Love Is Like A Tree
I feel like, “If you don’t have anything nice to say — don’t say anything at all” should really be applied first to ourselves.
Whether you believe in manifestation or not, I think we can all agree that words hold power. And although I don’t think any human language will be able to fully encapsulate or define a thing or feeling, the power of what we say remains.
The older I get, the more personal proof I have that backs the notion, “If you think you can — you can. If you think you can’t — you can’t.”
So then, we see… its not just the words we speak that hold weight, but perhaps even more powerful are the thoughts we think. What you say and specifically, what you believe creates your truth. And your truth defines your reality.
You are deserving of a beautiful life. And that starts with YOU. Is self love the answer to all our problems? No… but also, maybe… yes?
What parts of you are needing more love?
How can you actively show yourself love every day?
Because you are the love of your life. Nobody can “complete” you. You are already a whole person. And yeah, you’re not perfect… nobody is. Actually… everybody is IMPERFECT. Something we all have in common. I hate the phrase, “Nobody can love you until you love yourself”… as if there is some prize winning level of self love we need to have in order to be worthy of being loved by someone else. Thats garbage. I actually think if anything — its that we don’t SEE how loved we are until we can love ourselves (or are genuinely trying)… NOT that we are incapable of being loved.
I always say I knew I was in love with Adam when I fell in love with life; with myself. I looked up and around at what I was doing in life and who was with me doing it. It was my best friend, my partner, the person I couldn’t stop talking to, the person who I felt most comfortable making mistakes around, the person I wanted to take with me to every event… it was Adam. I loved my life. I loved who I was becoming. I loved Adam.
And as much as I adore him — he doesn’t complete me. We are whole without each other, but damn, life is so so sweet with him in it.
But I didn’t always have Adam. I certainly had my fair share of “not Adams”. I was even once engaged to someone else. I have experienced heartbreak. Sometimes that heartbreak was because of a “failed” romantic relationship, but some of the biggest heartbreak had nothing to do with that kind of love. Some of my biggest heartbreak - Adam got front row seats to. It had nothing to do with him and everything to do with… well, everything else.
Broken hearts are normal. There may be times your heart feels like it's breaking in a million pieces. When that happens it is usually best just to feel the weight of that sadness. True heartbreak doesn’t leave you the same. Understanding that there isn’t really a “going back to how you used to be” option adds salt to the wound while simultaneously somehow providing a sense of comfort.
When something in us breaks — we learn to live with the change. We can’t move on like it didn’t happen. Because even if you try to convince your mind and emotions that everything is fine when it is NOT - your body will remind you. When we don’t allow ourselves to face the reality, to speak our truth, to feel the depths of our emotions — our bodies become sick.
I cannot make claims, but I find it interesting that I developed a neck tumor during the saddest and hardest time of my life. For years, I didn’t share my truth, I didn’t tell my story… I protected the “peace” more than my own sanity.
As we all know, Tumey (the loving name I gave my neck tumor) is gone now. It was the final piece of that season of grief. Again, I cannot make claims but I do find the body to mental state connection so fascinating.
If you’re in a season of grief, I encourage you to speak it out loud. Maybe it's a friend or therapist. But if you cannot tell a person yet, if you aren’t there or able to — try setting up your phone and record a video. Consider writing questions for yourself as if you were conducting an interview. Answer them as honestly as possible. And then get in your body if you can. Go for a walk, dance in your kitchen, give yourself a foot massage, or simply focus on your breath.
Because if we aren’t careful, grief can get trapped in our bodies, making us sick… long after the season of grief is over.
And if your heart is broken, it is because you were brave. You took a risk with vulnerability - something we cannot avoid if we are looking to live a life of joy. Taking the risk of making yourself vulnerable for unfathomable joy is the exact same risk we take for heartbreak. When we love, we put ourselves on the line. No matter what it is we are loving. Whether its big type of love or a love that now seems far off. And is it worth it? Without question — yes.
I think love is like a tree. As we go through life, we develop rings of love like a tree grows a new ring each year.
I don’t necessarily think we stop loving our favorite stuffy from our childhood, or our first crush, or our friends from college… but as we continue to grow and expand… so does our love.
The love for those things doesn’t go away or diminish, but our rings of love are getting wider. And we wouldn’t / couldn’t love the things we do, in the way we do today, without those first 50 rings.
So, maybe we love things more than we did then, but thats because we can only love as much as we are capable. And maybe with each year that passes, we are able to expand our hearts to love a little more and a little deeper. Love doesn’t go away — we just develop more rings.