Love

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the kind of love that holds us steady when everything else feels like it’s falling apart—the love that doesn’t depend on circumstances or perfection, but on presence. The love that lives quietly in all of us, even when we forget it’s there. The love that reminds us we’re all connected—whether we realize it or not.

To be honest, sometimes lately I struggle. I know I want to meet life’s challenges from a place of love not fear, but the weight of the world these days brings up fear, grief, and frustration at times. And even with all the tools I’ve gathered, all the inner work I’ve done, it can still be hard to stay present… to stay rooted in love.

But isn’t that what presence is, at its core? Isn’t presence/awareness just love, choosing to stay?

So I’ve been sitting with that question:

What is love, really?

Not the love we chase or fall into. Not the fleeting love that shows up only when everything feels easy. But the love that begins within. The love that asks us to turn toward ourselves with compassion, presence, and truth, because if we can’t love ourselves—really love ourselves—then what we offer others is often limited.

Love already lives in us. It’s not something we earn or perform. It’s something we remember—because it’s innate. It’s the quiet truth underneath all the noise. The original language of the soul. When we come from that place—when we act from the love already within us—we move differently, we see differently, we become less reactive, more honest, more whole. We begin to choose connection over control, presence over protection.

Love, in its truest form, is a movement toward connection. It’s what drives us to truly see another being—not through judgment, but through presence.

Presence  however, requires awareness. An awareness that is a part of our being. It’s a shared awareness that lives in each of us. Awareness is the source of love. It allows us to pause before reacting, to listen, to remain present.

Love can’t live without awareness, because without awareness, we begin to numb ourselves—to the fear, the pain, the suffering that are part of this world and part of being human. When we numb ourselves, love is limited. Love can’t move freely, it becomes conditional, protective, or performative instead of authentic. Awareness however, interrupts this. Awareness brings us back to life, it helps us feel again. Numbness keeps us from Awareness.

Numbness wears many disguises. It doesn’t always look like apathy or collapse. Sometimes it looks like overworking, scrolling, overeating, not eating. It can show up as alcohol, television, perfectionism, busyness, hoarding, avoidance, or control, drug dependency, disassociation, abusive behaviors etc. Numbness can also looks like being fine all the time—smiling on the outside while disconnecting on the inside. Underneath it all, it’s the same thing: a way to not feel. A way to not hurt. A way to stay safe.

When we’re not aware that we’re numbing, we often slip into survival mode. We start reacting instead of responding. We become victims of our circumstances—or entangled in someone else’s pain—without realizing we’ve left ourselves behind. From this place, it becomes easier to judge, to blame, to distance ourselves from others by making them wrong or even less than human. When we’ve disconnected from our own inner world, it’s much harder to see the humanity in someone else’s.

Perhaps though the deeper truth is: awareness isn’t just individual—it’s collective. There’s a quiet frequency that connects us all. A vibrational pull between living beings that exists whether we acknowledge it or not. I’ve felt it, in the woods, in a silent moment with someone who sees you, in the pause before words. It’s presence without performance. A kind of knowing that lives beneath judgment.

So I wonder,  if awareness itself is shared, can we really keep drawing such hard lines between mine and theirs? Between me and you?

We live in a world so quick to divide—by race, belief, borders, gender, politics. A world that thrives on us vs. them, often fueled by fear, trauma, and a deep forgetting of our shared humanity. If however, there is a collective awareness, if we are already connected beneath the surface, then the hate, the anger, the polarization are symptoms of disconnection. Not truths and not identities.

I was reminded of this just recently. A woman I used to coach when she was a teenager—an artist, a Jewish woman, a lesbian, a kind and loving human, shared her heartbreak after two young Jewish people were killed. She also spoke about a lesbian woman who was beaten in a bathroom by two men because she didn’t appear feminine enough to them. The pain in her voice was palpable. She told me she always tries to come from love, even when it feels nearly impossible. And how could it not be? This is what happens when numbness turns violent. When people lose awareness of themselves, of others, of their own humanity. When fear and disconnection take the wheel.

Still, there are people like her. People trying to hold love in the face of unimaginable grief.People choosing to stay open, even when it would be easier to close. I believe that is love. That is courage. It’s remembering our shared awareness and our belonging.It’s how we heal this world.

It’s taken me a long time to see that love isn’t always soft. Sometimes love is a boundary. Sometimes love is letting go. Sometimes love is holding a mirror to what no longer serves us. And sometimes love is quiet—just presence, just staying, just seeing.

I think that always, love is a movement toward connection. Love is  the force that helps us return to ourselves and to each other. Love is where healing begins. Love is where growth begins. Love is where everything begins again.

Coming from a place of love can be hard sometimes. But in those moments—if we pause, even for a few seconds, and take a breath, awareness returns. Through that awareness, something deeper moves through us. A remembering, a softening, a glimpse of our shared humanity.

Love begins again.