Love
In Every Stone Sleeps a Crystal
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Love thy fellow woman. She’s capable of listening to your heart’s every desire and offering you many surprises. Nurture nurture nurture.
TweetNot being treated right? Take your cue, smile, and move on. One less person to worry about.
TweetThe Kiss
I witnessed pure love while dining out at the mall today. As I’m sitting at my table, feeding my son and trying to steal a few bites for myself, I see a woman walk into the restaurant. A man who appeared to be waiting for her approaches her and without hesitation, bends toward her, CLOSES HIS EYES, and gives this woman a kiss. I’m not talking a peck; I’m talking an unhurried, it’s-so-nice-to-see-you-smell-you-taste-you kiss. Nonchalantly yet appreciatively, she receives his kiss and soon follows the hostess to their table.
I felt the love this man had for his woman, sensed that he cherished her, that he found her beautiful.
In an interesting and unexpected way, I thought so too. Why was I so touched? He freakin’ closed his eyes for this very public kiss! It’s not often you see such genuine affection from one person to another in public. These people didn’t look like a young couple barely dating (prime time for such gestures). No, they looked like they had a house, dogs, and a couple of kids together. That’s what makes it all the more special, because at that point in a relationship, maintaining what brought you together as a couple is more of a choice than an automatic reaction.
Being with someone for years calls for more intention and effort to keep passion in the relationship.
It’s easy to get hampered down with the daily grind of our lives and let the simple pleasures such as holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes and staying long enough in that embrace or not pulling away so fast for that kiss go to the wayside. Have you ever inhaled your partner’s breath and then surrendered to the kiss? That’s what I’m talking about!
Love is a choice. Choose Love.
TweetA Convivial Sense of Security
A man walks into the doctor’s office carrying his daughter who was about ten years old and took a seat next to me. Glancing over at the young girl in his arms, I saw scraped knees and additional bruising and cuts on her knuckles and imagined a pretty good fall had occurred. After seeing her wounds, I met eyes with the girl and saw her bruised spirit as tears began to well up in her eyes. Her eyes communicated a girl who was hurt, vulnerable and fragile. And now, here she was cradled in her Daddy’s strong arms. It seemed all was going to be just fine.
I wondered what that did for her soul, for the future woman in her.
Instantly, I was transported back to a rare moment when I found myself in my own father’s embrace. I was about four years old and attending a church service for a family friend’s brother who had passed away. I had fallen asleep and my father picked me up to carry me out of the church. I remember waking up to see our friend’s son looking up at me. I pretended I was still asleep and rested my head back on my father’s shoulder.
I recall the feeling of security I got in my Dad’s arms. I felt protected, cared for. The memory makes me realize how important it is for a young girl to experience a father’s love and the security that comes with that love. Nothing is perfect, but there is a dynamic between father and daughter that sets the tone for how a girl may feel about herself and conduct herself in relationships with men later on in life. Many girls nowadays are growing up without the experience of a father’s love and it is my conclusion that this is a key factor as to why many women are giving away so much of their power in male/female relationships.
We have so much value and power yet so many of us women don’t realize it.
And when we do know, there are moments when we can forget. When that happens, it shows in our behavior, in our relationships, in our appearance, in our homes, in our families, in the decisions we make and most importantly, the decisions we don’t make. It shows in the ways we look for love.
In January 2008, I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting Michael J. Lockwood, author of the book Women Have All The Power, Too Bad They Don’t Know It, and I want to share something he said that stayed with me after our meeting:
Women are a prize to be won.
It’s one thing to say it, and hear it, but how many of us believe it? Demonstrate it in our actions? In the way we teach people to treat us? To value our wants? Our time? In order to be the change you wish to see in your world…it starts with believing you are a prize and finding security in that belief.
But it doesn’t end there. You must then go out and…
Live according to that belief,
Get Your Heart Right
Listening to John Mayer’s song “Split Screen Sadness” and I swear no matter how many times I listen to his music, I always catch new phrases and experience new epiphanies.
I’m thinking about how us humans all struggle to love and be loved.
In Mayer’s song, he sings, “I wish you would’ve fought me ’til your dying day…”
That lyric hit me deep. I think of the times that I have had a disagreement with my husband and when we can’t see eye to eye and how I feel it’s the end of the world- the end to us, yet we always work it out. My feeling that way doesn’t say that my marriage is in peril or near ruin; no, not at all. It demonstrates what I feel I have at stake to lose…a life that I have created with another human being who completes me in ways I know and don’t know yet. He may just offset my imbalance! I hear that lyric and imagine fighting my husband ’til my dying days…I marvel at the beauty and tragedy of such a love. These words come next as the song continues playing…my words…Love can be tragic, but more so is our life without it. I am thankful to have found this love. I wish the same for you and for the world, but there is one key to the search:
You must (MUST) find that profound love within you first…then be willing to give it away. There is no other way.
The Video:
Broken Heart
I started to listen to Carrie Underwood’s song, Lessons Learned and it made me think about how the only people that have truly broken my heart have been women. I have befriended plenty of women and they have been the one gender I have given my heart and soul to more than men, so there you have the broken heart. Women get into misunderstandings galore and for what? Mostly, I think it’s a matter of unexpressed anger and not our nature. Women are not encouraged to express their feelings when angry. We are known as the nurturing species and have the desire to mend and make better all that is not right. We have the need to talk, to express our feelings, and so when meeting someone, a woman, we look for a connection, a bond, and when we think it’s found or there is potential for one, we open ourselves up. We pour out everything there is inside of us and when heartache occurs, we learn to hold back a little. And if it happens enough, we hold back a lot and offer little to no feeling. But we are a stubborn species too, so we try and trust again, and again and again. Sadly, some women make it to pure bitterness and choose not to make friends with anyone until life sends someone down their path to shake them up a bit, give them a couple of unwanted hugs, some pats on the back, some compliments about how beautiful they look, and they may even just prove to be there when most needed and bitter woman starts to loosen up. Doubt and fear are still key players in the relationship, but without realizing it, they become backups and she begins to warm up to the possibility that hope and love can and do always prevail in relationships. This is life teaching us to stay open, to look for the lessons, to ask for advice when we aren’t sure, to reach out when we feel vulnerable and uncertain about the direction we are going, for whatever signs we need to grow and become stronger. Keep a look out for that woman, or the many women who have your heart, and cherish what they bring to your life. Even if it gets rocky at times, the lessons learned can be precious jewels for you to wear proudly too.
TweetBring Sexy & Dignified Back
Are you aware of your own sexuality, your sexual energy? I think that’s HUGE. That plays the role of knowing how to flirt, how to hit the brakes on a guy who always has his foot on the gas, how to decipher and manage friendships with men, how to put yourself first. Do you preserve the best of you for you alone? Are you selective with who you allow to get close to you, touch you, and see the beauty that is your body? What are your thoughts concerning yourself when it comes to how men see you, how you see men, and how does that affect your demeanor when in a man’s presence? How about a man you desire? I believe a dramatic shift needs to occur among men and women; the way men treat women, the way women let them, teach them to treat them. My ultimate desire is to see more women be bold, project strength, act with dignity and demand respect not by literally demanding it, but by carrying themselves in ways that will indirectly attract it. We all have our weaknesses and it’s a matter of confronting our fears, our weaknesses, and getting the practice we need to turn them into what makes us stronger individuals…women. My hope is to see a reincarnation of the dignified woman. She’s in me, in you, in every one of us.
TweetSonnet XVII – Pablo Neruda
I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers, and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
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