When I was deciding if I was going to divorce my former husband I was sitting in a question about unconditional love. Actually three questions. What does it mean to love myself unconditionally? What does it mean to love someone else unconditionally? And, who in my life can love me that way? I decided that I couldn’t find that in my marriage but now I think deciding to divorce was in its own way practicing unconditional love for both of us.
I left the marriage with questions. I wanted to know what it felt like, sounded like, smelled like, tasted like to love myself unconditionally. What it felt like, sounded like, smelled like, tasted like to love someone else unconditionally. And what it felt like, sounded like, smelled like, tasted like to be loved unconditionally. Since then I have been practicing loving the people closest to me in this way, my children, my friends, my friends, and my partner with various degrees of success. All the while learning and growing my own capacity to love.
The above meme showed up on social media this past week and has been cooking me in all kinds of good ways. There is something about moving from practicing unconditional love to being love in all conditions. It seems like a call to a sweeter and deeper place. In my girls book, Soul Growing II: Wisdom for 13 year old girls from women around the world I wrote, “I wish someone would have told me that life is messy and that I was here to make noise, screw up, fart in public, dance wild and crazy while everyone was looking, and cry the ugly cry at least once a day. I wish someone would have told me that there was something that I knew and could do that no one else did and my job was to discover that thing during my lifetime. I wish someone would have told me that not only was I loved and lovable but I was love itself.”
So here I go, the start of my own journey to knowing not only that I am loved and lovable but being love itself in all conditions.
Quanita