Can we talk about LOVE for a moment?
I’ve always been a lover. Not just in the sexual sense, I’ve been that too… but I mean that I’ve always been a big-hearted person who just loves.
Somewhere in all the trauma and in all the hurts, I lost my way in the past few years. I closed my heart. And while I LOVED… I didn’t really LOVE. Not unconditionally, not with my whole heart open wide and vulnerable.
Nor did I understand that I could love unconditionally and big and full and still have boundaries and still hold others accountable and not lose myself and my needs in the process.
It feels like the whole world is reflecting my biggest lesson right now.
Can I love and still be fierce?
Can I love you and still feel anger and disappointment?
Can I say “No, that is not okay!” and still hold my heart open wide to see another person with my whole heart and still love them – unconditionally?
Can I love and still create a boundary? Can I say “I love you but I feel unsafe in your presence.”
Can I love unconditionally and I still get to hold you to account for your words and actions?
This feels like a lifelong practice to keep my heart open and love and still have boundaries around what is okay and what is not okay to me.
It is much easier to close down, to hate, to push others away, to make walls, to build tribes that agree with my point of view, to create separation…
Much easier to do all of these things than to feel my pain, hurt and my vulnerability and to love wide open but have my boundaries and hold you to account and ask for what I need.
I might get stabbed again… but honestly, it’s more painful to armor up, create walls, and feel separate from you, than it is to get stabbed. It’s been my illusion that the walls are less painful than the wound.
I want to see you for who you really are on the inside, the true you.
And yes the pain forges who you are too, but you are not only the pain or the traumatized, or the hero, or the villain in this story – and maybe I am pollyanna, maybe I’m spiritually bypassing, maybe there are some people who are just dark, sinister people… but I want to love, even the darkness, the shadow, because even in the darkness there is still a spark of light.
Maybe by loving the shadow we transform it.
“Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
I believe that everyone deserves love and empathy and to be understood even when we believe we cannot understand them. And from a place of love, we can choose to be warriors of the heart.
From an I love you, I create my world.
From an I love you, I hold you to account.
From an I love you, I create my boundaries.
From an I love you, I let you go so that we can be free.
I love you. Please Forgive Me. Thank you. I’m sorry. – Ho’oponopono
