If You Will It, It Will Come

Susanne and Gordon

Susanne and Gordon met in 1999 after Susanne moved from Germany to Charleston, South Carolina in the United States. Gordon had just come back from a bad knee injury. They were partnered up to perform the Snow Pas de Deux in Nutcracker. Susanne had come from a large company and in her words was quite arrogant. She didn’t like him at all at the beginning and complained quite a bit about his performance. One night they were standing in the wings and he turned to her and said,

When we get married our kids could have a German, American and Canadian passport.

Gordon

Something happened in that moment and Gordon’s comment took all her nervousness away. They did their best performance because they weren’t fighting each other anymore–they performed as a couple.

When Gordon was a young boy, his mother gave him a notebook. In the notebook, he wrote down everything he ever wanted. Susanne was in that book–he had written that he wanted to marry a European, blue-eyed, blonde-haired dancer, with an accent, preferably from Berlin, Germany. Gordon apparently believed in manifesting before it became a thing.

When Susanne wasn’t spending time with him everyday and surrounded by his energy, she realized how much she missed him. They had a break after the Nutcracker performances and Susanne could not put her finger on what she was feeling–she had this knowing that he was the one for her and she was in Charleston to meet Gordon. Susanne really fought these feelings because this was not her plan. She was engaged at the time to another man–she had moved from Germany to Charleston to be with her fiance. The engagement broke off a couple of months later–Gordon and Susanne moved in together in March.

Seven years prior to us meeting, Gordon had auditioned at the company Susanne was a part of in Berlin. They never let him in the door because he didn’t have an appointment. So they would have met seven years earlier had he been allowed to audition.

In the summer of the year they met, they moved to Portland, Oregon. When they drove to Portland from Charleston, they stopped in Las Vegas and he took Susanne to Tiffany’s to “just look at rings.” The one she liked appeared out of his pocket on a rainy day in stall 13 in a parking lot in Portland on November 29 and it was beautiful. It was after rehearsal and they had given Susanne a really hard time that day and it was Gordon’s way of just letting her know that she was loved. They were married that summer in Charleston in a beautiful church.

After Charleston, they spent about six months in Sydney, Australia. Susanne didn’t feel comfortable there and the immigration laws were very restrictive. They moved back to Germany when she was six months pregnant and lived in her mom’s basement until they found a place of their own a few weeks later in Berlin. Their first son was born in July on the night of a full moon.

By the time Susanne was thirteen, she knew Germany wasn’t the right place for her. They had travelled to visit Gordon’s parents in Victoria, British Columbia Canada a couple of times. Susanne wanted her children to have a loving set of grandparents and her mother couldn’t provide that. They packed up and moved within two months of their son’s birth and lived with Gordon’s parents for six months before finding their own place in Victoria.

Without hesitation, Susanne says, it’s Gordon’s love that has made them successful. She knows that she is the most important thing in his world and there is nothing he wouldn’t do for her. If Susanne just mentions that she doesn’t want to do something, she doesn’t even finish the sentence and he’s doing it.

They got married in their twenties and now they are in their forties and they’ve been through many things together. They went through loosing everything–all their investments in the States after building their dream ballet company. In hindsight they gave up too quickly. Ballet was Susanne’s first love. That love diminished with everything that was put on them to become a dancer and in her late twenties the pain was worse than her love of dance. It wasn’t fun anymore. They went through giving up their ballet careers together. They have raised three boys together. Through these life experiences they have changed–they are different people with different expectations.

Susanne did not grow up in a house where they ever used the words, “I love you.” She never heard it from her mother growing up. When she married Gordon she was surrounded by love 24/7. After 15 or so years she started pushing it away–old habits started to seep in and she started to not believe Gordon’s feelings. She had to really work on that and stop resisting the love he was offering and let him in. Susanne’s advice,

Tell people you love them as often as you can because you are not loosing anything. It doesn’t hurt.

Susanne

It may feel different because you aren’t used to saying it, but let your ego go and explore what’s on the other side of these words.

Broadcast Love wishes you many more years of happiness and joy and adventures in this dance called love.