Let’s talk about LOVE
This weekend, a friend of mine drove out to Bay Saint Louis to get out of New Orleans for a respite with her young son. She stayed with other friends here. She is part of a great love story that had a painful twist. The father of her son – the great love of her life – died of cancer without him ever seeing their child.
On my walk with Stella this morning, I listened to a meditation by a woman who spoke about Loving Kindness in Challenging Times. She spoke about how Love is often viewed as being in the hands of another — someone who could give it to us and who could also take it away from us.
My years of therapy with Ellen showed me a different view. When I worried after divorcing my husband I might not ever love again in that capacity, she said, “But Rachel, it is your own capacity for profound love that you experienced. It is within you, so you hold the key to love.”
That was 14 years ago when she said these words to me, and the truth is I have never loved again and I must admit I don’t know if I ever will. Yes, I do love my child, my friends, my family and even myself, but I am speaking about love with a romantic partner.
The meditation teacher was focused on agape love and she spoke of love as being an ability not a feeling. And despite what I said a paragraph earlier, her words gave me hope, because I know deep within lies the ability to love but maybe I’m short on the desire to love again.
I’ve been content to leave my own footprints in the sand, and every year this becomes more of who I am.
Even this pandemic has taken my yin yang with being an introvert/extrovert and ratcheted up the Introvert in me in a very pronounced way. I’ve had one too many friends call out for help because they are quarantined with their significant other. Hell, there are times I crowd myself out in my home. Perhaps the truth is I have no imagination for what love would look or feel like in my life now.
