Tag Archives: love

If you are loved

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If you are loved, don’t miss it. Life happens to us whether we like it or not and though love may portend permanence, it is, sadly, not the overseer of life (unfair I know). But life, it seems to me, is not cut from a fabric beholden to anything but its very existence.

If you love, give it your all. I say this with one caveat; that you do not give it your all at the expense of giving up who you are. And who you are deserves respect. Know that. And if,  now, as your eyes travel this page, you find that hard to belief, it is still true. Promise. We all lose sight of our value and worth from time to time, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Any truly loving connection between two people, no matter its form, two people in love, friends, siblings, parent and child, grandparent and grandchild, can only be healthy loving for both if each person can be who they are (really are) safely with the other.

Love is life’s greatest gift. Don’t miss it.

If You Need Me

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If you need me, I’ll be there, with kind arms waiting, no furrowed brow for you.

Daylight comes and daylight goes, dreams seem to do the same, but I tell you

If you need me, I’ll be there, bringing you a cup of tea sweetened with a smile

From me because you are you and that’s all you need to be

If you need me, I’ll be there.  In coming storms or in the thick of pain, during times

Of hunger and lost hopes and lives, I’ll be there, in your dreams, in your heart always

If you need me, I’ll be there, in the song of the morning birds, the early day sun glowing

Warmth into your heart, because I love you, you know that, I am there, you can hug me

If you need me, I’ll be there, in the quiet and in the loud, in the darkness and in the light

In the rhythm of your footsteps in the morning and in the night I am there always

If you need me, I’ll be there, because you are you and that’s all you need to be

In life and past it, I’ll be there, loving you, always, because you are you and I am me

Relationship Jail Cells

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Many years ago I wrote a script that went nowhere called It Was Your Heart I Wanted. The story was about a woman confronted with the possibility of entering a relationship but found herself fearfully hesitant because her last relationship had been such a brutal one. An all too common reason for hesitancy many have when facing the possibility of new love. And so, in a very real way, they are trapped in the jail cells of prior relationships. I called the piece It Was Your Heart I Wanted because I do believe most of us can say that and mean that when we enter into a relationship.

But there is another kind of relationship jail cell. The relationship we are are already in, we know are not happy, and yet we stay in them anyway. The love may be gone, if it was ever there, and the environment is toxic, but we stay. Blessedly, I am not in this situation and after nearly seven years of sobriety would disengage from a situation like this were I in one. But, believe me, I’ve been in toxic relationship jail cells before.

I know a few people who are in them now.

I know one extraordinary person who is an American History buff. I mean this is someone who really knows and loves American History. But their spouse stops them from any involvement with history clubs or other people who love history. I know another person who is in a relationship with someone they like but don’t love but figures the person is good to the kids so why not.

I level no harsh judgment towards anyone who is trapped by their history in a way that stops them from daring to love and daring to be loved. What I will say is this. All of us have the right to love and be loved, and no one’s history deserves so much say it stops them from experiencing the heart-and-soul wonder of a relationship that works gloriously, and believe me, there are relationships like this in the world. I know people who are in them.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll take the risk of loving and being loved. My history be damned. If the possibility of a deep-in-the-heart relationship is there, I don’t want to miss it, at least not because of my history.

LOVE AND HEALING FROM FEAR

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Love. Is it the all too elusive nectar for the human soul? The base alloy of real human intimacy? The spiritual adhesive that joins lives with indelible bonds? Or, is it all of these combined and even more that rests out of the reach of words, at least out of reach of any words penned by this writer?

I do not pretend to know the answer, at least not in its entirety. I do know love is an overused word that is all too often said as ploy to get something from another human being. As a result, those who use the word love with sincerity and devotion are often not heard and not believed.

In some romantic unions, things have evolved to a place or, in some instances, always were in a place where each nothing more than a tenant in the other person’s life. In a recent blog piece I wrote about the distinction between a strategic exchange relationship and a communal relationship. The former is a relationship in which one person is seeking to get something or give something to the other in part by convincing them that the relationship is based on true intimacy. These are the relationships that dry up and grow brittle from lack of nutrition and either come to a painful end, or condemn the two people to an unhappy life because both are two afraid to claim their independence and by doing so reclaim their lives and thus reclaim themselves.

