Love is the Answer
Note: I originally wrote this about parenting, but it applies equally to divorce (and really to every aspect of our lives)...
Love. Love is the answer. To everything. Every problem, every issue, everything that is not working in your life. Every. Thing. The answer is love.
Sometimes the answer is to love yourself – to listen to your body calling for more self-care, to listen to your heart that is calling for a change in your life, to forgive yourself or find a way to love the parts of yourself that you think are unlovable. Sometimes the answer is to love another, or to see them from a place of love rather than what they are showing you. Sometimes it’s to love the planet. But no matter the problem, the solution is love, because every being at its core is love and love is the only thing that matters. Gary Zukav put it best when he said, “Eventually, you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is.”
And boy have I had lesson after lesson (after lesson, after lesson) on love over the past year. Unconditional love, loving when it seems impossible, when someone is literally spewing hate at you or screaming in your face. And most of all, loving myself when I fail to show up for love.
It’s been almost a year since we “closed our home” and stopped accepting more foster children. We knew that the three brothers who joined us in early 2016 needed more. At the time we thought they needed more attention, more help, more structure, more time. And while these things are all true (and many of them a form of love), what they really needed was more love – unconditional love.
And while I have only recently realized that this is the case, looking back it is very clear. Battle after battle, issue after issue has brought me to this place, where every single thing has been solved with love. Homework issues? Love. Potty-training problems? Love. Aggression, depression, tantrums? Love, love and more love.
And I know what you’re thinking – that sounds ridiculous! How can love solve potty-training issues?! Well, it does. As Albert Einstein said, “when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” This is true of everything, but especially of our children. The way you “see” them - with judgement, disappointment or frustration vs love and acceptance - changes them.
So when one of the kiddos had issues after being fully potty trained, at first I was confused. Then I was irritated – you know how to go to the bathroom – why aren’t you doing it?! Then I was more irritated. Then I was frustrated AND irritated, and every time I had to do another load of potty clothes and clean up another mess it got worse and worse. And then I remembered to love him. To love him exactly how he is, exactly where he is at, in every single moment. I failed for a day or two and would get pulled back into irritation, but I kept praying and meditating for an open heart and to love him exactly how he is. And poof! Whatever it was that he was processing through his accidents was healed when he was given the space to be exactly who he was and loved anyway.
And this is happening on a grand scale. You may have noticed that the world appears to be in a state of chaos. You may also notice that your children or other parts of your life seem to be mirroring this and “going crazy” or “falling apart”. This is a call to love.
We are one. We are all connected. Whatever we do to one, we do to all. Everything is energy and we are part of a collective consciousness.
This means that everything you see is also in you - good and bad. All of the violence, all of the hate, all of the blame and rage. The Vegas shooter? The white supremacists spewing hate? The President? Yes, yes and yes - this is you, this is me, this is my daughter – they are all of us. All of the ugly, hidden and previously unseen parts of our world (and ourselves) are coming to light, needing to be loved in order to heal.
And there is so much blame from both sides preventing everyone from seeing the light. Every political issue between Republicans and Democrats, every shooting that becomes another gun control battle, every social media post smearing the other side – it all just increases the gap between you and “the other” so you can continue to think it’s someone else’s problem, so you can continue to think that “they” are the ones that need to change, that someone else will fix it.
There is no “other”, there is no “they”. As Glennon Doyle says, “we are the ones we have been waiting for.” It is us. We are the ones who need to rise up for love, for peace, for equality. We all need to look deeply within ourselves and see where we are harboring blame, anger, hatred and we are the ones who need to change. We are the ones who need to teach our children about empathy, compassion and unconditional love. We are the ones who need to stand up and speak out for those whose voice is not being heard. We each need to take a look at our lives and see everything that is not love. The question is, where do we start?
First, take an inventory of your life: where is there violence? Where is there non-love? What are you focusing on? How much time do you spend watching violent media like the news, TV shows, movies? What about social media? How much time do your children spend playing violent video games and reading books with violence? What about the food that you eat? If you choose to eat meat and animal products, are you eating those that were raised with love by an organic, cruelty-free farm, or are you eating those that have been mass produced and likely violently or non-humanely sourced (to the earth and/or the animal)? What about your conversations? What are you talking about? Do you spend most of your time complaining about your job, what your Mother-In-Law did, your boss? The latest celebrity scandal? The horrific state of our country and politics? How do you talk about “others”’? LGBT, immigrants, white supremacists, politicians, etc?
With all of the above, look at what you are teaching your children. You know as well as I do, they are NOT listening to what you are telling them to do, they are watching and listening to what you are ACTUALLY doing and how you are living.
And I know, this sounds like a lot, it sounds overwhelming, but start small. First, just become aware – pay attention to your life and how you are living. Pay attention to what triggers you and where you start to blame others. Then pick one or two things to work on – stop spreading the blame on social media, reduce the amount of violent media you take in, choose organic and ethically sourced products at the store, become aware of your impact and choose peace and love over hate.
Heather Kristian Strang recently wrote an article for Finerminds on creating a love revolution – this is a great start on where to focus: http://www.finerminds.com/consciousness-awareness/create-a-love-revolution.
And I know, some of you think this is crazy or silly. That I’m too naïve, too airy-fairy and in the clouds. That I’m burying my head in the sand and pretending that the world is perfect, only seeing what I want to see. But quantum physics and science are finally starting to catch up with Spirit, and Albert Einstein, who was way ahead of his time understood when he said, “peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.” And I will add, through love.
As my dear friend and mentor Heather Kristian Strang recently commented, “We can either shut down or lash out as we see many in reactive/survival states doing OR we can uplevel and go INTO fierce alignment of Love which inspires us to take actions unavailable to us when we’re in a reactive state.” This is not pretending, it is taking action inspired by love – the most powerful form of action. I choose love.
“If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.”
— Mother Teresa
