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.

If you get nothing else from reading this blog, digest this next sentence, take it in, internalize it, and allow it to reshape your perception of your life. “Your definition of love defines you.” I recently read a similar quote in a book by Richard Rohr entitled, “Yes, And…” He states it differently, but the idea behind the phrase is the same. The ways in which we see ourselves and the world around us will determine how we interact with the content of our lives. If everything is constantly happening to us, we will be reacting from a place of helplessness and victimization. If life is happening for us, we can make the most of every opportunity and optimize our lives.

What does this perception have to do with our definition of love? Simply put, our definition of love determines what we think we deserve and what we think other people deserve, too. Love is the lens through which our spiritual vision sees. Some of our lenses are warped by severe trauma. Others are born with misshapen lenses due to a genetic component of generational trauma, whether such trauma is encountered through a systemic category such as living through The Great Depression or a personal trauma such as having a parent who committed suicide. We inherit these experiences through our epigenetics, even when we have no personal knowledge of their occurrence.

There were too many reasons for me to stay. I had to leave. I knew I had to leave. I thought it would kill me to leave, but I knew it would kill me to stay. I was in an abusive marriage, but I didn’t know that it was abusive. He didn’t hit me or kick me with his hands or feet. He manipulated me and controlled me with his words and emotional outbursts. I lived in constant fear and powerlessness. I was expected to live up to an impossible ideal and failed miserably. I didn’t know that his expectations were impossible to achieve; I just thought that I was a failure. Since our divorce, I’ve read multiple scientific studies about how mental and emotional abuse cause as much pain in the brain as physical harm, and they cause more devastating, lasting destruction. The body heals physically much more rapidly than it does psychically. Still, I wasn’t able to leave. Even after ending up in the hospital for a week, I still wasn’t able to leave. It wasn’t until he filed for divorce that the veneer of our marriage cracked enough for me to slip through. Twenty years later, I’m still healing. But, I am healing.

It’s important not to let reason triumph over judgment. We have three different intelligence centers. For fun, I refer to them as head, heart, and hands. They are also known as thoughts, feelings, and experience. Together, they form our intuitive knowing, or our inherent wisdom. We know exponentially more than we realize when we’re in tune with the frequency they produce together. In our western culture, we’re taught to prioritize an intellectual knowing, or reasoning, to the neglect of our inner realizations. We also tend to bounce between the extremes of trying to think things through rationally or reacting blindly from a place of emotional impulsivity. Both responses get us into hot water, launch us into loneliness and isolation, or callus our hearts to caring and consideration of others. These results are what have caused our current epidemic of selfish ambition and its unavoidable, disastrous consequences.

So many people are out there searching for their passion, trying to find some meaning and purpose in their lives. However, they’re also avoiding any type of pain or suffering at all costs. What they don’t seem to understand is that passion is suffering, and it’s simply not possible to find something if we’re also avoiding it at the same time. For me, there are several things that I enjoy doing. I like going for walks, especially hiking in the woods. I like running, singing, dancing, and playing cards. But writing is my passion. Why? Because I can’t NOT do it. I feel so much pain in my heart for everyone out there who has had to go through any past hurts like I had to endure. People struggle so much. Our specific hardships are often different, but the inner wounds are all the same. They grow and they fester when they’re kept in the dark. So, my sole mission in life is to shine the light of love on people’s broken places, to heal the world with empathy and understanding. I’ve been there, and I felt so alone. And the feeling alone part is what hurt so much. I felt like no one cared, and I felt like nothing mattered. But people do care, and you do matter. So, if you want to find your purpose, your passion, make some time to sit with your pain. Make friends with it. Ask your suffering about its purpose in your life and how it can use you to help others in a similar situation. If we all do our part, we really can change the world.

If I want to reach my goals, I need to start by raising the BAR. My body is trying to keep me safe. My brain is wired for perceiving danger. My past experience is full of pain. The irony is how painful it is to push through my body’s natural desire to avoid pain. I can barely see the screen for how hard I’m crying. Thank God for the typing class I took in high school, so I don’t need to see the keyboard. I have snot all over my face. My throat is so tight that I can’t speak. It feels like there’s a bowling ball in the middle of my chest, and I could hurl at any moment from the rollercoaster that’s raging through my abdomen. This desensitization stuff sucks, but I press forward anyway because I have a goal. I’m going to write a whole book regardless of how I feel about it. I’m not going to let my body stop me this time. I’m going to raise the BAR: Become aware of what I’m currently doing to avoid what I need to be doing, Assess my thoughts and feelings to determine what is legitimate and what is a lie of my mind, and Redirect my efforts toward what will move me in the direction of my goal despite how my thoughts and feelings rebel against it.

Why’d you put this dream in me and not make it reality? I don’t understand it. Instead, I’m lost in misery nursing wounds and injury. Is this how you planned it? In a world of why and a swirl of shame, I try to ease my whirling pain. In the midst of doubt on a sea of fear, is it enough for me to know you’re here?

Why in the world would I turn this way when even the winds and the sea obey? I can’t hear your voice. Instead, at the moment when I feel weak, you seem to be in the stern asleep. How can you not hear the noise? In a world of why and a swirl of shame, I try to ease my whirling pain. In the midst of doubt on a sea of fear, is it enough for me to know you’re here?

Why does this race have no finish line except for the grave for my faith that’s dyin’? I get turned around. Instead of reward all I see is debt, so I cling to the words you’re not finished yet. When will I be found? In a world of why and a swirl of shame, I try to ease my whirling pain. In the midst of doubt on a sea of fear, is it enough for me to know you’re here?

You say you’re here and you care for me. In a world of why I can simply be.

What is the difference between honoring my feelings and indulging my feelings? I think it comes down to who is in control. I have four children. I do my best to honor them as the special, unique, individual persons that they are. I treat them with respect. I listen to what they have to tell me, even when I don’t understand a word they say because they’re talking about something for which I have zero frame of reference. There’s an unconditional level of acceptance. I don’t try to force them to be who I want them to be. I love them just as they are, even when I don’t particularly approve of their behavior or share their varied interests.

However, I also do my best not to cater to them. I don’t give them whatever they want just because they want it. They do not get to make decisions for things over which I am responsible. My kids are the best part of my life, but they don’t run my life. I don’t bend over backward to placate their desires nor to remove obstacles from their life journey; they need to have the freedom to pursue their own passions and the opportunity to overcome their own challenges.

If I have the ability to take a step a back, to view my feelings as separate from myself instead of as an extension of myself, then maybe it will be easier for me to listen to the messages they need to communicate to me without letting them take over my thinking or dictate my behavior. It’s possible for me to accept my feelings as they are, learn from them, sit with them for a time, and allow them to be expressed through my body. But, I am responsible for choosing how they get expressed. I can’t always choose which feelings arise, but I can choose what to do with them. I guess that’s where the difference lies. Do I defer to my feelings and let them run the show, or do I listen, learn, and respond to my feelings with the same level of compassionate care as I do with those whom I love?