-on-one. Leading retreats and workshops in magical places. Sharing on Instagram, writing blogs, living the full digital nomad fantasy.

It felt like a dream — until it didn’t.

I came home. Back to Mexico. Back to myself.  Fresh from my wild, ocean-crossing, “let’s-sail-from-Mexico-to-Australia-in-the-name-of-love” relationship. And after a well-earned, heartbreak-healing tour across Asia and Europe, I crashed. Hard. Straight into my dark night of the soul. 

“None of this shit is working,” I thought.

Not the theories.

Not the therapists, or the counselors.

Not the philosophers with their clever quotes.

Not the healers or shamans with their feathers and sage.

Not my friends’ advice, not even cuddling with my dogs.

Not yoga, not meditation, not walking 10,000 goddamn steps.

Not journaling, or breathwork, or magnesium. 

Not being hydrated, embodied, mindful, grateful.

Life wasn’t working. Love wasn’t working. Everything I thought I knew — everything I taught — felt like it was falling apart.

And underneath it all, this deep, gnawing ache. A void so thick I could barely breathe inside it. The kind of void that invites reflection, or madness, or growth.

Not depression. Not grief. Something else.

The unbearable weight of realizing that no one had real answers. That the way we do love — the way we do life — is built on shaky foundations.

Standing there, everything shattered, I couldn’t see a way forward. No roadmap. No system.

So, I called my most powerful teacher in the Kaula Tantra lineage. One of the only people I thought could help me make sense of it all.

“Nothing is working,” I told him. 

Usually, he’d offer something. A riddle. A mantra. A practice. But this time, he didn’t even pause.

“Mayda,” he said, “If no path can guide you, it’s because you came here to walk one that hasn’t been made yet. Now, you are the guru. You are the tantra.”

And then he hung up.

Seriously? Did he really just hang up on me?

Am I the guru? I thought. Deep down, I knew he was right.

No one was coming to save me. No method, no book, no lover, no lineage.

This wasn’t about fixing things anymore —This was about rebuilding from scratch.

It was terrifying. It was lonely. But it was also a portal.

And from that place, the calling didn’t whisper. It roared.

I haven’t just performed love — I’ve lived it.

I’ve felt it in my bones, in my body, in the places that don’t heal easily.

I’ve risked my life for it.

I’ve sailed oceans for it.

I’ve studied it, listened to it, questioned it, taught it, bled it. 

I’ve died many times, in many ways, for it.

And I’ve earned the right to challenge it.

To reinvent it.

To try to make sense of this mess.

To share what I’ve learned from this journey. From the chaos that shatters our existence and the joy that doesn’t come from everything going right, but from choosing to keep showing up anyway. From my commitment to love as a path, not as a relationship status.

This is where I am today — almost 51, having traveled to the edge of the world, both literally and metaphorically, and made it back to tell the story. 

To rewrite the scripts. To question the old paradigms and create new ones that actually make sense for who we are now.

This is a raw, human space — not polished, not packaged, but alive. A space that’s trying to make sense of this wild, messy, beautiful thing we call love and relationships.

I’m not here just to share love stories. I want these stories — and the people inside them — to remind you that it’s still worth it. To love through endings. To stay open through disappointment. To believe in new beginnings, even when your heart feels wrecked.

Because love doesn’t have to be perfect to be meaningful. And pain? Sometimes it’s not the end — it’s the beginning. A doorway to something deeper, truer, more powerful.

I’m not here with polished answers or cute 5-step plans. I’m here to invite you into deeper, messier, more honest conversations — about love, sex, shame, forgiveness, grief, and what it takes to rebuild after the collapse.

These are our stories. And along with them, the tender, weird, surprising, and sometimes uncomfortable wisdom I’ve had the privilege of carrying — and now, finally, the courage to share.

Welcome to these messy love stories.

Thank you for joining me in this new chapter.