The communal relationship is the kind of relationship so many in their hearts honestly want, It is a relationship where there is real spiritual, emotional and physical intimacy. These relationships last because they have the nutrition of real love and thus real intimacy, and there is no better nutrition than that duo, at least not in this writer’s view.

But what of those who really do love someone and know they are loved in return, but cannot find a way to allow the experience, even though it is an experience the truly want and deserve? What then? I don’t know.

I don’t know how to help anyone discover they have a right to fully love and fully be loved. I don’t know how to help someone take decision making power away from their history, for it is there that the damage was done, it was there that the pain was inflicted, and it was there that the seeds of fear were sown.

What I do know about fear is that the only way to get free of it is to allow yourself to go through it. It is okay to be afraid, don’t let it scare you. And if the experience of loving someone and being loved by someone is there for you, can there be a more powerful medicine for healing from fear?

Love. There is nothing more beautiful and, if allowed its life, nothing more majestic, more nutritious and more powerful. This I believe. And I believe it with all my heart.
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FALLING IN LOVE

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Falling in love is an experience many of us hope for, yet, when it happens, doubting and second-guessing begin in earnest. For many of us, wen it comes to falling in love, the ability to allow it to happen is fragile at best.

There all kinds of theories about what falling in love is. In an article in Discovery, Professor Arthur Aaron from State University of New York at Stonybrook says, falling in love is, in part, rooted to our innate desire for self-expansion. Reading that made me immediately check my waistline. You can’t too careful.

Italian sociologist Francesco Alberoni, according to one article, believed falling in love “is a rapid process of destructuration-reorganization called the nascent state. In the nascent state, the individual becomes capable of merging with another person and creating a new collectivity with a very high degree of solidarity. Hence the definition: falling in love is the nascent state of a collective movement formed of two people only.” Moreover, “In order to understand if someone is truly in love, the individual must be put to truth tests and, in order to find out if he or she is loved in return, the beloved is also put to reciprocal tests. The incandescent process of the nascent state through these tests gives way to certainty and produces a stable love relationship.”

Reading that made my hair hurt and my eyes glaze over. No offense, Mr. Alberoni.

I am not about to say I have the answer. But I can tell you what I do believe. I believe falling in love is an experience rooted in nature itself. It is not about thought, reasoning, or intellectual agility. Moreover, over thinking and over analyzing has derailed more than one instance of true love. In fact, they play a large part in why so many of us get tangled up in doubt and second-guessing; we inflict the intellect on something that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the intellect.

Falling in love is a gift from nature itself, It is about emotion, spirituality, and feelings. There is a good reason why feelings are feelings and thoughts are thoughts. They are not the same thing!

Doubting love, doubting that you are falling in love often comes from earlier wounds in life. Many if us have grown to be understandably afraid we will be wounded again. Sometimes we are still under the spell of earlier life messages that told us we were unworthy of anything wonderful in life. Messages that are, by the way, bullshit.

Falling in love is very much like experiencing the breathtaking glory of a sunset or sunrise; it is like the mystical majesty of early morning clouds lifting off the mountaintops; or the quaint delicacy of early morning dew on the front lawn, when every blade of grass glistens in the cool morning air. When you experience any of these wonders, there is no discernible gap between seeing it and experiencing it. It happens all at once. You don’t need thought to know it. You just need to be open to it. It is the same with love, with falling in love.

One final thought, falling in love can be very scary, particularly for the far too many of us who have been wounded in life. This is why I agree with Professor Aaron when he said, “(K)indness is the strongest indicator for a successful long-term relationship.”

Remember, kindness, like love, is not about thought, reasoning, or intellectual agility either. Like love, kindness is about emotion, spirituality, and feelings. That is why they go together, and why, if you are blessed enough to have discovered both, you have not just fallen in love, you are on your way to being in love, and that, my dear reader, is the greatest gift of them all.

There is a line in a Bruce Springsteen song that says, “God help the man who doubts what he’s sure of.” Women too.