I’ve been studying Love lately. Both how it relates to me personally and to my work as a coach. I work with people who are going through a dark time in their lives – what was once their joy (a loving intimate relationship) is now their deepest despair. In exploring their loss and pain, the question inevitably comes to love: “How will I ever feel safe to love again?”
When you are facing the loss of and intimate relationship, it may feel like you’ve been left for dead in the middle of the desert. Your heart aches for a drink of love, but the sources you’ve trusted have either dried up or gone underground. Love becomes unavailable and unobtainable.
Whether you’ve experienced the loss of your partner through death or divorce, you’re in pain. You are angry, hurt, emotionally wounded. Your heart feels broken, like it will never know how to open to love again. You have come to face your deepest fear – that you have lost your chance at love or that, deep down, you are unlovable.
IT'S RIDICULOUS TO THINK YOU ARE UNLOVABLE
While you may think that’s the truth, it isn’t.
What is true, then? In the process of adapting to the loss of a life partner, you are in a time of extreme discomfort because you are facing the unknown and whole lot of uncertainty. “Where will I get the love that I so desperately need now that he/she is gone?” is the question I hear most people asking at the heart of their grief.
Distinctions have been made about the different kinds of love – romantic love, spiritual love, brotherly/sisterly love, etc. They all seem different, based on the context or the relationship we have to what/who we decide to love. And, is it possible that there is a deeper Love that holds it all?
WHAT IS LOVE?
What is love, anyway? An emotion? A feeling? The poet Rumi says “Only Love itself can explain Love…The proof of the sun is the sun itself: If you want proof, don’t turn your face away.”
When you see love as an external energy that comes from outside of you – from a person, a thing, a place, you are constantly searching for it. If the source dries up, you start searching for another one.
Let’s check in with you right now. Are you feeling a lack of love because the object of your love is no longer taking your calls, (either because they can’t or they won’t)? If the answer is “Yes,” you may find yourself wanting to turn your face away from love, hardening your heart, lashing out at yourself and others in an attempt to mask the pain of missing them.
LEARNING TO LOVE STARTS WITH YOU
What if your situation is an opportunity to know more deeply about the nature of Love? What if Love is like the sun – a constant, whether we see it, feel it, know it at the time, it’s still there. What if your job right now is to turn your awareness to the love that you are, whether or not you are in an intimate relationship.
Deep inside is a knowing that you are complete, whole, capable, and resourceful, just as you are. You know that the love you seek is the love you have to give – to yourself first.
I’ve even come to the realization that, in times of uncertainty and stress, the most important thing you can do is to love yourself even more. How? The first step is to be kind to yourself.
We’ll talk more about how to do that in my next blog…I have some ideas for you, so stay tuned.
Yes, we need Love. Like water, we are made up of Love. Love knows how to love you –if you let it. When you are healing, Love has EVERYTHING to do with it. We all know that particular brand of madness we experience when we have not been drinking of love.
“I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:
…You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.”
~Hafiz
excerpt from “I Know the Way You Can Get”
Love and Blessings on Your Journey,
