Part #15: Lessons from a Trip Around the Sun

My final lesson as I enter into my 45th trip around the sun is the most impactful one that has been the longest coming.

Lesson #15 I love the way I love and I love that it is a gift to the receiver.

Several years ago I met a man who ignited a feeling in me that I had never really known before. It took a random conversation with a girlfriend for me to realize that what I was feeling was love. Fast forward to the heartbreak that followed and the confusion that can be coupled with falling for someone, and I was talking with a male friend of mine about that pain. In the same flash that ignited the idea I was in love, I also decided that I no longer wanted to feel that emotion. I wanted to be numb. I wanted to take that piece of my heart and hide it away so as to protect myself from the pain and disappointment love seemed to be coupled with.

I wasn’t able to accomplish that. Turns out emotions don’t have a permanent delete button as easily as we hope and you really cannot help who you love. But throughout the past few years, I had begun to question how I loved and saw that it was wrong. I fell into the message that I loved too hard and too much. Generally when I do something wrong, I make every effort to figure out how to fix it. In this case the answer was to stop giving love out and to hold back those emotions.

I figured it would be easy. I would just stop those feelings from surfacing and when they did, I would replace emotions with logic and wallah the problem of loving people would be solved. But that is not how life or I work. The way I love is part of who I am. It’s why the people I run into in my life connect with me with ease. It is how I find my peace and joyful moments in life. I love so deep and so hard, but I wasn’t starting at the right place with it. My biggest lesson in year 44 was the love I needed to hold for myself. So in 2022 I learned how to gift myself the love I was so freely giving to others.

Loving myself did not come with ease with all the missteps I felt I kept making. I had to be intentional and carve out time or recenter myself in tough moments to remind myself that I was deserving of love from me and the world. In time my love for myself was deep and consistent. I showed up for myself and spoke the light and energy into my soul. I stood in the mirror and recited words from my journals to affirm this love. There were points where I needed to hear it daily to reclaim my power when I felt weak or unable to face the day or unsure if I would be successful at what I was about to attempt.

In time the feeling and belief that I love every piece of who I am in all its complexity and beauty was how I moved through my world. Confidently and with assurance. My love of self was powerful and precious.

Through this I learned the value of my own love. This is something I would have missed and tried to change about myself because I was being told the way I loved was too much.

I love myself so I can love others. Those others are my children, my family and friends. But one day that will also include the man who gets the gift of the love that I give. My love is a gift to the receiver and how I show it is uniquely my gift of being who I am. I will no longer give it as freely nor to people who have not earned what it can feel like when it is given with ease and shared.

This final lesson closes out the past year of life and brings in the potential of what it will be for me as the universe continues to love me back with blessings and abundance.

I have faith that in 2023 the one that deserves all that I am and can give will enter my life and find a place to stay to receive and return that love. But I know that with or without that, the love I have gifted and will continue to give myself is something I no longer take for granted or try to question.