We are a generation of broken hearts, broken dreams, and broken fantasies.

A generation that is too scared to love, too defeated to try again, and too broken to trust.

This week, I turn 31.

I recall my first college love, exactly 14 years ago. I was young and full of hope. I thought love was the greatest salvation. Little did I know at the time that this boy was the first of a long series of heartbreaks.

Over the years, I stopped counting the times I had my heart broken (or broke my own heart). It then became clear to me that this was not just my story: it was the story of my generation.

By my late 20s, love to me was no more than a miserable experience that promoted codependency and ended with me waking up with that blue, heavy feeling in my gut.

But how could something so heartbreakingly, humanly beautiful turn into the greatest misery of our time? Are we a generation that lets fear have the final say?

Sadly, we are a generation that desperately needs to know the meaning of two souls coming together—for the highs and lows of what we think is love and intimacy are the only things we know.

We are too naive to confuse stability with boredom. We run away when there is no thrill. Little do we know that calmness is what our souls yearn for: only in calm can we hear the voice of our own being.

We are a generation that settles for half-assed love. Half-assed feelings. Empty lust.

We accept those glimpses of intimacy, followed by long nights starved of connection, wishing that last kiss could have lasted a second longer.

I pray for a generational love awakening.

I pray for connection.

Connection is you, me, and us coming together. It’s that tiny warm break in my ego and your ego, and it’s the moment we wholeheartedly, presently kiss before admitting we are too scared to commit, but taking the leap, anyway.

It’s that slight moment we drop our unconscious judgment about each other’s story and we come together as one. The moment you tell your story of sadness and joy and defeat, and I feel safe to tell mine.

It’s the moment I let you hold me.

It’s the holy and the sacred. It’s what we have left from ancestral connection and tribe. It’s love in its purest form.

I want to listen to the words of Tom Waits while feeling my sweet heartbreak and falling in love with his words as if it’s the first time I know them.

“Lay your head where my heart used to be,” I remind my heart to awaken and stay open while remembering that life is a divine marriage of heartbreak and joy.

With my windows open, the neighbors pass by and feel the words too, albeit they resonate differently with each story, reminding people of the loves they had lost and their hardened, raw hearts.

I want to honor my space while challenging the boundaries that have become a part of me. Break that protective layer that screams, “I am strong and I don’t feel” because I finally know that shared vulnerability is really what this is all about.

I want to know how the heaviness you felt yesterday made you feel and hold space for you without trying to fix you. And I want you to know about mine.

I want to hold space for you.

I want to walk barefoot and feel the earth with the soles of my feet. I want to come on my knees in awe of the divine feminine—the mother who nurtures, loves, and grounds.

I want to feel the divine feminine in you as it nurtures, loves, and embraces. I want to know the divine masculine for what it is—loving and secure. I want to nurture both and be nurtured by them for I am both.

I want to know you. Not what society has made of you, but who you really are—beyond your ego. But I want to know your ego too for it tells the story of your struggles. I want to know what first comes to your mind when you think about pain, love, and hope.

I love your pain for it has awakened you. And for the first time, you can see the love inside me. But more importantly, that pain has opened your eyes to the love inside you.

I want it all. Your fierceness, your mediocre, your fullness, your brokenness. Give it all to me, and I promise I will face your wind and stay still.

I pray to never invalidate my needs and never silence my intuition.

Read me, tarot. I come to you feeling that I will never know love again. But my cards tell a different story—a story about solitude and divine connection coming together (or so I hope).

I want the sacred, the holy, and the real—beyond the limiting definitions and labels of modern society. I want slow; I want mindful; I want messy; I want chaotic; I want connection.

I want to know love.

I want us all to know love.

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