Declaring my love language in 2024
Have you read that book: “The 5 love languages”? It was all the rage 20 or so years ago. I read it back then with my…was he my hubby back then or were we just engaged…either way, we read it together and it was a good thought experiment. It was helpful to the extent that I learned the love-language combo he seemed to be. But none of them really stood out as my love language and this is not unusual for things of this world, and especially “experts”, to not land as nourishment for me. (hence…free-range medicine woman)
So, I didn’t give it much thought after that. I wasn’t that impressed with the book or concept but I see how it helps others so I value the work in that regard. (in all fairness, I’m not easily impressed) Flash forward to 2024. I’m not the same woman I was at 25-6-7…I’m in a season of woman-development that is purging and psychopomping layers and molecules of unfinished business…while simultaneously training myself to be a woman who leads her life from my wise and healed self. It’s a lot of feeling, healing, being better and DOing better. And, it’s a shit ton of grit and grace.
Anyway…one of my awarenesses in this season has been this voice of “I think my love is broken”. I think when I chalked the love language book not working for me as “I’m too free-range for this”, I missed doing some work that needed to be done to heal some childhood wounding around love & belonging. I see that now. And, maybe missing that work led to the narrative that I’m broken when it comes to love…I struggle to receive it and it’s getting hard to give it. (side note: I do loose love for people when I loose respect, so in all fairness, there has been loads of respect and love lost in the last 5-6 years…which leads one to have evidence that there is a lot less love given) So, I give myself some grace here…I’ve stopped loving a lot of people in the times we are in.
Come back to 2024…a friend asked me what my love language is. And just like that, the wound was opened and I fleshed out how all the love languages in the book don’t match, even though there is a little in all of them I require. I lamented over the narrative that I have broken love and that I’m “too much” to love (backed by evidence of all the love-loss) and blah blah fucking blah. It’s all got some truth and rational to it…but let’s be honest…it’s not THE truth, is it? I think she prompted me to consider what my love language is without tying it to the confines of the book. (bless her for that)
Anyway, at some point soon after that prompy it came to me like a thunder in my heart.
My love language is REALNESS.
I marco’d her with this declaration and saying it out-load was the crossing over of the healing into the healed for me. The organic matter of a person is fertilizer for relationship with me. The shallow suffocates me. The glossy veneer of pretending actually pisses me off and I admit this isn’t the healthiest response, so I’m working on this one lately. (there is always something to work on) The avoidance of ones’ shadow and not taking responsibility for their shit is like taking fertile farmland and building a devolopment…it rapes the environment of organic matter.
Realness. Wholeness. Bless the mess-ness. Can you witness and withstand ALLLLL parts of me? I love deeply those who can show me ALLLLL parts of them, because that is real. I want the simple, the mundane, the deep, the scary, the celebratory, the in-between, the big, the little, the center, the wise, the scared, the sad, the healed, the broken…the whole...the higher standard of deeper wells.
I was having a massage yesterday, and a wisdom came through. “vulnerability is the hardest to do, but the easiest to love in others”. #bodyisahealingtool
Yes, I have lost a lot of love in this lifetime, but more in the last 5-6 years than the rest combined. Yes, this happened. BUT…I’ve gained some new love that is way more real than the ones lost. AND…if I keep tending the soil of my realness and tend to the grit of recieving the real love I’m cultivating now, I will become a woman who has love she loves to have…and give. SO…the Truth is...you loose some, you win some and the real work is about ending those stories in medicine so you keep yourself clean, fed, and moving forward in becoming a human you can be proud of. (my you, I mostly mean me…but I’m really just talking to myself here, aren’t I? But maybe, me being me and sharing it with you can be a mirror to help you in some way…)
The Juniper Love Mug gifted by the precious friend who prompted me to the declaration. Created by hand from one of my favorite pictures of my beloved Juniper. #goodlordimissher
Truth is…we will get hurt. We will be let down. We will get screwed. We will have reasons to shut down. AND…we are divinely designed to heal, overcome, connect, and love.
Some of us just need to declare our own love language to find the land to build that love on.
I want to give sacred thanks to my friend for the pain of the wound, the prompt of the healing, for letting me be ALLLL my opposing sides, and for my Juniper love mug that really did bring great mystery healing into this for me. I could NOT have done this without you my friend…you know who you are. I love you. And the power of a prompt cannot be understimated!