How do you define love? We’re all experientially conditioned during our earliest childhood years. We learn by observing our parents, siblings, and others in the world around us (whether real or the fictional characters of movies and television shows). The ways in which others treat us, and interact amongst themselves, demonstrates to us how we need to be, or who we need to be, for us to receive love. However, it’s not simply what we perceive that shapes us, it’s also how we perceive it. The stories we tell ourselves, based upon our own internal disposition and personal interpretation, determine how we define what love is and what it means, or what we need, to feel loved. For me, I needed undivided attention to feel heard. I needed unbroken eye contact to feel seen. I needed to be able to share the most shameful and damaged parts of myself without the other person flinching or turning away from me for me to feel loved. I finally received these things from another person in my early forties. Now, I’m able to focus on healing my hurts and doing whatever I can to help other people feel heard, seen, and loved so that, together, we can all work toward healing our world.