Holding Hands

“We need love in order to live happily, as much as we need oxygen in order to live at all.”  Marianne Williamson A Return to Love

It’s Valentine’s Day, a day to celebrate love! Today I celebrate the loving relationship I have with my father. As many of you know my father was in prison for decades. For years I tried to push away my feelings of sadness and shame. Yet, when I severed my emotions in order to try and control them, I also lost my ability to know the depths of love. I closed my heart. But then one day I wanted to love more. I wanted to trust more and I wanted my father to know how much I loved him.  

Marianne speaks to this. “Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the relinquishment or unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts. To experience love in ourselves and others is the meaning of life.”

It was time for me to accept my fears, feel them and then open myself to whatever might happen from being vulnerable. I embarked on a spiritual, healing journey.  I came clean with the truth of how I felt and accepted my anger, sadness, and disappointment. I talked with my dad about how I felt. What I learned was that I couldn’t fully love my dad or myself until I stopped judging both of us. Our love grew.

The relationship with my father has given me the gift of soul and belonging to others with more compassion, understanding, and peace. I discovered that I was strong enough to not only feel my pain, but his. Love showed me its power to bring us together no matter how harsh the circumstances. Love taught me that it is free.

Dad always held my hand from the time I was a little girl until his death at the age of 88. I believe that we are all holding hands.  We all belong to one another.  Your suffering is mine. Your fear is mine.  We need each other for that.

“So moments pass as though they wished to stay. We have not long to love. A night. A day.” Tennessee Williams

Intention: Love freely.