Love.
Without fail, the number one request in almost every reading I have ever given has to do with love.
“Am I going to meet someone?” “Have I met the one?” ” What about relationships?”
I’ve read hundreds of people over the years, and I promise you, it doesn’t matter how old you are, your position in life, how much money you have or don’t have, or if your life has been one of privilege or one of suffering, it doesn’t matter.
We all need love. We all long for love. We ache for love, to be loved and to give love, and we want it now.
Real love.
Love that says, “No matter how you feel, whether you are angry, frightened, sad, betrayed, feeling like you are not good enough, alone, ashamed, critical, trying to be perfect, at odds with the flow of life, looking for approval from those who will never give it, we long for love.
Sometimes we think we need to deserving of love, but of course, this isn’t true.
You don’t earn love in the way you earn respect, because love is always available, like air. We don’t earn air, we just breathe.
Yet off we go, looking for love out in the world, for someone to validate us with the bestowment of love, and we completely forget to look within ourselves.
We all want to matter, and as humans, I think we tend to go through life either afraid we might not matter or secretly believing we don’t matter at all.
My mother used to say,
” Be true to yourself.” another way of saying, ” Love yourself,” I agreed, absolutely, but it always flummoxed me.
I mean, how exactly do you love yourself? I didn’t get the manual on that one.
So it’s taken me most of my adult life to figure it out, and I think I get it now.
It seems the trick to it all has to do with allowing. It’s about acceptance.
Meaning I allow my feelings, messy and uncomfortable as they are, to be as they are, without sitting on them, shutting them down, pretending they don’t exist because somehow I think I shouldn’t feel whatever it is that I’m feeling.
It means I don’t collapse into blame or shame, either toward others or myself.
It means I avoid making how I feel somebody else’s responsibility.
This way, I get to own my feelings, I get to be myself as I am.
Yet we try to talk ourselves and other people out of what we are feeling. Like feelings are the enemy of existence,
We all have the right to connect to the depth of our emotions,
In fact, we need to feel the fullness of our feelings to feel anything else profoundly.
When I allow myself to have my emotions, the more I become a true friend to myself, and the more I befriend myself, the more I have to give to everyone, including myself.
As I accept my own imperfections, the more room I have for someone else’s shortcomings.
I become a kinder person, a calmer person, a more open person, less judgemental, more loving and more secure. I feel safe in a world that is often chaotic and unpredictable.
Love grows love…
Nobody is perfect, we are all works in progress, so on this day that celebrates love, let yourself feel what you feel. It’s freeing and, it’s a powerful antidote to things like despair, loneliness, the idea of separation and “other.”
Love yourself as you love, and are loved.
Here is one of my favourite quotes to leave with you today from the poet,
Hafiz
“ The sun never said to the earth, “ you owe me.” Look what happens with a love like that, it lights up the whole sky”.
Happy Valentine’s Day
