What I Learned About Love ... From a Bear

I wake up every morning grasping for kind words. 

I go through my memory and my phone gathering moments of kindness and love to wrap my heart in.

The silence from which my heart emerges in the morning is heavy with the energy of my young life. The voices around me were volatile and negative and angry and unkind for so many years that my heart is battered ... Covered in ancient scars, and in new wounds from those scars being ripped open by perceived abandonment or judgment or unkind words. 

Unkind words from absolutely anywhere, to anyone, about anything, rip those wounds open. Every unkind word I hear is amplified a thousand times in my heart and screamed at myself.

It just DOES NOT MATTER where our words are directed ... When they are unkind, they are shattering hearts all around us.

They betray that our spirits are critical, rendering us unsafe spaces for others to be themselves.

I’ve written often that I had no concept of love before someone walked into my world four years ago. That the things I had grown up learning to call love - control, possession, obligation, and fear - were absolutely not love, and are absolutely no part of love.

As I fell deeply in love with someone, I came to know what is to love. That it is simply standing in awe of someone's being, having a deep desire to see and come to know who they are, without a single solitary second of envisioning what we “want” them to be or requiring a single thing of them.

It is just stunning the depth of control that so many of us grew up calling “love.“

So, I now know what it is to love, but I still have no concept of what is to be loved.

There have always been many people in my life who love me, but the people closest to me understood “love“ to be shaping me in their image. They did this from the best place, as everyone always does everything. They truly wanted the best for me, and they loved me to the absolute best of their ability and understanding.

That does not change the fact that what they were doing was 100% control, and was just not love.

I was seen with critical eyes and spirits.

With eyes that saw what was wrong with me and wanted to change it.

I’m sorry, that Is. Not. Love.

I was not loved.

I don’t know what it is to be seen with awe and wonder by someone close to me.

I only know what it is to be seen and criticized/directed/corrected.

This means I only know what it is to be seen and hurt.

It does not matter that that criticism and direction and correction came from a good place, as I know it did.

It fucking destroyed me.

We have to stop doing this to our precious children. 

We have to stop endeavoring to shape who they are. 

They already are who they are, and it’s our job to discover them. 

Not to shape them.

When we endeavor to shape them, we are creating a war inside them between who they are and who we want them to be.

This is completely devastating.

Truly, I believe this war is the root of every conflict on the planet ... And that it is ignited by parents and cultures that endeavor to shape and control, rather than see and embrace, who we are.

So, on Valentine’s Day, I decided I would pick up a few goodies for myself, and I picked up this guy.

I had no idea what an amazing teacher he was going to be.

Along with being one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen, his face is powerfully kind and full of grace.

I woke up this morning - that space where my heart emerges heavy with the volatile and angry and unkind energy of my young life - to his sweet face right in mine

It. Was. Powerful.

I have truly never known what it is for a presence to be that close to me without inflicting pain.

I always remember when I was little, my mom would kiss me right on the ear.

So that it was loud and it hurt.

I remember my grandmother sitting next to me holding my hand, and then playing a game she called “milking a mouse,“ where she would bend my pinky finger back against itself and squeeze the life out of it.

I’m sorry, these things are not loving.

They are no part of love.

Neither is yelling and screaming and demeaning.

I learned in no uncertain terms that love hurt.

It was a vicious lie.

What I experienced was not love.

This guy, however, absolutely is.