Feeling the Power of Love to Create Resilience

My theme for February is love, which I realize is as cliché as it gets, but it is what it is, so why not just embrace it? February is when lovers all over the world celebrate Valentine’s Day, and in Canada, when avid readers participate in, I Love to Read Month. Personally, I’ve never understood the concept of limiting these celebrations of love to one day, a week, or even a month. I believe that as human beings, loving is our life purpose. My heart calls me to find, give, receive and express love every single day that I’m alive. 

During my interview with Valeria Teles on her Quest for Wellbeing podcast last year, she asked me about my beliefs on love. I shared with her my opinion that love is the most powerful and limitless experience I’ve had. I spoke of how elusive it can feel to try and express love with words, because it is a feeling. I told her that love is shaped by our relationships and can be manifested in many different expressions. We feel romantic love towards a partner, protective love towards a child, supported love from a parent, companionship with a friend. Love is what motivates me to endure all the hardships in life and what drives me to be my best self.

Of all the different expressions of love, I believe that unconditional love is the most powerful and transformative of all. This kind of love never asks us to be someone different, but accepts us exactly as we are. This is the love relationship that is the core theme developed in my soon to be launched novel, The Holding. 

The opening scene in The Holding describes the dramatic events of the day Cate Henderson was born into the world, including when her father, William, first beheld his daughter. After spending several anxious hours in the hospital waiting room, Nurse Peever takes William to see his daughter in the newborn ICU. “William places his hand on the window and stares at his little girl. Something switches inside his heart as a fierce protectiveness is ignited. ‘Daddy’s here,’ he whispers, fogging up the glass.” 

William’s hands become a symbol of the unconditional love and acceptance Cate feels from her father and this symbolism is developed throughout The Holding. In chapter two, Cate is in an extremely traumatic situation, and as a way of coping, “…she imagines she is home, with her father, who holds her in his strong, loving hands, keeping her safe – her place of refuge.” In the following chapter, Cate and her brother Michael are helping their father create a skating rink in their back yard and she whispers I love you to her Daddy. “William squeezes Cate’s hand in a way that says ‘I love you’ as clearly as anything he could say.”

Moments that demonstrate the powerful imagery of hands as a refuge continue to be woven into each chapter. William teaches Cate how to ride a bike, how to hold a fishing rod, and how to roast marshmallows. He holds Cate through adversity in her adolescence and into adulthood. His hands are her sanctuary right through until the culminating poem in the final chapter. They symbolize tenderness, steadfastness, support and comfort, but most of all, they speak of the unconditional love that I believe every human being yearns to feel. 

In my first novel, The Healing, I tell the story of Cate Henderson’s transformational journey much later in her life. Unconditional love is a central theme here too, but instead of the father-daughter bond that is examined, it is romantic love. In chapter one, Cate has just found the courage to leave her abusive marriage to her first husband. “She yearns for something deeper, and then, when she isn’t looking, she finds love with the solid and virtuous Ethan.”  The healthy relationship that evolves with Ethan is a part of Cate’s healing, but she discovers along the way that self-love is the secret to her confidence, peace and well-being.

I’ve also written about love in its many forms, relationships and expressions in several posts on my blog, Musings of an Emotional Creature. I dove deep into my spirituality and shared my love of God, my faith in magic and miracles. I wrote about the light and love I felt after reuniting with my daughter and healing our wounds from the past through open, vulnerable connection. I shared insights on the healing power you can feel when immersing yourself in nature. I penned my thoughts on love as it relates to grief, loss, and letting go.

Which I suppose brings me full circle. Love is at the beginning, middle, and end. It is eternal and non-linear; it exists inside everything. You can’t define it with a word, a poem, a blog, a book or a movie, but you can capture a glimpse. Feeling love is what drives us to risk being hurt, to be risk being vulnerable. It is what sustains us and gives us strength as we navigate the trials, tribulations, pain, grief and loss that are inevitable life experiences. 

So yeah, I’m feeling the power of love to create resilience.