Learning Love

What comes to mind when you think of your childhood home? Your parents? Maybe when you draw to your senses the memories, pretty things don’t come to mind. Maybe you hear crashing dishes or find an empty master bedroom or smell a burning smell. Maybe a picture comes to mind that was a little too perfect- there were smiles and matching dinner placemats- but it was just that, a picture. You hear silence, maybe the evening news always buzzing in the background. You learned to be perfect for the picture, but you didn’t learn to be real. Maybe it's hard to find a flaw within these memories – you smell your mom’s warm vanilla smell as you press your tears into her shirt and she pulls you in tight, you hear laughter upstairs in the kitchen with your dad, you see the sunbeams flashing over your sibling’s face, as you sing together in the car on your way to get fast-food for dinner.

I believe these places and people are where we first develop a definition of love.

I feel the definition of love that I was taught through my parents and childhood home was one of balance. I feel I am one of the lucky ones. I saw that marital love was not perfect- it was not the prince saves the princess and they live slow dancing through life untouched by the outside world. It was the prince and princess fight for each other, with time, with laughter, with a commitment that could not be broken by the outside world. I saw that love meant boundaries, but also selflessness. I learned that if you have just enough love for the people that are easy to love, it might not be real. I learned that real love gives the extra and fills the empty.

Maybe you would not consider yourself one of the lucky ones. Maybe you grew up to find that the monsters you thought lived under your bed were actually sleeping in the master bedroom. Maybe the ones that were supposed to keep you safe taught you the opposite of what safe is. I hope that since then, you've seen love in someone else, in a single action, in kind words. I hope that what someone else inexcusably tore down within you has been rebuilt. Because it is never too late.

It’s never too late to discover the real definition of love... it is a forever kind journey. Relearning and unlearning. Erasing and Creating. Knowing and Experiencing.

It’s never too late to choose a different definition than you were taught, than you encountered. It may feel like you will never escape some of the words you heard and hurts you felt. It is okay…it is necessary to hurt for the little seven-year-old you. The fifteen-year-old you. The twenty-six year old you. Whether it was ugly words, a divorce, abuse. You can mourn for what was lost. We all have lost things, no matter where or how we grew up, some just lost more. Some lost earlier. But there is hope because love is true and real, and as long as it is true and real, you can find it. It's not something that has to be lost forever. You can embody it. You can fight for it and you can fill the empty places with it.

Maybe one day you’ll have a little seven-year-old that looks just like you. You have the ability to look into her eyes, look into his eyes, and be love for them- real and true. You can show him how to fight for it, you can show her how to fill a room with it. You can be the love that you were never taught, to everyone around you. We all have the opportunity to give the extra, fill the empty, and be the kind of love that is real and true.