I believe in love. All kinds, every kind. Romantic love, brotherly love.  The love a mother has for her children. Self-love. Unrequited love.  Big, expansive make your head explode love.  The quiet hidden love no one will ever know about. Secret love. The kind of love that can make your heart swell and then shatter like glass in an instant. Lost love. Lasting love. Enveloping love. Emanating love. Penetrating love.  Love is an ocean. Love is a teardrop.

Love is what keeps me going.  I am indelibly and permanently marked both by its presence and absence.  I can feel the love within and without.  The universe is a constantly flowing stream of love.  I used to think love was an essential human trait.  It was a commodity we alone possessed to dole out or hoard at our whim.  I know know that there is a bigger love.  Much bigger…it’s everywhere. Everywhere.

You can connect to it. Tune into it.  But like a distant faint radio station, you have to listen carefully to be able to lock into the frequency.  Once you do though, it’s quite literally life-changing.  What if I told you-you are loved? You are loved right now for simply being who you are.  The person you are right now, with all your foibles and darkness is loved.  That you are perfect exactly as you are.  All the things that you regret, the constant black itch that keeps you awake at night does nothing to change the love that’s yours.  It’s immutable.

We all feel, at times, disconnected from love.  Many of us carry the scars of past traumas.  Too many of us wrestle with the shadowy shame of our histories. Our past whispers how undeserving we are of love.  It tells us love’s abandoned us, and no matter how we search for it it will always be out of our grasp.  That it will always be just out of our reach…visible but impossible to have.  It says to give up, stop looking to have what is unattainable for someone as broken as you.  It turns love into the light of a sun seen from a distant planet…diminished and never warming.  The past is a liar.  Your wounds do not determine whether you are worthy of love.  You are loved not in spite of your hurt but because of it.  All of you. Every experience, beautiful and tragic created you.  There is nothing wrong with you.  You are not broken. You are loved. It’s always with you, you’re never alone.  I believe in love, and I believe in you. Happy New Year.