Searching For Love

I’ve been spending time with family this week, my fiance’s family, a family I’m enjoying getting to know more and more, and we’ve been talking a lot about love and life. As I plan for my wedding, a big milestone, and a celebration of love, it brings up a lot of emotions, for us, as a couple, and for family and friends who are on this journey with us. We’ve had some spontaneous beautiful moments that all center around love. Our conversations have often gone to memories of new beginnings, of birth, of heartfelt moments, and endings, but through it all, the through line to all of those moments and memories is love. We look for love, are attracted to love and, hopefully, give love. There’s a reason why so my songs have been written about it, and according to The Beatles, “Love Is All You Need.” We probably need more than just love, but love is the center of most things we do, it is something that motivates us, challenges us, and for some of us, something we are constantly searching for.

I had a friend share with me a near death experience she had, she described it in detail, but what has always stayed with me is her describing how she felt in the place her soul went, she said to me, the only way to describe how I felt where was was love, but that doesn’t even come close to the feeling, she said, what I felt doesn’t exist here on earth, and I think we are always searching for it, and the closest thing we have here is love. I think we do always look for love, or gravitate toward it, and why not, for the most part, it feels great, to give it and receive it, but the love I’ve found for myself is the love that allows me to fully enjoy the love around me.

For most of my life I hated myself, there was no love, I was full of anxiety and self-hatred for who I thought I was and that dominated my thoughts and actions. That self-hatred stood in the way of most true love that I had in my life because I didn’t believe I deserved it. I loved to the best of my ability, but I only let it get so far out of fear I wasn’t good enough or it would be taken away. When I made the commitment to get well I was faced with that self-hatred and told I had to learn to love myself, the voices in my head screamed, YOU CAN’T! But anything is possible when we are willing, and with a determination to get well I set out to find the love within myself. It was difficult at the start, I was at a place where I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror, never mind find things within myself to love, but was challenged, each day, to find those things, or on many days, just one thing, to start. And like anything, the most difficult task is always to start, but as I started to shift my focus from the bad to the good, I slowly started finding more things to love about myself, and it was slow, but it happened. I had to be mindful, and still do, each day to keep my heart in a place of gratitude, because that was, and is, where my love comes from, and grows.

As human beings we seem to be on the search for love most often, we instinctively gravitate toward it, when we are able to find it in ourselves or except it from others. And perhaps there is something to my friend’s story, I’ve heard similar stories from others, that we, deep in our souls, search for it because it brings us closer to what we know, to God, or a spiritual connection, or to a place we feel safe.

Open yourself to love, and find the love within yourself, appreciate that love and who you are, and share that love with others. Love really can heal, it can perform miracles, and it can bring joy to even those who just witness it. Spread your love today. SLAY on!

SLAY OF THE DAY: Are you able to find the love within yourself? If not, why not? If yes, how do you find it and what does it feel like for you? Have you always had this love or have you had to go seeking it within? How did you do that? If you haven’t found love within yourself, how can you, today, begin looking for it? How do you feel when you receive it? Or, give it? Focus on that feeling SLAYER, and look for that love inside yourself, it may just start with you imagining how it feels with others and imagining that within. It starts with a spark and if you continue to feed it, that spark becomes a burning flame.

S – self L – love A – appreciate Y – you